Beancounter of the Week

You know, I wasn't really irritated by MS's Wallop project - but after reading this, I am.

This article makes it clear that MS is going to try to parasitize, co-opt, and control the social software scene, to extract all the value from it. We all knew this - the part that bugs me is that the manager quoted seems to have absolutely no idea what she's talking about. Which means that Microsoft is viewing this as a beancounter style project to gain control of a strategic resource.

It also really bugs me that the (as the screenshots make clear) MS is adding almost nothing, and completely ripping off all the innovation that people have contributed to this scene for years. They'll then tie it to Windows, and slowly attempt to lock people out of using anything else. I expected more.

Don't take my word for it - check out the groups' papers, which are light-years behind the real social software scene.

The full list is at MS's Social Computing Group's site.