The fight to save Windows Live Writer

The bumbling dance moves Microsoft makes in their existence is just astounding...

When Windows Live Writer was released, I'm sure it was meant as a complement to the blogging service that Microsoft was planning to offer to its users/members, in the form of Windows Live Spaces.

Overall, Microsoft has a real problem with project concept and follow through.

Microsoft thought that if they purchased some blogging software, and set up their own blogosphere [if you build it, they will come] that would be a huge hit for Microsoft, but the problem is, Microsoft purchased a small company that was producing an off-line blog editing application; they simply thought that if they threw up a blogging service like Windows live Spaces, people would just come in droves.

The reality is that Windows Live Spaces may have been a noble concept, but the execution Windows Live Spaces was simply just not given enough attention. There were so many things wrong with Windows Live Spaces that people chose simply not the blog with Microsoft; there was just too many features that were lacking, too many options that just weren't there…

So Microsoft killed Windows Live Spaces…

Microsoft killed Windows Live Spaces and advised all their users to transition their Windows Live Spaces accounts and information over to WordPress. WordPress was Microsoft's direct competition for Windows Live Spaces and was on a daily basis outperforming Windows Live Spaces at every point… Microsoft's perspective was that there was no way for them to beat WordPress; they were simply going to throw in the towel…

But where does that leave Windows Live Writer?

If Microsoft purchased an off-line blogging software package from a small company to complement a service for blogging that Microsoft was going to offer, and this blogging service completely cratered; why would Microsoft continue to support a blogging software they no longer have a complementary blogging service to go along with it?

For a while now, I thought that the future of Windows Live Writer has been fairly bleak, because there's no updates for Windows Live Writer or at least the past two years.

Microsoft has failed miserably to pay any attention to this fantastic off-line blogging software that's used by so many people, and so many people find it so incredibly useful— since the introduction of Windows Live Writer, the Windows live development team has failed to even include a 'find and replace' function in the application; the simplest of additions in an application, so easy to do, but Microsoft has simply decided to ignore the application.

Microsoft did the same thing to Internet Explorer...

It released the Windows Internet browser, it gained huge popularity and became the Internet's number one used web browser. Once Internet Explorer reached the top of popularity, Microsoft simply forgot about it and didn't give any attention to the application. The popularity of Internet Explorer continued to nosedive amongst ports of instability, insecurity and performance problems… If Microsoft had only paid attention and given the application is due efforts, possibly it could've stayed in the top ranks. The problem is now that Internet Explorer is continued only as a brand name of toxicity.

And now, Microsoft recently decided to kill the Windows Live brand…

In a recent blog on MSDN, Microsoft developers talked about the future of the Windows Live applications, but completely omitted any information about Windows Live Writer or the future it might have…

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/02/cloud-services-for-windows-8-and-windows-phone-windows-live-reimagined.aspx

This reinforced many people's fears of the death of Windows Live Writer [Windows Writer]…

Now there seems to be a drive to get Microsoft's attention; to show them how important Windows Live Writer is to so many people— to everyone who creates or maintains a blog. Scott Lovegrove started the petition, is a Microsoft MVP and a Windows Live Writer plug-ins enthusiast; he's written many plug-ins for Windows Live Writer to add functionality the application that it would not innately have…

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/dontkillwlw

The request for the petition is very simple—
Update Windows Live Writer with the Metro interface, or put Windows Live Writer out to pasture; releasing it to the community as open source where it can live on…

No one can ever tell exactly what Microsoft is going to do, but Microsoft continues to exhibit such bumbling ignorance in understanding the environment around them.

Microsoft continues to have the thought processes that they alone can control the future of the Internet— they may have had that power in the past, but they don't have it anymore. Microsoft should been thinking more of the people that love their products and embracing that, instead of simply throwing them away…

Please make sure that you stop by and sign the petition to save Windows Live Writer…

…this article was written with Windows Live Writer 2011.

 

Thank you,
Larry Henry Jr.
LEHSYS.com 

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1 comment:

  1. I love Windows Live Writer and find it extremely convenient to compose posts when I'm offline. It will be really sad to see a useful piece of software go through this sad death!
    Appreciate the post and shared it on the networks to save Windows Live Writer

    ReplyDelete

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