Hot on the heels of facebook’s announcement of an enterprise version Microsoft is releasing its own ‘facebook for business’ called TownSquare. I am very enthusiastic about the potential of enterprise networks which is why I continuously boost Connectbeam and Trampoline Systems. Start-ups invariably brick themselves when a big company moves into their territory but they shouldn’t. I get the impression from SharePoint and now TownSquare that MS is just tiddling around with this. They have never been an Internet company and all their web products display a profound lack of understanding of the web.
I am sure there are a great many employees at the company who do understand it perfectly but none has sufficient clout to make any changes. All the top people have grown up around software and that is where their focus remains. This is not unique to MS, Apple has a similar problem but their excellent devices tend to distract attention from the fact that their web offerings are non-existent. This includes iTunes which seems like a big deal until it’s set against p2p which is where most iPod owners get their music. In this context iTunes is just a good way of getting songs from BitTorrent to their music player.
Focus on users
I expect that one of the enterprise network start-ups will really get traction as they are totally focused on getting that product right. They are also more responsive to the user who can ask for extra features to be included. Integrating with existing systems should be less of a problem because (a) enterprise networks are delivered through the browser and (b) many people are already familiar with social networks so the jump to using an enterprise network in the office won’t be too great.
The start-up which wins will be the one which can respond quickest to their customers’ needs. Large company products which are a sideshow to the large company will never succeed in this environment. MS cannot abandon Office because they have too much invested in it. Here’s a clue – when nobody prints documents out any more nobody needs a word processor. It’s so 80s. What people really want is simple web authoring and networking tools which is why MySpace et al took off a few years ago. The same will happen in business, you read it here first.
Read more:
On trampolines
On facebook enterprise
Pic: Computerworld
[...] has already started tinkering with enterprise networks in the shape of TownSquare. Now I fully expect TownSquare not to make it as MS seems to have taken its eye off the enterprise apps ball, apparently believing that all they [...]