Another monumental Microsoft blunder. Today, at 2PM, a new thread started on Slashdot reporting on the newest Microsoft strategy: first-hand accounts of people who switched over to Microsoft XP platform and got more productive as a result (in that specific case, from Mac OS).
What Microsoft didn’t foresee was people finding out that the woman whose picture appeared in page was a online photo catalog model. Soon after the thread started and the comment was posted, the page disappeared from Microsoft’s site.
Unfortunately (for Microsoft, that is), Google had already cached the page, and at least two people took screenshots (1, 2). Dave Winer also posted a search result from Microsoft’s own search engine which still reported the page.
Slashdot later followed up on the history. Apparently, a Microsoft PR rep is the misterious switcher. She says she really switched, but Microsoft’s page is still 404.
Although funny, I think this incident illustrates a fundamental error in Microsoft’s thinking: the belief that people will take anything given enough marketing. The present Internet culture simply doesn’t allow such behavior. Although a lot of people will really believe anything (think PHBs), the knowledge webs created as the Internet grows (of which blogs are a huge component) will thwart those attempts to deceive users. An indirect evidence for this fact is the very existence of sites like Snopes.com, which sometimes are able to debunk hoaxes in hours. The ability to cross-check facts in large scale should and will make people much more careful when writing for the Internet (and indirectly for any other media). That is a lesson Microsoft has yet to learn.