#TulsaTechFest @msftguy keynote on Live platform – blog to follow

Brian is a great presenter, but my problem with the entire Live platform can be summed up in this one slide.

This slide shows all the different Live services, including Virtual Earth, Search, Hotmail, MSN, SkyDrive, etc. It’s hard to see with my iPhone camera’s emailed photo.

These sites don’t look or feel anything like each other.

Contrast this with Google, where every single product they have looks and feels like it’s part of the same family. It really feels like a platform. Microsoft’s Live stuff is a whole ton of services that are elbowed into the same phone booth using the same name. That doesn’t make it a platform, and it sure isn’t a compelling sales pitch.

Update 9:18 AM – argh.  He’s pushing Windows Live ID, and I have a big problem with corporate ownership of identity.  If Microsoft owns my login ID and controls it across the sites.  Sure, right now it’s free to use for sites up to 1 million logins per month, but that can change at any time, and monopoly on ID is a problem.  I’m not saying Google’s login ownership is any better, but OpenID is better.  Way better.

Update 9:26 AM – ARGH. Now he’s pimping Live’s ability to share your friends with other sites.  Why restrict that to the closed Live system?  Why not pimp the XFN or FOAF open standards?  Dang it!  Where are my open source evangelists?  I love Microsoft – I make a great living off their kick-butt products – but identity ownership gives me the creeps.

Update 9:38 AM – he’s selling the ability to embed Live Messenger in your web site, so visitors can log in to do their instant messaging on your web site.  Uh, what?  Why?  Why would I want to give up screen space on my web site to let users do instant messengers?  He’s showing this “invite a friend” feature and saying it was really easy, but it wasn’t – it involved a multi-step login-and-wait procedure.  Bad user experience, too much screen real estate, and not compelling.  He does a great job of delivering the message, but it’s just a bad message.

Update 9:57 AM – he pitches Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live, and I’m actually interested in that because I want to do some video streaming.  I go to sign up for a free account, and – uh oh….