Tuesday 28 April 2009

MS Vine - Microsofts first success in Social Media?


"Hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system"


Ok so what this actually is, is every teenagers nightmare. An application that incorporates feeds from local and broader news sources, as well as serious weather warnings and social networking updates. Its intended use though is for times of emergency - keeping family and close friends connected. Users can geotag their location so keeping those closest to them up to date with their whereabouts.

The app is still in beta but soon to be added features include updates feeds from Twitter and other social networks. Facebook updates are already available.

Microsoft Vine was the brainchild of Tammy Savage, general manager of Microsoft’s Public Safety initiatives following Hurricane Katrina four and a half years ago. Therefore this is an app that has been developed after being identified as a real need and one that will certainly find itself being downloaded by parents and guardians.

It is interesting that Microsoft has chosen to keep this to itself and this is vaguely admirable in a time when . Though could this not be taken a step further with the use of Google Latitude? Could parents auto tweet their kids after a certain time period. Geotagging only works if users undertake the action of updating their location. Most smartphones have GPS functionality and so could provide this data automatically.

Read the full details below:

social media blog