Microsoft-focused ‘Social Object’ launched

September 17th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton

You may have seen this story covered in a few places today, such as the FT or TechCrunch, but it’s certainly worth further investigation.

At first glance, the story is that Microsoft has unveiled an own-label wine. Yes, you did read that right, an own-label wine. It’s called Blue Monster Reserve, and it’s exclusively for Microsoft employees and partners, as well as members of “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group, but that really isn’t the point, although the clue is in the Facebook group reference.

This is the brain child of Hugh Macleod and winery Stormhoek, and has been designed to promote innovation inside Microsoft, and of course Stormhoek!

You’ve undoubtedly heard of Hugh Macleod, either as a cartoonist - that’s his handywork on the label, as a web 2.0 strategist, or blogger…this is part of what he had to say in his post overviewing the launch which can be quaffed in full - here.

‘Personally, I like this idea because it directly connects to a lot of different things I’m interested in. “Social Objects”, Microsoft, cartoons, Stormhoek, Marketing 2.0, corporate-reinvention, geek dinners etc etc.’

Social Objects, (or Object Centered Sociality) is where it started getting interesting for me. The term, as Hugh points out, can be tracked back to Jyri Zengestrom. The basic idea is that a collection of people need something to talk about, otherwise they just mingle around, get bored and leave. The theory has been translated to online communities and how they may fail because that ‘object’ is either missing, unsuitable or uninteresting. 

This goes against the theory that social networks are just made up of people, and argues that in fact social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. It’s a fascinating subject, and this campaign should form the basis for a good case study on the theory.

Hugh also overviews the five key principles of building a useful service around social objects in an earlier post.

Apparently the tagline; “Microsoft – change the world or go home”, has now been adopted by some Microsoft employees and fans as a symbol of the company’s innovation. Judging by the discussion this has already caused, the message and therefore object, is focusing attention.

I’ll be following Blue Monster’s progress with interest.

                              

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