A New Twist on Social Media from Microsoft: Art of Office

UPDATE at bottom.

Yesterday's launch of Art of Office from Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (the group that creates software for Macs) was a great milestone for me. We started working on the project back in December of 2006, so naturally I've been chomping at the bit to see what happens when we launch.

The site attempts several very interesting things at once:

• It's meant to stretch the perception that Office is purely a productivity tool and extend users' sense of what can be done in Office beyond mundane "work" chores, a nice gesture toward the Office for Mac's creativity-inclined target audience and an interesting extension of Office's brand position.
• It creates a valuable resource for Office for Mac users: a document library they can pull from and use, remix, etc. (Everything's licensed for attributed reuse under a Creative Commons license.)
• It builds community around a shared value (creativity) while adding real, tangible, practical value (reusable documents).

We tested the early concepts for this site in the usability lab at ZAAZ, and we got some great initial reactions just to the home page. Lots of participants raised eyebrows in skepticism at the idea of "art" presented in connection with Microsoft Office. We worked hard to present some awesome work in a compelling framework, and ultimately found people very willing to suspend their initial disbelief. Check out the hot Flash work in the upper portion of the main landing pages.

Most people ended up feeling like the art / Office concept is pretty cool. And participants quickly realized they could contribute (we placed the proverbial BIG, YELLOW UPLOAD BUTTON right on the home page). What really excited test participants, though, was the realization that they could download and reuse the documents on the site. This is the real power of the site, the value offering Zeus Jones calls "marketing as a service."

Another piece of this that I think is interesting is that Art of Office enters the document-focused social space with something a little bit different than most of what exists already. For example, check out the following illustration from Rashmi Sinha, one of the minds behind the brilliant Slideshare:

What excites me here is that I think Art of Office introduces several new axes to this landscape: one is "content in document" to "document as content," another is "collaborative" to "single author," and yet another is "view documents" to "share documents." Art of Office manages to live in a number of different places along all these continuums--where individual participants can do the activity that suits them at different times.

Microsoft Watch had nice things to say. I'd love to hear what you think as well, and I can't wait to get a sense of the reaction that matters most--the reaction of participants.

UPDATE: Art of Office hit the front page of del.icio.us today, and is being noticed widely across the Web. And as I predicted earlier, the haters are out in force in comment threads. When the generalized anti-Microsoft fury subsides, what will happen?

Comments

[tyesha]

Congrats! I checked out the site and my first impression is that it feels very much like a site created by the "people" It doesn't feel like a MS sanctioned site. The tone is natural and trust worthy. Great job.

I found a lot of fun, novelty stuff which is interesting but not enough to keep me coming back. I will be looking back for documents that save me time in my creative endeavors. The most compelling reason to use MS Office is for speed and ease but maybe that is just the attitude the site is trying to change. I'm not sure yet.

Oh, and interface is sweet!

[Ryan]

Thanks, Tyesha. Your comments here are really interesting, I think. In terms of the real value of the site, it's the stuff you can take and use that is truly compelling.

So how do you compellingly invite people to participate in a brad-new site where the value is created through participation? We had a pretty good plan for this site, I think.

Part of the plan is the featured art. A lot of it is really good, certainly good enough to drive traffic (in particular I like the Mothersbaugh piece, the Zeus Jones piece, and the Quodia piece. Phase I is about having something already on the site interesting enough to bother looking at in the first place.

Phase II is an outreach effort. We're working our network to solicit interesting and useful documents.

But it will take some time. The site's getting a lot of traffic, and ultimately the document library will be full of valuable stuff--when the initial site experience shifts from what you described to an experience of abundant value, that's when the idea will take off.

So far most commentators have focused on the art / office concept, and have overlooked the community component. Those who've mentioned it have said things like "Mac users coming together to discuss Office." Ummmm, right. Sounds fun...

No, the community is really about sharing work--accessing and contributing valuable stuff to use in the real world.

Community--shout it from the rooftops!--is not discussion.

[tyesha]

You're right Ryan. People will come back for the art and to see the cool stuff people have created, useful or not. You guys did a good job of preventing the empty dance floor syndrome. I am taking that comment back.

More and more I think ego maybe the driving force around community participation. If this is the case people will start adding content because they want to be identified with all of the super cool, super talented artist that are present on the site now and since these people will have varied skills and experience the diverse catalog of documents will grow.