Reflections

Is It 30M or 300K? Microsoft Dumping Windows Live Spaces & Who Does The Counting?

Posted by on Sep 30, 2010 | 3 Comments

I recalled when I read the number of users Microsoft was claiming used Windows Live Spaces, the 30 million users, seemed to me just a little high IMHO. Now it seems that the actual number of Windows Live Space users that may transfer over their site to WordPress may be as low as 300,000. But who’s counting?

But it gets better:

Some Microsoft partners are none too happy that Microsoft chose WordPress as its “Plan B,” given that WordPress runs on Apache and MySQL, not Microsoft’s own stack.

Well at least those who make the change over, whether it be 30M or 300K , will have the knowledge that the WordPress servers are using reliable software. LOL

But did Microsoft over state the actual numbers on purpose? Some believe they did:

Wilcox, however, has managed to obtain internal e-mail messages exchanged between (yet unnamed) Microsoft employees that suggest far lower numbers.

However, according to a senior Microsoft manger e-mailing colleagues: “The net is: 300k sites are expected to migrate of the 30M ‘blogs’ — most are dead. WordPress is adding somewhere in the order of zero servers to handle this capacity. This was a ‘who has the best online service for blogging for our customers’ and had nothing to do with technology.”

Ouch – so basically most of the 30 million so-called active blogs are in reality dead, and Microsoft expects a mere 300,000 sites to effectively migrate to WordPress.com

This is just another example of why we Americans have become so skeptical of corporate America and our own US government.

Comments welcome.

Source -ZDnet

Source – TechCrunch

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ the oracle

    I have four Hotmail addresses (don’t ask, the explanation is simple but long!) and to each is tied a blog. It seems that, when I signed up for the last three (I’ve had the first for 13 years), it was an automatic thing to assign a name to a blog when you signed up. So Microsoft has no one to blame but themselves that there are so many “empty” blog addresses.

    I was doing three of them, about various things, mostly about my personal life and family, until Windows Live Writer started having a few problems, and I stopped (coincidentally, it was during the time when I could not use WLW to post here, as that avenue had been cut off).

    The estimations were obviously high, but I think that with the changeover, and possible move to a site not reminding everyone of its Microsoft roots, there may be more continuing than the low end quoted.

    You know me by now, I am one of the first to criticize some things where large corporations are concerned. In this case, however, anything other than taking an average of the time between entries, and then applying that to the blogs that have had two entries in the last “average period”, or doing a hand count of same, would have achieved quality results.

    I really have no animosity about the bad count, I simply wonder why Microsoft starts so many things, and doesn’t keep them going, for obviously 30 million blogs on a continuing basis is nothing to sneeze at.

    It is like Vine, which I really liked, and thought was an excellent idea for the non-teen generations. It has been killed in its infancy, probably never to be heard from again.

    Perhaps Microsoft needs a better thought process ahead of launch time, so that these expensive “misses” could be avoided.

    • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

      Hi Marc,
      ‘I really have no animosity about the bad count, I simply wonder why Microsoft starts so many things, and doesn’t keep them going, ‘
      I agree. The company seems to have lost their focus. Too many product lines have been dropped. Think KIN just recently.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ the oracle

    I meant 300k where I said it is nothing to sneeze at – and if the change allows time for the non-Microsoft address scheme, it will grow. Maybe not thirty million, but certainly above 300K.