See Windows Vista site goes viral

June 2, 2006 By

My wife works for Worktank, which is a company that does a lot of stuff for Microsoft (she is one of the producers of MSDN's Webcasts). Last night she was bragging about a site that they did about Windows Vista: http://www.seewindowsvista.com/

She said that they got 39,000 unique visits in the first 24 hours of the site being live. All based on talking to blogs. It's funny what happens if you don't click on anything (the actor gets impatient).

Wait a second. This is an advertisment. One that got people to send it around to their friends. And 39,000 people showed up? Wild.

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  • http://www.zoom-in.com/ Megan Cunningham

    The interface design of this site is pretty slick and intuitive – kudos, but many of the examples are REALLY LAME. To me, it’s not clear from looking at some of these examples what the point is –there’s not a clear value proposition, and the project descriptions seem very surface and vague. Compared to the launch material associated with other graphically-driven apps and OS’s (name Adobe and Apple), these feel pretty behind-the-times.

  • http://www.zoom-in.com Megan Cunningham

    The interface design of this site is pretty slick and intuitive – kudos, but many of the examples are REALLY LAME. To me, it’s not clear from looking at some of these examples what the point is –there’s not a clear value proposition, and the project descriptions seem very surface and vague. Compared to the launch material associated with other graphically-driven apps and OS’s (name Adobe and Apple), these feel pretty behind-the-times.

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  • dmad

    Skerritt was probably a cheap/easy choice given I believe he lives on Bainbridge Island, which is across the bay from Seattle. If that was the way they were going, it could have been worse.. they could have gotten Cliff from “Cheers”. John Ratzenberger lives in that neighborhood, too ;-)

    @26.. So the goal of the video was to fool the unwashed masses into believing they need Vista to get all that “cool” stuff they were seeing?

  • dmad

    Skerritt was probably a cheap/easy choice given I believe he lives on Bainbridge Island, which is across the bay from Seattle. If that was the way they were going, it could have been worse.. they could have gotten Cliff from “Cheers”. John Ratzenberger lives in that neighborhood, too ;-)

    @26.. So the goal of the video was to fool the unwashed masses into believing they need Vista to get all that “cool” stuff they were seeing?

  • http://raincoaster.wordpress.com/ raincoaster

    72,000 visitors in three days isn’t much considering half that was in the first day. I’d consider this a substantial drop-off, particularly as Robert has linked to it here, on the #1 WordPress blog.

    Verdict: NOT viral. No legs.

  • http://raincoaster.wordpress.com/ raincoaster

    72,000 visitors in three days isn’t much considering half that was in the first day. I’d consider this a substantial drop-off, particularly as Robert has linked to it here, on the #1 WordPress blog.

    Verdict: NOT viral. No legs.

  • http://inoveryourhead.net/ julien

    great site. it has some of the worst captioning i’ve ever seen.

    as someone who is hard of hearing, i want to be able to look at what action is going on on the screen while being able to read the captions with ease. whomever designed that part of the UI made it impossible by putting the captions and the action in two distinct parts of the screen, which makes me decide what i prefer to experience: the content, OR the pretty pictures. (instead of what i should be experiencing: both.)

    conclusion: the captions were an afterthought. it’s very nice that they were added in and i was pleased to see it available as an option. they are badly designed, however, and it’s clear that no hard of hearing person actually worked on helping the design team with this.

  • http://inoveryourhead.net julien

    great site. it has some of the worst captioning i’ve ever seen.

    as someone who is hard of hearing, i want to be able to look at what action is going on on the screen while being able to read the captions with ease. whomever designed that part of the UI made it impossible by putting the captions and the action in two distinct parts of the screen, which makes me decide what i prefer to experience: the content, OR the pretty pictures. (instead of what i should be experiencing: both.)

    conclusion: the captions were an afterthought. it’s very nice that they were added in and i was pleased to see it available as an option. they are badly designed, however, and it’s clear that no hard of hearing person actually worked on helping the design team with this.

  • Charles Robinson

    So the audience isn’t meant to be technical people but virtually none of the examples are anything end users would care about. I can’t tell you how many nontechnical people have asked me about Vista because they see something on CNN about it being delayed again. I certainly can’t tell them to visit this website to get their questions answered.

    The example apps don’t show ANYTHING that isn’t being done today and there is no discussion of what Vista brings to the party. I also found the crazy camera flyovers of Vista screens nauseating and annoying.

  • Charles Robinson

    So the audience isn’t meant to be technical people but virtually none of the examples are anything end users would care about. I can’t tell you how many nontechnical people have asked me about Vista because they see something on CNN about it being delayed again. I certainly can’t tell them to visit this website to get their questions answered.

    The example apps don’t show ANYTHING that isn’t being done today and there is no discussion of what Vista brings to the party. I also found the crazy camera flyovers of Vista screens nauseating and annoying.

  • Jon

    39,000 people visited it and now I have too. And I haven’t learned one damn thing about Vista.

    I’ve learned that Mercedes has a model called “AMG”(?) that I can drive and something about buying ski jackets. And doctors using computers to help with their work.

    Because Windows XP and any other OS couldn’t let you look at websites. And nothing but Vista can have programs made that help doctors.

    Wait what’s the point of that site again?

  • Jon

    39,000 people visited it and now I have too. And I haven’t learned one damn thing about Vista.

    I’ve learned that Mercedes has a model called “AMG”(?) that I can drive and something about buying ski jackets. And doctors using computers to help with their work.

    Because Windows XP and any other OS couldn’t let you look at websites. And nothing but Vista can have programs made that help doctors.

    Wait what’s the point of that site again?

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  • matt

    I love all those really cool features…who cares about simplicity, reliablity and security as long as I experience “Flash 8″ like web animation.

    Note to self…don’t hire Tom Skerritt to promote high-tech product.

    -M

  • matt

    I love all those really cool features…who cares about simplicity, reliablity and security as long as I experience “Flash 8″ like web animation.

    Note to self…don’t hire Tom Skerritt to promote high-tech product.

    -M

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