Gates touts blog as biz tool

Reed Stevenson

WASHINGTON: Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates often takes the stage to talk about the future of software technology, but he also told top corporate executives that Weblogs and the way they are distributed can be used as business communication tools.

"What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate," Gates told executives gathered at Microsoft's headquarters for its annual CEO Summit.

Gates' comments on blogging technology were the most extensive thus far from Microsoft's chief software architect, signaling that the world's largest software company is waking up to the potential of blogging as a potential threat and also as a new business opportunity.

Blogs, short for Weblogs, have been around for several years, serving as online journals for Web-savvy disseminators of information ranging from personal ramblings, product reviews, to social commentary.

The growth in the number of blogs and those who read them, however, is attracting greater attention from businesses as a means to communicate more directly with their employees, partners and customers.

That's due in part to the way that blogging has driven the adoption of yet another technology, called Real Simple Syndication (RSS), which allows blog readers to track freshly posted information without having to browse through a long list of home pages. Instead, many subscribe to RSS feeds on blogs so that they can read them on desktops as they come in.

Gates described to his audience, which included Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Carly Fiorina, Barry Diller and other top business executives, how blogs worked and suggested that they could be used as a tool for businesses to communicate with customers.

"It's getting away from the drawbacks of e-mail and the drawbacks of a Web site,' Gates said, "We're progressively getting better and better at it."

Indeed, Amazon.com Inc., where Bezos is chief executive and co-founder, began offering RSS feeds earlier this year, allowing users to subscribe for announcements of new products from the Web's No. 1 retailer.

NEXT BATTLEFIELD

Microsoft, which has already amassed more than 700 employee bloggers talking up its products and software in development, is embracing blogs and RSS technology because they are yet another potential threat and opportunity, said Joe Wilcox, analyst at Jupiter Research.

Since blogging and many of the tools needed to post blogs, can work independently of Windows, they could be used to draw away from Windows-based software, similar to the threat posed by Netscape in the early days of the Internet, analysts said.

"If I'm Microsoft and my fundamental goal is to sell more copies of Windows, then I might want to get involved in that," said Wilcox, who also has his own blog called "Microsoft Monitor".

A new Microsoft competitor, Google Inc., has also embraced blogging as a way to deliver more information to Web users and commercialize on the opportunity.

Google, the No. 1 Web search company that has announced plans to go public, recently upgraded its Blogger.com service, which it bought in 2003, by adding features that allow users to publish content from any e-mail-enabled device, such as cell phones and handheld devices.

Instead of RSS, however, Google is also promoting a rival syndication standard called Atom.

Microsoft last year targeted Web search as key strategic area and has challenged Google's lead in the market. Google, meanwhile, is reportedly working on a search function for information stored in personal computers.

Google's increased presence in the Web and computing space is turning it into yet another Microsoft competitor reminiscent of Netscape.

"That gives a nice rival for the troops," Wilcox said.

© Reuters