Mon 21 May 2007
I mean, seriously.
Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications. Popfly consists of two parts:
Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups.
Popfly Space is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.
“From the same team that brought you Internet Explorer, it’s…Microsoft InternetWeb 2.0!” You know, I wish I had a monopoly to free me from the pressures of innovation, the need to be fresh and creative, secure in the knowledge that no matter what mediocre, uninteresting crap I pushed out, it would still be foisted upon millions against their will.
At least they admit they’re uncreative: “left to our own devices we would have called [it] ‘Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, May 2007 Community Tech Preview Internet Edition,’ but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly.” Maybe you should have asked those same folks whether a “Visual Mashup Creator” was even a good idea to begin with. My hunch: “um no”.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to work for these people. Popfly is the kind of product that happens when upper management says, “Hey, we have to show our shareholders that we’re doing this Web 2.0 thing they keep hearing about!” What a sad, sad little company.
May 21st, 2007 at 14:50
And you’re an expert on Popfly because??? Give me a break. The comment on the name was obviously a joking reference to Microsoft’s history of long boring names. Duh. If you think Popfly exists b/c of some management plot show MSFT is doing Web 2.0 then you clearly don’t understand neither Microsoft nor business in general.
I’m sure you haven’t actually used Popfly so I’m unclear on how you’d have an informed opinion on whether it is innovative or not. More likely you’re just spouting ill-informed nonsense to incite both of your readers to comment - both being me and your mother.
May 21st, 2007 at 18:07
Popfly appears to be a mashup of existing tools and services (page creator, widgets, pipes, social networking, etc…), with one main exception — it’s not a web app. It requires you to install software on your computer and it only supports Windows (no surprise there). With that approach, it’s obvious that Microsoft still doesn’t understand the playing field. If you have to run their operating system and install their software to create content, then they’ve already lost, again.
It also looks like they’re fishing for the next big thing. They state the following on their FAQ page: “It’s the “YouTube for applications” where you can discover, rate, comment, and remix everything.”
May 22nd, 2007 at 03:19
Requires you to download something? Well, sort of. Some of the apps people will create will use Silverlight which, like Flash, requires a browser plug-in. Big deal. There is absolutely no requirement for Windows. You can use the site with Firefox or Safari on Mac. If you’re saying that you’re not interested in using any Web application or tool that uses anything other than plain old HTML and maybe AJAX then you’re going to fine yourself living in the dark ages fairly soon
June 10th, 2007 at 02:33
interesting. do you feel the same way about others, like ning, yahoo pipes, or google’s mashup editor?
June 12th, 2007 at 04:40
Ryan:
I feel the way I do about Popfly precisely because of things like Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup. Unless Microsoft is offering something interesting and new (and from what I’ve seen, they aren’t), I don’t see why they’re getting involved. This kind of thing makes a lot of sense for Yahoo and Google — especially for Google — since products like Maps have developed their own ecosystems. Microsoft, though? I don’t see it.