Microsoft Vine

Checking back in on a subject I think many of you would be interested in reading. There’s been a lot written in the press lately about how people will use Microsoft Vine. Many of the articles, like this one, talk about Vine’s potential to help people in emergency situations.

Helping people and communities in times of crisis is an important part of our mission. But we built Vine to be useful in everyday situations, too. We believe that the only way you’ll ever use Vine during an emergency is if you’re already familiar and comfortable with it in your everyday life.

With that in mind, here are a few of the examples of how we envision people using Microsoft Vine during our Beta:

Get help with childcare. Imagine you’re a parent and your child needs an early ride home from school because she’s sick. You’re stuck at work, so you need to quickly find someone you trust to give your child a ride home and look after her.

You could start calling and emailing people you trust, maybe leave a few messages and wait for someone to get back to you. Or, you could send one Vine alert to all your emergency contacts and have the message delivered via email, text message and through the Vine client. And, when one of those contacts replies back and offers to pick up your daughter, everyone sees the reply so they know that the situation is resolved. It’s a lot faster than using email or a phone tree. It is also better for the people you reach out to; if your neighbor is in a meeting they would probably rather get a text message than having the phone ring. They can see what is needed and reply without stepping out of the meeting.

Connect with trusted neighbors: When you go out of town or on vacation, use to Vine to “Post a Report” of your upcoming plans. Ask trusted neighbors to keep an eye on your house and let them know how to reach you while you’re away.

Vine provides many pre-populated reports to choose from. For example, when cars get broken into, you can post a report of suspicious activity. Or, you can report an upcoming event, like a backyard BBQ. If you are wondering how to get your neighborhood setup we have good news. One of our early adopters shared a way to get your neighbors on Vine and I’ll add that to our blog soon.

Report a last-minute field change: Warmer weather means lots of outdoor sports. But when there’s a last-minute change, like a softball game getting rained out or a soccer game changing fields, notifying team members can be a real challenge. With Vine you can send one alert to team members and have it reach them via text message, e-mail, and via the Vine client. So whether they’re at work, en route to the game, at home or elsewhere, your message has a better chance of reaching them in time.

Of course, each of these scenarios requires some preparation. You will need to download Vine, set up your “Vitals”, invite the people you want to connect with, and then add them to a group (i.e., emergency contacts, neighbors, softball team). If you need help at any time, you’ll find lots of useful information in the Vine forums.

These are just a few of the ways that planned for people to use Vine in their daily lives during our Beta. We still have a lot to learn about how people want to use it, what works and what doesn’t. How do you want to use Vine? As you use it, we hope that you’ll take a moment to share your stories and ideas, so we can learn from you and make Vine even better.

More later,
‘GrapeVine’

I wanted to post a message to clarify some comments about Microsoft building Vine to compete with Twitter, Facebook and other Social Network sites and tools. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Microsoft Vine was conceived and built from the beginning to allow people to continue using their favorite social network while allowing others to have a consolidated view of the people they care about the most. This isn’t new or even that novel an idea; it has been done by several startups and technology companies….”social network aggregators”. We just aim to take it one step further – to include all people using all the tools available. We want to include every person and allow them to participate through whatever technology they choose - email, text, voice, Instant Messaging, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or whatever people want to use next.

Microsoft Vine is not just another Social Network site or tool. It provides a way to keep track of places you care about, your friends and family and ask for and receive help. We aren’t going to compete with these other tools and we sure don’t think of ourselves as Twitter on Steroids .
Thanks again,
‘GrapeVine’

First, let me thank you all for taking the time to come to the site, check out our videos, the demo and for registering for the Beta! Thank you for all the interest!

The buzz after announcing Microsoft Vine has been exciting, humbling and I can’t wait for you all to get a chance to try out the service. There have been a lot of questions posted around the ‘net and in my inbox asking how to get invited into the Beta. The answer is the same for everyone (Microsoft employees aren’t even getting special treatment) we will start sending out invitations to the broader community on a first come, first serve basis over the next two months. Right now we are focusing our attention to ensure that our Pilot customers are up and running.

We will be adding more and more users over time and I don’t see any reason why the people who’ve taken the time to register their email address with us won’t get in with time. Thanks for your patience and understanding through this beta testing phase. I know it may seem strange that we are controlling access like this but our main goal is to make sure the application works for the scenarios and people who were instrumental in helping us design the feature set first. With that information in hand we want to hear other points of view, ideas, gripes, complaints and hopefully praise from a larger audience.

If you haven't registered for an invite already, please visit vine.net.

Thanks again, stay tuned for more updates and information about Microsoft Vine.
Signing off for now,
‘GrapeVine’