LiveSide - Interview Blog : Office Live

Office Live Small Business: our interview with Michael Schultz

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:36:00 GMT

With 450,000 domains in use with Office Live (now Office Live Small Business), its becoming clear that there is a market for a connected set of services helping small businesses to establish, maintain, and grow a web presence. We talked with Michael Schultz, U.S. business and marketing lead for Microsoft Office Live Small Business, about small businesses and their website presence, about SEO and SEM, and some partnerships they have developed, specifically with The Search Agency and WebSite Pros.

You can listen to the Silverlight streaming version here, with chapter markers:

Why change the name to Office Live Small Business?
Three versions: Basics, Essentials, and Premium
Most of the customers start out with Basics
The value for customers with everything (domain, website building and management, SEO and SEM) all in one place
Small businesses want to focus on their business more than website management
Search Engine Marketing described
Search Engine Optimization: Science and Art
The Search Agency and three levels of help: Do It Yourself, Get some help, and Have it done for you.
What's coming up? Users want help to promote and market their business.

Interview with Michael Shultz on Office Live Small Business:

or listen to or download the mp3 8mb.

Office Live Workspaces: Our interview with Kirk Gregerson

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:12:00 GMT

Office Live Workspaces, announced on Monday and set to go into beta in December, will provide workspace manipulation and storage from within Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and integration with Outlook), and a web browser interface with a viewer for those Office files (and .pdf), and an ability to comment, along with rich list making capabilities that will synch to Outlook Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar.

Office Live Small Business (formerly Office Live) is one of the fastest growing Small Business services on the web, with over 450,00 domains registered in two years. Office Live Workspaces is set to become a feature of the free Office Live Basic service.

I talked to Kirk Gregerson, Director of Product Management for Office for Consumers and Small Business, about the upcoming beta:

Introducing Kirk Gregerson, and Office Live Workspaces
What is Office Live Workspaces, and what is Microsoft Office Online?
How does it work? Kirk talks about Workspaces within Office
Office Live Workspaces in the browser
Kirk explains the commenting process
How collaboration works: a check-in metaphor
2 different interfaces
Store many types of (non-Office) files
What's the relationship to SkyDrive?
Workspace size explained: 500mb limit
What versions of Office will work with Workspaces?
Integration with Office Live Small Business
Beta information - begins in December (sign up now)

LiveSide with Kirk Gregerson - Office Live Workspaces.mp3 (9.2mb - 19.38 minutes)

Update: We talk about being able to add comments to non-Office files, and I just got word that this is indeed possible.

Office Live Interview with Baris Cetinok

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:27:00 GMT

Office Live is set to come out of beta on Wed. Nov 15, and at the same time launch into beta in four new markets, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. The set of services, aimed at very small businesses (VSB), offers free custom domains, domain name Office Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger accounts, and a tiered set of services, from the free Office Live Basics, to Office Live Essentials ($19.95/mo) and Office Live Premium ($39.95/mo).

The new launch introduces some new services - an AdManager beta that initially features Microsoft adCenter and Live Search ads but will be expanded to include other search engines and business directories in the next 6-12 months, a new online Business Contact Manager with browser access from anywhere or a full offline component using Microsoft Office 2007, and, with MS Office Accounting Express 2007, product sales management through eBay. Again, this service is due to be expanded in 6-12 months to include other sales venues such as Shopping.com, Craig's List, Windows Live Expo, and sales through Office Live websites.

I spoke to Baris Cetinok, Director of Project Management and Marketing for Office Live, about the new release. We covered a lot of ground in a short time, and Baris is a fun guy to listen to. Enjoy!

LiveSide interview - Baris Cetinok of Office Live
(8.71mb download)

VSBs - under served by technology	0:00
New Features: AdManager and Site Designer	2:49
The AdManager Beta	5:07
Office Live Business Contact Manager	5:59
eBay and more: Accounting Express 2007	8:29
Surprises from the beta: non-profits	11:54
Continued improvement on Collaboration	15:14
Migrating from the beta	18:24
End	19:02

For more on Office Live (and lots of other Windows Live offerings) check out the LiveSide List. I'll be updating the Office Live article quite a bit in the next day or two, so check back often!