See Windows Vista site goes viral

That's Tom Skerritt, and he seems bored out of his mind.

OMG! I can see a 3D car! Fuck, I'll buy it!

Geez, give me a break.

Tom Skerritt's dentured speech impediment make me cringe. He seems old and tired, the application preveiws were ok, doesn't really speak to Vista much. I would lose the old codger, let Vista speak for itself without, a voice over could accomplish just as much, but please don't use someone with slipping dentures.

I'm a geek that works for an advertising agency. I just make sure that our creative and client services staff has the tools they need to get our client's message across. We've done a lot of work for various groups at Microsoft.

It's been interesting to see a couple of posts lately on your blog about advertising (visual marketing on your drive through Idaho, and now this.)

Working with such amazing creative people has given me a greater appreciation for the work that goes in to creating advertisements - especially viral marketing like this Windows Vista demo.

Because I am at a site that does not have sound cards (hence no speakers) I was impressed that the captions were available. However, when the actor goes into the waiting mode and starts talking, there are no captions.

That is one seriously annoying site. I to think that I switched to IE to actually see it when it didn't work in FireFox.

What no RSS feed? ;)

Too bad they didn't think about the design at all. I mainly use the keyboard to navigate, and you can't one bit. Boo:(

Rick: you're so right. This site is also totally Web 1.0. No trackbacks, pingbacks, comments, or any other community interaction.

Viral doesn't necessarily mean good. David Hasselhoff's "Hooked on a Feeling" video went viral.

I sent it to someone to show someone how visionless Vista is.

It seems like Microsoft has come up with the hunk of junk comprised mostly of scar tissue and now they're trying to figure out what to do with it and how to sell it.

@9 So, I guess your wife doesn't listen to you either, Robert? I know the feeling ;-)

Wow, welcome to the late 90s! It's like I'm playing Phantasmagoria all over again, only without the CD swapping.

I like they way they avoided the web designer's classic trap of re-implementing scroll bars that behave in a different way to the standard ones. Oh no, wait, they totally failed to avoid that.

I also like the way that as I'm typing this, I keep getting nagged via audio because I'm not clicking on anything. They obviously didn't know that Vista allows more than one application or window at the same time!!!11

Get Tom Skerrit off my screen. Now. Who the heck is that meant to fish in? I'd rather have some random (unknown, and, um, younger) actor talking to me than a guy who hasn't done a decent movie since... since... wait, I'm still scrolling at IMDB... Hmm, I'll get back to you on that. I like my washed up celebs where they belong: on stage at conferences.

I find it ironic that they had to use Flash to sell WPF.

And Tom sounds thrilled indeed.

It looks pretty enough otherwise. No real substance though.

Sadly I'm surfing covertly while at work using the text browser links, and all I see for the entire site is:

[EMBED]

Even a 'noscript' tag to say that you need flash to see this would be nice.

The first time you boot Vista, you will get a 45-minute interactive training video starring Wilford Brimley

This video is so far from viral. It's slow and chuncky. Just a buzzword bingo, how does it really show the underlining draw and potential of Vista? These apps? So where does Vista sits if its just these apps. They still dont show the sparkle of the innovation behind Vista.

Come on, I can do 3D modeling in XP too but maybe poorer compared to Vista. The value of running Vista is not apparent. Consumer ad - yes, viral - far from it.

That guy doesn't sound convincing at all. You need someone who really knows what he's talking about and whoever this is clearly doesn't and I agree he does sound bored. There's going to be plenty of people who will purchase Vista but I doubt they will be anyone who does so because they've been persuaded by this video.

I've taken the time to look through everything available on it and must say, as someone who is very much looking forward to the release of Windows Vista, I'm under-whelmed.

Tom Skerritt is completely unexciting, isn't the idea of viral marketing to create excitement? Does Microsoft not want to get people excited about Vista? I can't help but wonder who this is meant to be targeted at because it's all over the map showing what the possibilities are.

My main problem is, I didn't see anything about what Vista can do for me that can't already be done with existing and previous iterations of Windows. I also don't think that anyone other than developers need to know what WPF and any of the other technologies behind Vista are, only what they can do for us.

All fair enough comments, but let's go back to the original post here. Somehow this thing got 39,000 hits in the first 24 hours. HOW?

Actually, I'd like to see the breakdown by hours. If it really is that bad (can't view it here, sorry) then I'd suspect the majority of hits were soon after posting, then it dropped off. If it's good, then you get a few hits at first before absolute explosion.

And how many has it gotten since?

What kind of advance marketing did they do for this, ie were there a ton of people who thought it would have some scoop on Vista and were waiting with baited breath for it to come out? I doubt they just plopped it on the web to see what happened.

I was one of the many people responsible for putting this site together, and it's great to read this feedback. Most of the comments across the 'net are pretty polarized: "too much marketing," "very inspirational," "love Tom!," "why Tom?," "I can't wait to use Vista now," etc. The best part is that it's causing some great conversation.

As expected, this site has been picked-up and read by a lot of very technical people. However, it's important to note that we explicitly DID NOT target the messaging to deeply technical people. Most of the technical folks have already heard about the features in Windows Vista. This site is a way to show what our partners and customers are already building on top of our platform. They're meant to be inspirational in nature.

Although I agree that the site doesn't have any "community" to it, if you were able to talk to these early adopters, you'd find a bunch of passionate people who are excited about the applications they can build in record time.

It's interesting to argue about how these could be built using other technologies on other systems. As always, with enough time, effort, money, and skill, almost anything can be built on any system. In this case, though, most of the power of these applications is provided by Windows Vista, so development is extremely productive.

You'll hear more technical details as we get closer to launch. In the meantime, look at the applications that can be built...and this is well before the actual operating system will even ship! I'll be curious to "take the temperature" of this crowd again as we see the applications evolve closer to launch.

Thanks again for your frank and candid feedback!

Oh...regarding traffic numbers, we're now up to over 72,000 unique visitors. :)

What no Team99.com? ;)

That is one seriously annoying site.

Amen, just your basic drecked ad agency flip up. But Web 2.0'isms would make it thrice as annoying. Would Tom Skerritt, on the intro and later on, get his hand outta his ass? That pose is maddening. And that's gotta be the worst bit of acting in his career ever, bored to tears is the overall impression, at least SEEM INTERESTED!! Tom's got Fallen and Bonneville, why bother with lame Microsoft infomercials. And this was FAR FAR from viral, just lightly seeded...

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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