Three Degrees Three Degrees from Microsoft. Microsoft is targeting the Internet generation with a new product called Three Degrees.... The product is a powerful extension of instant messaging with the ability to create ad-hoc personal communities. Once you establish these groups, there are a variety of tasks that can be shared including pictures, listening to shared playlists and the ability to send animated “winks” to other users. Newsweek has the story. [Michael Gartenberg]
..."We really wanted to have a different set of skills that would allow them to meet new people online in a way I, for instance, cannot," said group manager Tammy Savage. "They have a way of vouching for each other as friends, figuring out who to trust and not trust."...
..."If you look at Threedegrees closely, there are broader implications for this product for Microsoft, (such as) driving IM use for corporate purposes," Gartenberg said on Tuesday. "Take the Threedegrees functionality and apply it to corporate work groups and you have the extension from communication to collaboration that goes beyond IM. If you look at the shared-picture feature and imagine that was a PowerPoint file, you get the idea of where Microsoft could go with this." [C-net]
Microsoft's first relationship product should be taken seriously. By initially targeting the younger IM set, they don't have to hold back on multi-modal features. Their proprietary FOAF functionality enables community building similar to that of Live Journal. It could also host a trust/reputation system. And as a platform for other applications and gateway for P2P file sharing it is comparable to Groove. That and it bypasses blogging. The question is if we want our kids growing up hooked on monopoly.
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