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.

Google has disappointed me. I thought they were more high tech and more ecofriendly than that. Moreover, I thought their cash cow was naturally working without needing much marketing even in non-US countries.

A good point for Google, however, is they sent their mail in French.

In case you wonder what this mail is about. Here is a summary translated from French. So it is not Google’s wording.

5 reasons to launch your marketing campaign through Adwords and gain customers with Google.

• 1 You determine the broadcast zone of your ads (targeting by country, region, city)
• 2 You define your budget and control your cost
• 3 You pay only if an internet user clicks on your ad
• 4 The configuration of your account is very easy
• 5 A welcome offer : a 50€ credit to broadcast your ads

So dear Google, like many, I hate spams and I hate all the more paper mail spam. So please do not do that again. And btw, this mail reminds me to think about removing the Google ads thanks to which I earned in 3 months about 1.5€. That is I am close to be a millionaire ;-)

The mail is signed by Barbarin Martin, Head of Marketing, Google. I suspect, though, she is head of marketing for Google France. I am going to send her an email to be sure she reads this. I would have tolerated an email but not a paper mail. Moreover, I have just verified there is no option in my account to prevent this. That would be a good idea to add this option just like in general there are options to desactivate marketing emails in good websites.

PS If you think about this mail, it is an ad for ads. We live in such a crazy world.

If you have a look at yahoo’s results on TC’s article you will see that 3 of the top ten results are “Britney Spears”, “Jessica Alba”, and “Angelina Jolie”. I deeply apologize for saying that I do not think that guys searching for “Britney Spears” only search for song results ! So indeed people are looking for sex on the net, period. So where is this fact in Google’s results ?
The UK results are just too depressing : 1. facebook 2. bbc 3. youtube 4. ebay 5. games 6. news 7. hotmail 8. bebo 9. yahoo 10. jobs. Who can believe that Sun’s readers are not looking for something else ? About French results, who can believe that French lovers are only looking for weather and youtube ? Well, OK, Google does not tell us what French guys are watching on youtube…

Somehow the results are very biased. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert probably have an idea of what is going on. My feeling is that Google is not telling us exactly what they mean by query. Do they mean single query or complex query ? Let us say I look for Britney Spears sex (obviously this is for mathematical demonstration purpose only, I would never do that my dear sweetie if you read me), does this count for 1 query at “Britney Spears sex” or for 3 queries at Britney, Spears and sex. Results would be very different and using the first one will hide the word sex. So Google is most probably doing that. Web analytics experts are used to both kind of results. Indeed when you have a website you typically watch the queries leading to your site and you look both the single word queries and the sentence queries. Both give you different insights of what is going on. Knowing that Google is quite good at analytics, it is their business, I am deeply disappointed by the poor quality of the public statistical analysis of the queries they get.


The database made by the set of all the queries is just unbelievably interesting. That is the actual Google’s goldmine. First because they make their ads business out of it but also because they gather amazing intelligence information. This set is just the dream of any spy agency in the world. It is not only the most popular terms that are interesting. Using IP address, they can also check what every company is looking for on the net. They have access to the most private searches from people and company. Let’s say some guy somewhere makes a search on “a new mean to revolutionize the web search by using chaotical semantics”, well, Google knows it !


What I am saying here is that I expect a more thorough analysis of what people search because this data is after all people’ data. Anyway, if statistical data in general were more public, I guess I would not need to develop myself a public polling website.


Bonus: Writing this post I have a fun idea: making a simple website which is only a search engine, for instance using Google’s engine through the api. The only special thing it makes is to openly give a public access to all the queries. That could be fun.

So let’s begin with the first post. Today Michael Arrington said that the sexy commercial from Fleggaard was the best commercial ever made. OK this video is very sexy. We see very pretty girls. We see them top less and even naked. And we see a lot of them in action, the action being skydiving. Ok it looks like 100 James bond girls naked. OK every man is drooling over this video. But come on “best commercial ever made” how can this be ? It is just one more commercial with naked girls. It is not really something new. So if this is the best commercial, I guess I just need to make a post with the words sex, naked, and top less to triple my traffic ? I hope I will never have to do such a thing ;-)
Is talking about sex so good for business ? Is marketing so simple ? Before these 2 posts this blog traffic is very modest but fastly increasing: in September I had 300 unique visitors, in October it was 500, in November 800. The google requests leading to this blog are very logically “rails open flash chart”, polls, “hardy to intrepid”, “harry seldon blog”. So, if in December the traffic is significantly above 1100 unique visitors (obtained from linear regression) and if the requests are more sex, naked and topless I will conclude that indeed sex is just the best marketing tool*. I will keep you posted if I see a traffic surge after these 2 posts.
For part 2, just go to this post.
* As there are many things going on around the Thinkosphere and this blog, the design change for instance, I am already seeing some traffic increase. So I will need to correct the traffic from this increase to analyze the effect of these 2 posts. Not simple but that is the beauty of stats !