Microsoft, unable to buy Facebook, makes their own for Big Biz

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Microsoft, web 2.0

Microsoft, unable to buy Facebook, makes their own for Big Biz

by Drew Olanoff Jun 12th 2008

So we all know the saga of Microsoft and Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, Facebook and Yahoo, and so on and so forth.

But at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston Microsoft is expected to show off their own new social networking project that the company's been "incubating" for a while. It's called "TownSquare".

TownSquare is a social networking platform for your company to use internally. Apparently it even looks like Facebook. There's probably a village idiot in every company too that will use it for something inappropriate, which is the true test of a full on corporate piece of software.

The goal is to provide a system for storing anniversaries, job promotions, shared docs, and other information about employees. It actually sounds kind of neat and useful.

Microsoft has been using it since January with 8,000 employees and no word on whether it displays in Internet Explorer correctly (we told you all jokes aside, "for now")

Hopefully some screenshots will surface soon.

[via zdnet]

Tags: corporate, facebook, microsoft, social networking, SocialNetworking, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Todd said 9:32AM on 6-12-2008

What? Microsoft is incapable of developing original products so they just "copy paste" someone else's idea!?!? No WAY! Fun to watch Redmond slip away into a lesser foot note in computing history, with this "Town Hall" thing being the beginning of the end.

http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

Drew Olanoff said 10:52AM on 6-12-2008

But maybe you can move it around with your hands!!!!!

Quikboy said 1:07AM on 6-13-2008

1. MS does have original ideas. You're too blind to see them.
2. Have you used TownSquare? How can you be so quick to judge on rather sketchy details?
3. TownSquare is aimed specifically towards business users. Facebook is for anybody.

No need for blog spam.

Eric said 10:12AM on 6-12-2008

Why can't you just do all that with sharepoint?

Ethan said 10:27AM on 6-12-2008

An employer just emailed me saying they'd checked out my facebook! It scared me rancid, though actually looking at it I come off quite positively.

Drew Olanoff said 10:51AM on 6-12-2008

*deleting things from facebook as we speak*

eeeeeek!

Jim Lamb said 11:31AM on 6-12-2008

I've been using TownSquare for a few months internally at Microsoft and, overall, it's really useful. It makes an initial guess about who you work with and tracks them, but you can modify that list anytime. Whenever someone you're monitoring publishes/modifies a document on any of the monitored SharePoint sites, it shows up in TownSquare. You'll also see their IM status/note when it changes. It's a nice way of keeping track of what your colleagues are working on.

It really isn't much like FaceBook at all. People don't have their own pages per se. It's more of an aggregator that makes it easier to track SharePoint activity (document changes, blog posts, etc.) across a number of different SharePoint sites.

Drew Olanoff said 11:50AM on 6-12-2008

Thanks for commenting Jim. It does sound really interesting *and* useful. We're pumped to hear more about it actually.

Transcontinental said 12:01PM on 6-12-2008

Looks like a nice contribution to office paranoia, call it hide and seek!

Hasan said 12:11PM on 6-12-2008

This is why they bought part of Facebook?

James said 10:17PM on 6-12-2008

This could be looked at as another Microsoft flop but I think it's got potential in that business oriented social networking isn't big yet, at least no in my opinion. A visual index and database for a business to keep track of it's employees and various other things while allowing the employees to easily connect to one another. Microsoft has all these sharing and synchronization services but none of them really aggregate together. I think bringing exchange and sharepoint and groove and maybe even the online Office into a business oriented environment that's devoid of the useless apps, games, and popularity contests of Facebook would really be useful to a lot of companies. But who knows how it will turn out.

Aaron said 11:10PM on 6-12-2008

Sounds like IBM's Connections product...

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/

Daaave said 3:55PM on 6-16-2008

Much like when a young Microsoft was trying to get a date to the prom...

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