Talking with Satya Nadella at Searchification

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:01:00 GMT

I had an opportunity to sit down with Satya Nadella, Corporate Vice President, Search & Advertising Platform Group, right after he presented at Searchification. We talked about the "super-positive" internal buzz within Microsoft about the new search, some strategies for how to increase search share (by going after the 70 million users of Live Search now, and the 500 million MSN users who may or may not be using Live Search as much as they could). I'll be adding in some more notes this weekend, and getting our dev guy Scott to help with a Silverlight version, but for now in the interest of getting this out, here's the unadorned .mp3 file. Enjoy (and thanks, Satya!)

Chapter Points:

0.00 Internal Beta + Employee Buzz
1.46 70m Live Search users - How to retain them with UI and features
3.31 Targeting the Windows Live and MSN users to increase search share
4.55 Branding issues - Will Live Search remain as Microsoft's search brand? Satya neatly avoids the question.
5.50 Focus on MSN.com over Live.com users - The 70m Live Search users come from MSN
7.57 Search: good user experience v advertising medium
10.27 This release of Live Search and the future
11.48 What is the one feature that needs the most work

LiveSide with Satya Nadella at Searchification.mp3 (11.3mb, 12 minutes 50 seconds)

Round Table Discussion with Live Search

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:21:00 GMT

Last week LiveSide sat down with some people from Live Search to talk about a wide range of topics, including the switch from MSN Search to Live Search, the Windows Live name and brand, migrating MSN Search users and acquiring new ones, Live Local, QnA, Google and Page Rank, and a lot more.

My apologies if I spell some names wrong, but the participants were:

Neil Freeland:      Marketing Programs and Acquisition
Laura Kern:         User Experience
Sebastian Gard: Evangelism for Live Search
Sean Nordberg:   Group Program Manager,Windows Live Local Search
and thanks to Kevin Briody from Windows Live for putting it all together.

A couple of links referenced in the discussion:

Nicholas Carr: Beyond Question - Oct 2, 2006
Comscore: Local Search Continues to Gain Momentum - Sept. 28, 2006

I broke up the interview into two parts to make it a bit easier to download, or you can listen to the whole thing at once:

Download the full Interview (20mb mp3 - 44 minutes)
Download Part One (8.5mb mp3 - 18 minutes)
Download Part Two (11.5mb mp3 - 26 minutes)

(edit: fixed links to point to direct download)

LiveSide - Interview Blog : Live Search

Talking with Satya Nadella at Searchification

Round Table Discussion with Live Search