Scoble, firing, and Microsoft as "Brand Cool"

The dog-pile of the week is Mr. href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/12/19.html">Scoble's href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/12/19.html#a8932">open letter to
BillG and other bemused folks enjoying detailing the href="http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.htm">Rorschach-like
reactions to the post. I totally href="http://scoblerocks.blogspot.com/2004/12/scoble-hunt.html">missed
this little part the first time I read through it (colorization / bold
mine):

1) Start a weblog.
NOW. Get the person who runs the team to start
a blog. NOW. Or fire him/her. I'm serious. color="#808080">Make it as cool as href="http://www.kongisking.net/kong2005/proddiary/">color="#808080">the King Kong blog. Put
EVERYTHING up on that blog. Videotape every
meeting. Every design session. Write something every
day.

Fire folks? Boyakasha!

Hey, if
it gets people out of the company I'm for this blog-most-coolly-or-walk
litmus test whole-hearted! Two thumbs up.

Anyway, going back to a
meta-level on Scoble's original post: his point resonates a lot with me
with-respect-to:

1. Microsoft is not cool and
2. The Microsoft
   brand, while well known, doesn't mean much to most folks.

We
might have touched upon coolness during the internet boom. But we've faded
and you just have to believe that this is not missed upon by the analysts. I
certainly don't blame our cool-deficit to the lack of black mock
turtle-necks around campus... I blame it on the leadership's decision to
gravitate towards what they think is easy money: IT.

You can tell me
day and night that, new feature-wise, we're licking the boots of the IT
department because "that's where the money
is" and for some reason people walking around on the street with
money in their pocket don't matter because they don't make relevant
decisions. B and S. All this IT licking hasn't raised our stock from the
dead. The dog and pony shows we put on for analysts are yawn-fests.

To
invigorate Microsoft's stock and the view of Microsoft by the analysts, we
need an injection of "Oh, I got to get me one of
those!" by the everyday consumer. Buzz. I don't know if it's a
music player, a phone, another device, or suh-weet software.

We can't
just be a technology dial tone.