How's the Reception at Channel 9?

Channel 9 was a radical development for Microsoft, because it sought to provide developers with an unfiltered inside view. The rawness of the early videos contributed to that sense of being inside the company.

Lenn Pryor, then Microsoft's director of Platform Evangelism, was the mastermind behind Channel 9. In the year before he left Microsoft, Channel 9 certainly offered more view inside the company, but it's debatable how unfiltered. In past conversations with Pryor, he indicated the site worked largely independent of public relations influence. The Channel 9 Doctrine makes a similar position.

However, some developers see the video blogsite differently.

"Channel 9 is little more than a PR machine," said Chris Martindale, a developer with Interactive Business Systems, in Oak Brook, Ill. "I haven't really found much use for that site since it was first announced. Same with their Channel 10 site."

Marindale emphasized, "I absolutely love Microsoft products, but I feel the Channel 9 site is more of a way for them to play at being hip and cool as well as show off their products and only give their view on them."

Jurgen Altziebler, interactive experience director at branding agency Corebrand, Stamford, Conn., finds more value in Channel 9.

"I think it's great resource [that] gives me 'backstage access.'" But he cautioned, "I just really hope it stays that way and it won't become a fake reality show."

Yes, It's About Marketing
As a marketing concept, Channel 9 is brilliant. But marketing is the key descriptor. The site is run by people paid to evangelize Microsoft products. Their job is to win over developers to Microsoft products.

Channel 9 is not today what its creators professed three years ago. Many videos are now coordinated with Microsoft announcements. If Microsoft releases a new product or technology, Channel 9 often has the inside view—Microsoft's perspective—which is very much about marketing the products to developers or other customers.

Channel 9 creates the illusion of greater transparency, when in fact the Web site opaques transparency. The view inside is highly filtered, and it would have to be even with no marketing or public relations agenda.

Microsoft employees are natural filters, because they have jobs to protect or because they have vested interest in the company through stock or other investments. Either filter creates conflict of interest an independent third party, such as a reporter, wouldn't have. Would a Microsoft video blogger ask hard questions that put his job or investments in the company at risk? My surveys of Channel 9 videos put the answer as no.

Altziebler sees some filtering as being necessary. "Obviously they can't post some secret source code," he said. "But it gives me a lot of 'why are they moving in a new direction with a product.'"

Before Channel 9's inception and related success of former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, the company mostly released information through fairly controlled mechanisms, such as coordinated product announcements and press releases. From a public relations perspective, such an approach has drawbacks because Microsoft—or any company, for that matter—has limited control over third parties, the journalists, writing about new products or corporate initiatives.

Channel 9 created another public relations mechanism that put Microsoft more in control, allowing the company to bypass the news media and directly take its message to customers and partners. Channel 9 videos feature Microsoft employees interviewing Microsoft employees. There is no third-party process, such as an independent interviewer or editor. It's all controlled by Microsoft.

More importantly, Channel 9 regularly gets first- or only-access to key product managers or executives—the insiders' view, just like the Channel 9 positioning, but also highly managed information dissemination. Microsoft controls everything. It's a public relations dream machine.

Channel 9 as a public relations tool isn't without precedent. Over at Microsoft's Presspass Web site for journalists, the company often posts Q&As with executives. The situation is the same: The people being interviewed work for Microsoft, the interviewer works for Microsoft and the Website where information will be disseminated belongs to Microsoft.

Companies' public relations objectives often conflict with those of news agencies, one of the biggest being objectivity. Many companies do their best to "spin" for the most positive outcome possible. Microsoft's spin site is Presspass, and having this kind of public relations Web site isn't unusual for any company.

"In general, one has to remember that any material from Microsoft is implicitly biased," said Helgi Páll Helgason, lead developer for Kaupthing Bank. "I find it invaluable to also read material from independent sources to get an independent perspective."

Helgason is not a big user of Channel 9 because he believes that "video is an inefficient way to get development related information. I find the best source of info to be the MSDN [Microsoft Developer Network] web."

Unfiltered Community
As a channel for reaching developers, Channel 9's success is unquestionable. According to Channel 9 stats available on the Web site early this evening, there are 46,071 members and 1,077 guests, 136 of which were online. The community is huge by most measures, but other developer communities are large, too. SourceForge has 1,547,487 registered users, for example.

Channel 9 members and the comments they make are Channel 9's largely unfiltered contents. Community comment is raw, not orchestrated by public relations people and sometimes downright condemning of Microsoft.

In a December blog post, Scoble explained, "What was so special about Channel 9: that the customers could write 'Microsoft sucks' right on the home page and we wouldn't pull it down."

Microsoft can and does use community feedback to improve developer relations.

In a November blog post, Jeff Sandquist wrote: "We're listening, and we hope that by working with you we'll continue to keep Channel 9 one of the finest developer communities on the Web." Sandquist, who is Pryor's successor, is responsible for Channel 9 and companion site Channel 10.

In a December blog post, Sandquist described Channel 9 as a "revolution in community for Microsoft."

Microsoft also benefits by seeing which videos are most popular and can use the insight given for developing products or features. From the aspect of building community, Channel 9 sets a standard for corporate blogging.

"We as the developer community get a much better look into the inner workings for Microsoft software development and future products," Altziebler said.

While the Channel 9 community is a largely unfiltered look at Microsoft, it doesn't give the unfiltered inside view conceived by Pryor three years ago.

Blogger Employees
If Microsoft were truly serious about giving everyone the unfiltered view, more top company executives would blog. Incoming chief software architect Ray Ozzie used to blog, but he disappeared from the blogosphere. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates emphasized the importance of blogging in a May 2004 speech during the company's annual CEO summit. But Gates doesn't blog; same for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Some other CEOs use blogging as a way of increasing transparency. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs, posting as recently as Tuesday, too. His posts tend to be very personal and seemingly unfiltered.

Many Microsoft employees do blog, reportedly more than 4,000 of them. The number of employee bloggers was comparatively quite small, about 300, before the launch of Channel 9 and the success of Scoble's blog.

Last year could be called year of the blog at Microsoft. Employee blogrolls swelled and Microsoft bloggers disseminated lots of vital information about the company. Increasingly, employee bloggers are becoming Microsoft's primary evangelists. They are certainly a group over which the company can exact some control and which can spin information to Microsoft's advantage.

It's increasingly common for employee bloggers to make product announcements rather than there to be a formal press release. That puts the bloggers in a PR role and a decidedly effective one. The blog outreach is a personal and more approachable way to reach customers, developers and partners. It's also a mechanism with limited feedback loop. The blogger assumes the role of a spokesperson, but not one easily questioned by the news media or other third parties. With the exception of blogs with comments, the information flows one way.

Still, many blog posts offer some real transparency. The personal quality of the blog format is one reason. The passion of the employee for his or her product is another.

For some developers, the employee blogs are a vital resource. Martindale recently needed information about SharePoint Server 2007 APIs (application programming interfaces) that wasn't available on MSDN.

"I needed this information on how to programmatically backup and restore specific sites of a SharePoint web and luckily was able to find it through the SharePoint Team Blog," he said. "Without that information, I would have just been spinning my wheels and randomly trying things to see what worked and what didn't."

Not all bloggers or their posts are unfiltered. Some posts clearly have public relations approval. Otherwise, why for some important posts would there be outreach from Microsoft's primary public relations agency, Waggener Edstrom?

That said, writing something personally for a blog with one's name on it is vastly different from conducting a video interview with a colleague or manager. The one venue is conduit for the personal view, while the other is constrained by social, economic and business cultural mores. The employee bloggers are the more transparent view into Microsoft in a way Channel 9 may never be able to be.

If Channel 9 is listening to the cockpit, Microsoft bloggers are the passengers in the cabin—and they may have more interesting stories to tell.