Microsoft Tries to Mesh with the Mash-Ups

By Eric Brown Apr 22, 2008

Another of the big guns gets in on the mashup craze that is growing like wildfire. With the recent mashup news from IBM (not to mention strings of vague promises) Microsoft is set to jump on the bandwagon.

At the web 2.0 expo in San Francisco, Microsoft is scheduled to deliver a keynote tomorrow called “Mesh It Up!” — the stage for the release of Microsoft’s new LiveMesh beta. To get into the heart of LiveMesh would require high level software architects at Microsoft — but they are being pretty tight lipped about it all.

According to a source, Microsoft’s Amil Mital will also be giving a keynote at the expo called “Get Mesh!”. But again, try to find much information on what is going to be actually covered and you may get a headache. There simply isn’t any info out there. At least not until the release is over.

Microsoft's Big Hype

There is speculation and rumor flying around based on some early talk and hype, but not much concrete until the expo. Essentially, LiveMesh is striving to be (according to Joe Wilcox @eWeek Microsoft Watch):

“[A] massive mashup of people, devices and content into a three-dimensional lattice supported by an extended computer network. Cloud is the wrong metaphor. Air is perhaps more appropriate, but still inadequate.”

LiveMesh contains two basic ideas. One will be a social mesh, containing things like shared content spaces, tagging, ranking of content and publish and subscribe of information from public sources. The second will be a device mesh that will create a convenient hub to bring people together to synchronize information, to synchronize images and create a hub; bringing the number of devices that professionals have together.

Will it Match Up?

The big concern is that LiveMesh simply won’t match up. The problem inherent with many Microsoft projects is that they are Microsoft focused and therefore have issues integrating with other items, third party plugins, and other software and services. They typically run according to Microsoft protocols instead of web protocols.

Time will tell if Microsoft can leave their ego behind to compete in the great world of mash-ups. And with other major players in the game already, they better step it up tomorrow at the release or they are dead in the water.