Pivot Invitation system is bad
First the invite is an installation code. As Microsoft says “This code is good for 10 installs – give it to 9 friends and keep 1 for yourself!” I have nothing against a code for a single use. However, this is not practical at all to invite other people because they can themselves redistribute the code! Invites by email, like Google does with Google Wave are way better.

Microsoft is unfair with Firefox (OK, it is not new)
Then, let’s install Pivot. Another bad thing, the installer says “Firefox must be closed. Click Next to close Firefox and proceed”. It does not say a thing about Internet Explorer though. Unfair treatment by Microsoft, as usual… (I am not speaking about compatibility with Linux…).

Pivot installer is bad
Worst, this code does not work. Once I use it, I get: “We were unable to verify your code at this time. Make sure you are connected to the internet and click back to try again”

Microsoft customer support is nonexistent
I emailed Jenn Lin who sent me the invitation: no answer. I tweeted livelabs and Jenn Lin: no answer. OK, they got only 2 hours (working hours in Seattle). But Twitter is real-time isn’t it?
[EDIT] See their answer at the end.

Microsoft is awful at being user friendly
I went back to Pivot website to see what I had missed. And indeed I had missed the small characters:

• “Pivot is supported only on US English-based operating systems with US English date and time formats.” I am French using Windows in… French. So I assume that is the problem. But I cannot say the way the software fails is nice. It is not clear at all what the problem is. A message like “sorry this software requires an US English-based operating system” would have been better.

• “Pivot requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Internet Explorer 8. Pivot will import your browsing history from Internet Explorer and Firefox during installation.” OK I have that but it is not the sense of history which is to be cross-browser and cross OS, (I know I am speaking about Microsoft).

• “Windows XP is not supported at this time. Pivot is not compatible with Windows Server Editions.” So even your fellow Windows users are screwed if they don’t have the version you want them to have. Gosh and I am not speaking about Linux.

• Recommended System Configuration: Windows 7 with Aero enabled, 2-GHz 32-bit (x86) processor, 2 gigabytes of random access memory. I comply with that but wow that is light… Why not a Xeon with 10Gb of RAM while you are at it.

Conclusion
So to sum up, Google Wave is easy-to-use, accessible for the world, fast, cross browser, cross OS, not requiring a monster of a computer, and has an effective invitation system while Microsoft Pivot is complicated, US-only, single browser, single OS, requiring a hell of a computer and has a poor invitation system.

I am not a Google fan boy. Do you remember when I posted that Google was spamming by paper mail or when I wrote about Google and Microsoft revenues per employee. I am neither a Microsoft hater even though I am a Linux user. I switch back and forth according to my needs. Moreover, I love data, data mining and visualization, I was excited by Pivot (as this tweet says) and ready to make a good post about it. But finally after trying Google Wave and trying to try Pivot, I must admit I am closer to be a Google fan and closer to be a Microsoft hater. I was willing to spread Pivot by spreading the invites like I did with Google Wave but, as you understand, I won’t.

[EDIT] So after 9 hours I got this answer: “I am sorry you are seeing this error. Pivot has very limited configuration support, and both the language and date time settings must be standard English-US.”
This still leaves me with the following thought. Releasing this, even in beta on invitation, is still weird with such a limited support. I mean the fact that MS is not able to make a software that works for any Windows language at the very least is really not serious. They are the ones making Windows! They should get a sens of the image they give to the world because right now I got an idea of very bad software engineers!

[EDIT 2] Here is a second answer from MS. “Perhaps you missed this detail. There is a work around for machines with configurations other than our supported set. It is not recommended for everyone, but it will get Pivot going. It is up to you if you would like to try it.” The work around can be found on Pivot Forum.

This calls for a few more comments (sent back to MS):

• Actually, I had seen that. But I don’t like much when it comes to run around your PC and make the rain dance to get a software to work (even though I am a Linux user ;-) ).
• The title of the previous link is “Non English-US installation failures - looks like a network error ” Nonsense, isn’t it?
• Now my interest about MS Pivot has been diverted from a technical question to a marketing question. I don’t understand why you have these difficulties but I don’t care much. Where I would be interested to get an answer is how they can dare to distribute (even on invites) a product with such a ridiculous support without at least an explicit help inside the software?

That being said, I don’t really expect an answer from them because marketing questions are not discussed publicly (not only at Microsoft). So, maybe, they will discuss this internally and that is enough as far as I am concerned.