Anatomy of the MSN Search Blog

Some interesting things taking shape at Microsoft these days – most notably its MSN Search Blog.  Is anyone else following this stuff?

After the rather anti-climatic debut of its new search service last week (see “MSN Search’s Beta Blunder”), the MSN Search Blog has been a vehicle for crisis communication and controlled leaks in the span of five days and eight posts.

Bear with me on this:

Nov. 11 @ 2:49 a.m. PT – MSN Search Service Beta Now Available – the service is officially unveiled

Nov. 11 @ 1:35 p.m. PT – MSN Search Beta Availability Update – this is where things start getting interesting.  The service has only been up and available for a little over ten hours but already people everywhere are reporting problems and industry bloggers are taking jabs.  IMO, there are three interesting points to call out in this particular post:

• First, the Firefox incompatibility comment is hard to swallow.  You’d think that a key learning coming out of its much hyped “Search Champs” event is that early adopters don’t use Internet Explorer.  And early adopters are exactly who MSN should have been appealing to with this new beta service;

• Second, props to the MSN folks for providing people with an outlet for offering feedback; and

• Lastly, it’s interesting to think about “how” this sort of thing might have been communicated had the blog not existed.  Perhaps a press release?  Maybe a statement on the website?  Media call downs?  Probably a combination of these tactics, however, in this scenario MSN would have had some WaggEd flack billing $150+ per hour to accomplish the same thing that took 10 mins via a blog post and achieved arguably the same level of exposure.

Nov. 12 @ 2:42 p.m. PT – MSN Bombs & Rumors – On day two controversy surrounding MSN’s algorithm has the search for ‘more evil than satan’ returning Google as the first result.  This was later fixed.  Props again to MSN for having the foresight and wherewithal to use its new blog as a way to diffuse the rumor mill and address the issue(s) head-on.  And once more, you have to wonder, would this have been communicated as effectively and/or as efficiently via other PR mediums?

Nov. 12 @ 8:33 p.m. PT – How We’re Doing – Well, the easy answer here is “not good,” but you have to at very least respect the fact that MSN’s demonstrating a willingness to listen and take the good with the bad – even if sentiment is disproportionately negative.

Nov. 15 @ 1:02 a.m. PT – Desktop Search – Have you ever been to a basketball game and the ref makes a really bad call?  The crowd starts shouting Bull Sh_t, Bull Sh_t, Bull Sh_t in unison.  Right, that was the entire search industry today.  Seriously, everyone knows MSN is working on a desktop search product, but the fact that they decided to publicly paint this post as an “unauthorized disclosure” is laughable.  This post did, however, demonstrate MSN’s willingness to take some risks and share inside information and that’s what will ultimately keep folks coming back for more.

All this being said, we now officially have the three largest Web search companies mixing it up online via their blogs (see Google, Yahoo).  It’s an interesting corner of the tech industry – one I’ll personally be following closely as things continue to unfold.