Microsoft says goodbye to Windows Live brand | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft says goodbye to Windows Live brand

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81 pointskefs55 comments

In early 2005, before Microsoft announced the Windows Live brand, I was a Principal at Microsoft (and was told to keep the branding information a secret - not even my direct reports (senior dev leads) could be told about it)

At that time, it seemed like a big joke to me (because a lot of senior people seemed very excited about the changes - even though it just amounted to renaming MSN as Windows Live)

I suspect that a new crop of senior leaders at Microsoft are now talking abut how excited they at the latest change.

I feel the same way. I like that they are consolidating, but part of this just feels like a new coat of paint. Further, I didn't see how this announcement fits with the Office365 identities. Are those now going to "Microsoft Accounts" as well? Or are those still Office365 accounts? Can I use Hotmail with them? What's the difference between Hotmail and Exchange Online? Can I migrate back and forth?

Unless something radically changed in the last 6 months, the two identity infrastructures are completely separate with one tenuous federation holding them together. And the two groups of products -- consumer and business -- will still be unnecessarily separate.

This happens at small businesses too. And, it's actually a lot sadder because truly nobody cares. At least MS will get some blog posts about people being confused or complaining. Small business execs who are hyped up for a re-branding usually don't even get that.

I work in biotech and this is rampant there - our company changed names three times before we ever had a product (or any revenue at all). These were not small name changes, either - they redecorated the entire office to the new company colors each time.

Hysterical - I started to formulate a theory on this that leadership distracts themselves with these types of tasks just as a person might engage in avoidance. Of course, I'm about 56 years late: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

Somebody needs to justify his paycheck.

Too true - we also had a marketing department for an entire year before we had said product. Now I certainly understand that you need a marketing department before the product launches - but consider that at a time when development was in full swing (about three quarters before launch) we had two software developers and three marketing people.

And nothing of value was lost.

Seriously, their "Messenger" software was the most emblematic of this. If memory serves, the name of the program in chronological order is:

1. Windows Messenger

2. MSN Messenger

3. Live Messenger

4. Messenger

The constant needless iterations of the software - which was basically perfect around MSN Messenger - made it suck so much, because they wanted to cram social gunk into it, add toolbars, and revamp the interface for no goddamn reason that I would willfully give it up and shun digital contact with my friends, since I don't have a Facebook user.

This is why Windows users drink.

Your point - that the software was at its peak when it was called MSN Messenger - is exemplified by the fact that most people still call it MSN Messenger. It seems even teens, who've probably never seen this brand out in the wild still call it MSN.

A thing that is so serendipitously weird about the program is that it has the best IM emoticons of any IM client of all time.

I think they since replaced the icons with some new eye sores, but it was fascinating how the smilies in some way revolutionized the way I and others communicated, because they really helped create a good mood and served the purpose of disambiguation.

Smilies and emoticons aren't a gimmick, which some erroneously believe; it's just that they have to be designed properly before they can serve a purpose. For one, people have to want them because of their design, and second, they have to convey the user's mood unambiguously. Interet forums (AKA bulletin boards) often live or die by them, because the worst-case scenario results in the must insufferable atmosphere of bitter curmudgeons.

Developers at everywhere from Facebook, Skype, Google, and Tapbots don't seem to get this and just include for them for reasons they probably don't know themselves.

The smilies were actually a huge part of what made the older version of Messenger great, and for more important reasons that people would think. It was the main litmus test when I compared to competitors; none of them got it. I believe it was also fairly novel in introducing the "X is typing a message" feature, but I could be wrong on that.

It wasn't perfect by any means; the X Messenger Plus extension became mandatory fairly early on: http://www.msgplus.net.

Whenever and wherever I possibly could, I always disabled graphical emoticons in favor of the text-only versions. I don't know why--maybe it's the same reason I turn off HTML email and do all of my programming and most of my writing and notekeeping in vim in a terminal window. Suffice it to say, it's quite weird to see someone wax poetic about the minute details of designing one of my least favorite features. It's so strange that even though I can't detect a bit of irony in your post, I'm still not sure whether or not this is some kind of elaborate joke.

it's quite weird to see someone wax poetic about the minute details of designing one of my least favorite features

Someone has a different opinion to you. This is not rare, and should not be surprising. Turning off HTML e-mails, using vim... you are in a tiny, tiny minority. Nothing wrong with that, but don't go around thinking that people are being ironic because they don't agree with you.

Oh I know--that's why I mentioned all that stuff, to point out what you're saying--but this is still Hacker News, and it seems a bit incongruous to see that particular opinion stated so intelligently on HN.

It's not. :)

Smilies are great for disambiguation, as people have some innate tendency to assume the most negative interpretation of a comment online; look at the culture of manufactured outrage in the U.S. over absurd interpretation of what people say in the public space. Of course, smilies like ":D" and such are rarely useful, and I prefer communicating in text to smilies when possible. (My Twitter feed barely has any smilies.)

I can see why you would usually turn them off, because they are often misused and superfluous, but text-based smilies usually serves the purpose perfectly well.

Go to a community like Quarter to Three[1] and behold the surliest community that has ever been suffered onto mankind. Emoticons do wonders in forum-based (BB-based) communities to lighten the mood.

Text is very poor for conveying tone, as your response and the ensuing conversation conveniently illustrate. Even if text weren't poor at the job, people would lack the time and skill to wield it convincingly.

Don't get me wrong, I hate smilies for the most part. I still see their purpose, when relevant, though.

[1]: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/index.php

If people use them, they are useful, but my feeling on smileys has always been negative. The vast bulk of the time they are used to disambiguate a joke or sarcasm. But telling people you are joking kills the humor anyway, so just write plainly.

Emoticons/smilies and such do emerged for the very reason you say, disambiguation of things that could be taken out of context in mail form.

Note that this disambiguation does not necessarily mean "making less ambiguous".

A smiley could also mean "make what I say more ambiguous, because I mean it in an ambiguous way (e.g half joking)".

So, it's only disambiguation in a meta-level: making what should be ambiguous more ambiguous, and what should be taken literally more literal.

>Smilies are great for disambiguation, as people have some innate tendency to assume the most negative interpretation of a comment online; look at the culture of manufactured outrage in the U.S. over absurd interpretation of what people say in the public space.

I think "manufactured" is the key word here (that and hypocrisy).

People used to be more vigilant about that kind of hypocrisy, but only if it's by people on the right (i.e a strict republican "man of god" that's caught red-handed with a prostitute, not on the "left", e.g a blog post in the lines of "Booth babes at a tech expo, that is so sexist" by someone who's idea of fun is Hooters).

Yep. I used to love this IM, but it got so bloated, so quickly that I quickly stopped using it. Now I use Google Talk. Reminds me of my old MSN :)

I still call it MSN messenger and it's because when I started using it it was originally called MSN Messenger.

This is basically Microsoft's internal organizations being forced outward, and powerful marketing people attempting to either latch onto existing brands where inappropriate (Windows, also often Office) or build new ones (Live, SQL, Visual Studio).

What's happened now is that there's finally someone sensible with enough pull to get these back in line- Sinofsky. Core services for Microsoft are getting the Microsoft brand (Microsoft Account), and the unnecessary 'Windows' prefix is going away. It's just mail now. (Thank you very much Apple for initiating this trend).

Similarly, there's the lineage of:

1. Microsoft Passport

2. .NET Passport

3. Microsoft Passport Network

4. Windows Live Passport

5. Microsoft Account

It seems that whenever Microsoft releases a new strategy white paper, the Passport brand changes.

As a note http://apatch.org/index.php A-patch is a patch to rip out the social gunk and toolbars, I haven't used Messenger in years so I don't know if its any good anymore but it used to be great for keeping the UI tolerable.

nothing of value was lost? There was no mention of Windows Live Writer in the announcement, which saddens me a bit. It is the best piece of software of its kind that I know of for writing blog posts etc.

It was the best piece of blogging software available. Then they did that horrible ribbon redesign and ruined a near-perfect interface.

Agreed.

I loved using it but ribbon is horrible. Still, it is best on Windows and I hope they do not do anything stupid with it.

Hit Ctrl-F1 to hide the ribbon.

From the Vista era: Windows Live Messenger

My relatives still use that. That was also the one that added advertising to the bottom of the window.

MSN has had an ad at the bottom of the chat window for a long time - at least since version 4.X. The version which came separately with XP, 'Windows Messenger' (which would, for some reason, operate separately from newer MSN versions installed on the same PC) didn't have the ads, however.

I must say I love the marketing focus of this announcement together with the one last week (or so) about just having three versions of Windows 8. Feels like a new kind of Microsoft.

I agree. This is what having healthy market pressure on all sides does. It makes me (almost) want to go buy a Windows Phone 7 Phone.

I wanted to think that way as well. But scratch a bit of the surface and you'll find the same old Microsoft, just wearing some lipstick.

Good riddance. It's part of the nonsense that makes Microsoft look silly - first it's OLE, then ActiveX then .NET - yes, they're different, I know. However the ability for competitors like Apple to a) stick to brands and b) reuse old company brands (see iBook) when Microsoft is shedding brands like a snake molts is part of why some folks "irrationally" avoid Microsoft.

A brand is a promise - when you shed them, you are shedding responsibility to your customers. Microsoft has essentially been unaccountable to it's customers while milking them using it's monopoly cash cows for over a decade. Perhaps they're realizing this won't be the case anymore very soon.

That's a completely different topic. OLE, ActiveX, .NET, MFC, WinRT - they're all entirely different technologies and, as such, have entirely different names. Good idea to keep creating new tech and abandoning it? Maybe not. But it's a complete non-sequitur to compare many techs to many names for the same tech.

OLE, ActiveX, .NET, MFC, WinRT - they're all entirely different technologies

Not really. Initial versions of OLE were built on DDE. COM was the next generation of OLE. ActiveX was just COM with a DispInterface (self-describing interface to allow dynamic scripting), so named solely because of a rebranding effort to put an X into everything. .Net was, in my opinion, a ridiculous branding of what was essentially analogous to Win32, and it was only named .Net to align with the Internet craze. MFC was just an app development architecture, so as I understand it it's related in intent to WinForms.

Why was COM with a DispInterface called ActiveX, to stand alongside DirectX, when the two had essentially nothing in common with regards to meaning or context, yet MFC and WinForms, which seem related in intent, share absolutely nothing in terms of branding or name?

Microsoft's rebranding efforts just confuse everyone: developers, users, and IT.

And hey, Windows is just DOS with a bit of new code, and wasn't that just a quick copy of CP/M. Really we should expect Windows 8 to have been called Microsoft CP/M 2012, right?

Some of the names you mention are indeed related, but branding and marketing are entirely different beasts, and from a marketing perspective, it may be perfectly logical to give disparate names to tangentially related technologies.

Windows 8 has no code parentage from DOS. Windows NT was as a completely separate OS design. Compatibility and so on for various submodules, sure, but DOS isn't in the parentage. They've had/have POSIX as well as OS/2 subsystems in there too, but NT is its own thing.

And hey, Windows is just DOS with a bit of new code

If you think that the step from a command line to GUI, multitasking OS is anything at all like cramming an 'X' or 'Live' into a bunch of disparate technologies, then I don't know what to tell you.

Edit:

from a marketing perspective, it may be perfectly logical to give disparate names to tangentially related technologies.

Please explain the logic of 'X' and 'Live'. From where I'm sitting, they're just aliases for '1997-2003' and '2005-2010' (numbers purely guessed). It added absolutely nothing of value for anyone, aside from the marketing team.

From my totally unqualified understanding of marketing, it's because it makes people go "oooOOh" and statistically more likely to buy or even notice the product, because they associate it somehow with fast cars and filthy sex. This makes the "random and without value" renames vaguely sensible in a for-profit corporation: it drives the bottom line. But hey what do I know, I'm a nerd and have barely sold a thing my entire life.

Quitting the devil's advocate role and in support of your position, if nerds had their way, the entirety of marketing and design would be annexed in favour of technically aesthetic solutions (functional product names, stable UIs, uniform web designs, ...), but sadly when speaking of the masses, buying choices are simply not driven by rationality. My ideal world will probably never come, at least in this lifetime.

As a developer, instead of "oooOOh" i tend to do an "oh shit" whenever i see another MS API.

Someone I worked with long ago had a t-shirt with about 8 of these COM 'rebrandings' with strikethroughs through each.

The one that I recall was "Windows DNS" (no, not that DNS, it was distributed network services or something, aka COM+).

DX (DirectDraw+DirectSound+DirectNetwork) had support added for IDL - basically making an AX wrapper for DX native parts. However, MFC encompassed the entire message pump, which winforms just consume (unless additional code is added).

I do remember delivering an ATL-MFC COM component that had interop with .NET some time around 2000. It would have also had some additional OLE code too, but at the copy+paste feature was removed sometime mid-project. If your code needed access to a keyboard, the screen, the network AND wanted to be able to use it as a library this was the only "sane" way to do it.

The overlap and confusion was insane, and it hasn't stopped.

.NET (.NET Enterprise Technology) is a bit more than just an API like Win32. It's a whole cross-platform language runtime, in addition to a massive standard library...

The most interesting part here is that they seem to embrace XMPP for their MSN service!

They already did for some time, I am not sure if they've done in the scope of this rebrand, it is surely an welcome addition. [1]

Don't expect that it just works with any XMPP client as it uses a proprietary authentication mechanism "very similar to Facebook" OAUTH2.[1] More popular clients have already integrated it.

That's why Windows devs drink.

[1] http://blog.process-one.net/details_on_msns_xmpp_server/

Over the years, the one thing you can almost always count on from Microsoft when it comes to product announcements is their large and mostly useless chart of which version is going to have which features.

Finally something to say "you go Microsoft!" - Windows Live was so DOA that you couldn't make lemonade with it!

I hope nothing happens to Windows Live Writer. It saves me lots of time when blogging.

So does that mean I no longer need to feel guilty for not using my @live.com email account?

Microsoft you were "not live" anymore for me when you decided to bring a wall between your Internet services and your Windows XP.

Confusion again, but hopefully for the better.

So we've gone from Hotmail, to MSN Hotmail, to Windows Live Mail, to Windows Live Hotmail. Where now? Windows Hotmail?

It appears to be branded "Microsoft Hotmail" or just "Hotmail" now. I think this is an improvement.

Every few years, Microsoft seems to dip its toes into single-signon for its services.......only unable to make it work seamlessly and replacing it with yet another solution.

5 Years Later: Microsoft Says Goodbye to Microsoft Account.

I can bet this will happen.

for record, rebranding doesn't help windows mobile.

Thank God!

This was great till I got to the renaming of Outlook to "Mail app". Outlook still has the largest market share and completely disregards HTML standards. As someone who often has to write templates for Outlook, it's a hassle to get it to work cross platform.

I can just imagine the conversations trying to differentiate OS X mail.app and windows 8 Mail app now.

The Metro style Mail app isn't Outlook, it's a Metro style version of Windows Live Mail (which I think used to be called Outlook Express, not sure if it had any real relation to Office Outlook but if it did they diverged long ago). Outlook is still part of Office (and there have been no announcements about Metro style versions of Office apps).

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