The demonstrations at the Windows live session were good - some news of where Live is; with a new mail client launched and the new messenger in beta. But the most interesting part was when Kojin showed just how easy it to develop using Live. He showed gadgets, bots and activities - and coded them live. (Gadgets are Microsofts version of Widgets, a means of adding functionality to a Live page , bots and activities are ways of using Messenger conversations). A number of the very smart people attending were already developing these tools.
All very geeky - but this flexibility and easy development is going to open a whole new world of possibilities for brands. Rather than just buying a few banners, brands can provide a service by providing a useful tool - for example we could develop a version of the Share Price Alert for Halifax to offer to Live users. Or a travel brand could offer a branded weather guide for major cities.
And the opportunities for bots are also exciting - by adding a bot to your contacts you can ask questions - such as asking Encarta for answers
I was told that a US headhunter uses a bot to help people find jobs - they add the bot to their contacts and answer questions on where they want to find a job, the type of job, qualifications etc.
The bot then answers with some jobs that meet that profile and each time they have a suitable job, it pops up in your messenger. This dialogue is really interesting as it seems a good way of gathering data without seeming too intrusive or too time consuming.
Microsoft have seen how allowing this sort of mash up has benefited Google and Yahoo, and want to encourage people to improve Live through their efforts. Which should improve the web for everyone - including brands.
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