Microsoft Gets A Clue From Its Kiddie Corps

Bill Gates didn't get it. Neither did Steve Ballmer. In July 2000, when Tammy Savage, a 30-year-old manager in business development, went before Microsoft's heavy hitters and presented a case that they were clue-challenged in understanding an entire generation, the reception was chillier than a campsite on Mount Rainier.

She'd told them all about her perception that for young people, the Internet is like oxygen, and the 13-24 set "are on instant messenger before their morning coffee." To serve that crowd--the "NetGen" --Microsoft had to discard its methodology of starting with a technology and then creating products. Instead, Savage reasoned, the needs and attitudes of the customers should determine what software Microsoft should produce, and the technology should come later. If Microsoft wanted to be relevant in the future, she told them, it had to adjust to NetGen, even if it meant producing software that the middle-aged guys in the room didn't care for.

Fortunately for Savage, Microsoft group VP Jim Allchin was curious enough to follow up, and now--after a wild ride in production development that took a page out of MTV's "The Real World"--her NetGen project has finally produced real software. Next week the company will release a public beta version of threedegrees, a persistent (maybe too persistent) online application that will allow young people to express their social graces, and sometimes disgraces, among friends and lovers.

Here's how the software works. You invite friends to form a posse of up to 10 participants. Representing the group on your desktop will be a colorful image, either one from a set provided by the software or something one of the group has produced. (It could even be a digital photo.) If you're online--and since threedegrees assumes you have broadband, you're probably online all the time--you give your friends a holler simply by sending the equivalent of an instant message. Everyone in the group will see it. If you want to send them a digital photo, you simply drag it over the icon and it shows up on everyone's computer. Then there are "winks": small animations that you trigger to run on everyone's screen. Some of the standards include big lips smacking a kiss or a heavyset cartoon character who drops trou and cuts the cheese. (Sending these to oldsters might cause a NetGen gap.)

The most ambitious feature is called musicmix, an online equivalent of a pajama party where people take turns playing deejay. Each group member contributes favorite tunes into a shared playlist, displayed on a dashboard with a customized "skin," and everyone listens together. A click from any participant can choose a new song. Then everyone chats about the tunes. Interestingly, men and women use this feature differently: guys will see it as a contest--who's brought the coolest tunes?--and do virtual chest-thumps introducing the hottest bands. Meanwhile, the girls use the music as background for their chats.

Threedegrees is a surprising departure for Microsoft. The company that's relentlessly focused on productivity has now produced an anti-productivity tool, constantly interrupting you and urging you to waste time with your friends. Who would want something like that? According to Tammy Savage, an entire generation.