Microsoft’s billions could not force the creation of good Internet content

Evidence

It was not for want of effort or resources. Microsoft opened an entire new complex in Redmond, California, at some distance from its main offices, which it staffed with “content people” specially imported from New York and Los Angeles. The team was comprised of “black-clad creative types,” reported The New York Times, tasked with “building a new, chic kind of media business.” In reality, the new hires were given an impossible task: that of inventing both a new platform and an entirely new form of content—one that was not television, film, or a computer game but instead “interactive” and that capitalized on “convergence” via a new portal named “MSN 2.0.” That was the name of the interface being preinstalled on every new Windows machine and designed to make the Internet feel more like a television. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 865

Categorization

• XREF: The failure of corporate convergence-bubble MSN 2.0 foreshadows the later pattern of platform companies believing money can manufacture audience interest. — connects to: The early Internet nearly died from lack of demonstrated usefulness. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 641