I was just done reading Alexander Muse’s post about Microblogging being a mess and just as I was going to twit about it, Twitter was (you guessed it) down with a link to this thread at Get Satisfaction. I happened to read through it only to find people saying downtime is “fine” because the product “is free”. Actually, downtime is not fine, even if the product is free – free shouldn’t mean that failure is acceptable.

Just because it’s free, it doesn’t mean it has no value

Let me put it this way. Gmail is free and yet I’d personally panic if it suddenly went away. Google is free too, and we use it all the time. Free doesn’t mean “allowed to suck”, or stand for “acceptable downtime”. Free products like Gmail, Google, Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed still have a value. What you’re not giving away in dollars (or in our case here, Euros), you’re giving away in data and attention.

Sure, I’d be bitching often if Twitter was down and I had paid money for it. But even if I haven’t, they have my data, their service still is the vehicle through which people hear from me at a more personal level. I have invested in this service with my own attention. I don’t have a particular number for how much that’s worth, but it’s definitely not a zero.

It’s about you, the user

This isn’t a rant against Twitter. They’re not the ones saying we should accept their downtime because they provide their service for free. Real people are saying this. Personally, I don’t think these people understand the value of their own presence and data. Don’t want to be frustrated because a service is down? It’s definitely your right not to be (and I’m glad – we as a species are already way too stressed out as we are). But don’t underestimate your own value, or think that just because something doesn’t have a price tag, it should be allowed to fail.

If you’ve been around Techmeme in the last few hours you probably read about the agreement between Microsoft and One Laptop Per Child about making Windows XP available on the project’s computers. I personally believe it to be a bad decision from both ends, even though I admire both OLPC and Microsoft. Here’s why:

The goal of the OLPC is to create a computer that lets kids explore and be creative by themselves or with their friends. It is definitely not a computer to run Notepad, or Office, or play Solitaire and Minesweeper. It is not a computer for those who’ve been using Windows, OSX or Linux for years. By this I’m not saying that the OLPC needs a dumbed-down experience. It does need, however, to be designed in a way that fits with the needs of someone for whom a computer is a strange and alien object.

On the Sugar UI: If you’ve ever seen a OLPC device, you’ve seen Sugar. Sugar is the user interface that the computers use, and it has been designed with kids in mind. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know I am critical of Sugar because it is confusing and abuses icons at the expense of usability. It is what you get by having a top graphical design firm work on a computing experience. But despite all this, it is still an experience you can make better and evolve.

On Windows: Windows on the other hand, is a controlled, fixed experience. It’s not like you can just go and change the whole UI to fit OLPC and kids. Or you can, by running apps on top of the OS (just like HTC does with their mobile Touch interface on top of WM6), but that’s just wrong and and a lousy experience for the user.

Users of the OLPC – again, children in need – are not going to get the desktop metaphor, the applications packed with Windows XP, or the computing experience as a whole. Would they benefit from a transition to Windows or OSX after using a simpler UI to understanding the concept behind the machines? Absolutely. But as an initial experience, Windows (or anything else that’s not tailored to the OLPC audience) is a bad fit.

Update: Just noticed how Mike over at TC seems to agree with this assessment, albeit from a angle of his own (and in his good old style). There’s a few more takes on this matter (although mostly from old media) on Techmeme.

This year’s Web 2.0 Expo Europe is happening from the 21st to the 23rd of October in Berlin. If you have been to a Web 2.0 Conference you know how relevant it is for the industry we all work in. This year, the conference is not only in a better venue but it also features an overhauled program due to the shifting nature of entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe. Exciting!

The Call for Proposals for the conference is now open, and will remain open until June 2nd. So if you have ideas and stories to share with the Web 2.0 Expo audience, this is the right time to write down a proposal and send it in. There’s a lot more information on the Call for Participation page.

I’m lucky and honored to be on the advisory board for the conference, so I’m hoping to see some exciting presentations so we can plan and roll out a great conference program for you. So do send in your proposals if you have them, and I do hope to see you guys on the speaker stand sharing your ideas about entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe.

Notes: Read more about the conference, program and the CFP here. Photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

It’s already all over the news so you probably know already – Microsoft walked away from buying Yahoo because they ultimately couldn’t agree on price. Yahoo wanted $37+/share and Microsoft was offering a maximum of $33/share – according to them, already a big premium over the value at which negotiation started (which is in fact the truth). When I first posted about the merger possibility, my biggest argument against it was the culture shock because the two companies have distinctive ways of thinking. Who wins now? I think both companies lost.

They both lost because Microsoft comes out of this deal proposal with a failure, while Yahoo will quite likely see its stock value plummet. This isn’t the only problem for Yahoo, though – they’ll still need to figure out a solid strategy going forward that will in fact deliver value to its shareholders. Personally, I don’t think cutting an ad deal with Google is the right way either because it only proves how their own ad business is not so good.

I guess we’ll see how things progress, but after thursday and friday’s news about meetings finally taking place about the acquisition, I thought we’d see a deal. And while initially my opinion was that a deal would be a bad thing, now I’m not sure, given how the future of Y! seems bleak. Well, at least this whole subject is done for, for now.

More coverage at Techmeme, Techcrunch, Microsoft’s PR, Yahoo’s PR. Image credit: Mr Gee at Flickr.