From a social point of the view, the upshot to this is that they can only share with other Zune users, which slows adoption if adoption is slow, but also speeds it up if adoption is fast (the vicious circle is pretty clear).

If you’re interested, more thoughts on it here: http://richardsona.squarespace.com/main/2007/5/16/skating-toward-the-digital-music-puck.html

Post on http://bokardo.com/wp-social.php

Putting aside the specifics of the Zune’s sharing capabilities, offering opportunistic Zune-to-Zune wireless sharing is an excellent feature, and focusing on that capability for the launch campaign made absolute sense; unfortunately the good news ends there.

The problem was that “the social” was nothing more than a marketing campaign…the failure was in not going into the Zune’s launch with a single question at the forefront: “can we ensure that ‘the social’ isn’t just a slogan, but something that everyone who buys a Zune actually experiences within a day of opening that box?”

Because Microsoft didn’t think about the “selfish” end of things going into the launch (how soon will a Zune owner be able to actually take advantage of the social?), there was a painful disconnect between the actual experience of the device and the associated content and marketing.

The problem is that the Zune is not a particularly well-designed product, and so speaking to its only true differentiatior as a device was really the best it could do. Offering up a comparison of the basic features forces MS to talk about the core experience being somehow better than the iPod, except for the small problem of the core experience being designed to mimic the iPod’s so they would have an even platform to tout this media sharing feature on top of; “It’s just like the iPod, but….”

As you said, the strategy was wrong.

The Zune’s social strategy is a good one. I think most people buy iPods because they’re “cool” and all their friends have one (that icon thing). Well if some of your friends have a Zune, the social feature adds enough buyer incentive to be competitive with the iPod. Then comes the network effect.

The problem, and what Joshua distils into the del.icio.us lesson, is that your friend doesn’t have one. No one’s friend does (I exaggerate of course). The net effect is that people don’t get one. The social features of the Zune do sound interesting but they presuppose a world in which lots of people have Zunes. In short, a great product strategy if you’re already the dominant player (ie. the iPod) which the Zune isn’t.

Oh, and the iPod isn’t successful because it’s cool. It’s cool because it’s successful. And it’s successful because the software and hardware work together in a way that most mp3 players still don’t come close to emulating.

The reason why the iPod is killing the Zune is because the iPod brand is an icon and the Zune is 3-4 years late to the market.

The Zune’s social strategy is a good one. I think most people buy iPods because they’re “cool” and all their friends have one (that icon thing). Well if some of your friends have a Zune, the social feature adds enough buyer incentive to be competitive with the iPod. Then comes the network effect.

Without emphasizing the social aspect of the Zune there is very little incentive for buyers to purchase it because they are very similar but Apple has the better brand.

Picture this: the Zune strategy is to try to prove that it is a better personal music player than the iPod… and the iPod is kicking its butt. A reasonable person might criticize MS for their strategy and suggest that they ought to be focusing on how the Zune is different than the iPod (i.e. the social aspect) because going head-to-head against the iPod solely as a personal music player is a fool’s errand.

Frankly, the Zune would lose either way. The only way someone is going to compete successfully against the iPod is by attacking the closed iPod-iTunes marketplace… and Microsoft is clearly not a company that’s going to compete on openness.