Since Microsoft Surface was introduced in May 2007, I have been excited about the possibilities. While the coffee table model is cool in a retro-pac-man-in-a-pizza-joint way, I immediately envisioned form factors from walls to phones to smart cards that can fit in your pocket.
Imagine the walls of your house in Surface. You would have total control of the style of the room from the wall colors, to the artwork. There would be no need to have a television, it could exist whenever you wanted it to and then disappear as artwork, solid colors or maybe even an aquarium.
The placement of your TV would be variable. If you wanted the kids to be able to watch a small “television” in their beanbag chairs, you could drag a small TV down near the floor where they could watch. You could also drag the TV around the wall and modify the size, the shape and even segment into multiple TVs to monitor other channels. Imagine that during sporting events! Who needs picture in a picture?
In the office you could have relaxing scenery that transforms into a conference call command center, complete with charts, stats and live avatars of participants. Want your office to look like a library or a beach? Surface!
One of Surface’s powers is its ability to interact with objects and devices. The examples we see are the camera being set down on the coffee table version and the pictures spilling out. People can then put their Zunes on the table and drag photos onto the Zune. That’s pretty cool, right? It’s true social computing because the Surface does not limit the number of active interfaces, meaning I can drag photos to my Zune while you do the same, at the same time, on the same Surface.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am big on process innovation. Technology is a big enabler for me, however I try hard not to force technology into a situation just because I think it is cool. That said, if we do not start innovating with Surface, we are not going to see its benefit anywhere.
The general sentiment of the blog-o-social web is that the Seinfeld ads were terrible. They produced a sort of anti-buzz throughout that resonated on blogs, twitter, seesmic and vimeo.
In other words, everything went exactly as planned.
Microsoft knew that one of two things would happen. People would love the approach and they would begin a long series of Bill & Jerry ads; or people would think they are terrible and people would begin a wave of criticism and disdain for the campaign, not the product. In the process, they would tell Microsoft exactly what they really wanted the brand to be and Microsoft would react… swiftly.
The ads were released in early September. This chart shows a spike in Microsoft, Seinfeld and PC related buzz on twitter. Granted, the buzz was generally negative, but if the ads had been funny, people arguably would not have reacted so passionately.
This buzz is consistent across social media properties:
- Microsoft needed to brand themselves for the everyman.
- They needed to remind people that they are crushing Apple
- They needed to explicitly state that it’s OK to do what everyone else is doing
- and that the lion’s share of computing is running on PCs
Loren Feldman of 1938media nailed it.
Coincidence? If you believe that any PR is good PR, then Microsoft got their wish with the Seinfeld ads. They also got a load of free consulting from bloggers, nanobloggers and the media. Shortly after everyone told Microsoft what they wanted, they got it. Seinfeld and the Bill & Jerry campaign were “canned” and “I’m a PC” was born.
Ha ha suckers! Pure Genius. Oh and kudos to Wired for almost realizing that it was all part of the plan.
It all started a month ago when @melkirk tweeted:
