Short Term Trading Week Starting: 8th May, page-137

Microsoft can't - and won't - release something like Thred. They may (and I'm punting on 'the ever-so-slightest of chances') acquire Thred to eliminate them as a competitor - or for any other number of strategic business reasons - but they wouldn't release a product like it. Firstly, they just can't. Microsoft is a power player at the highest level, in direct competition (for ad, storage, software and 'eyeball' revenue) with Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. Why would they release a 'convenient aggregator' to promote the offerings of their competition? And especially when that would also affect their own product lines? It just doesn't make any sense.

On top of this critical difference, an App like Thred doesn't stack up with Microsoft's core offerings and it's product philosophy. Here's an example: Thred, and the fanboys who bleet on about it, have been hinting at how amazing it would be if Thred was integrated into Office 365.

So... Get this.... They want to integrate a whole bunch of social media and private messaging applications into a premium business productivity platform used by organisations all over the world. What will that do, do you think? Will it increase or decrease an average workers productivity? I'm sure we'll see management argue passionately for this as they stump up the cash for their SaaS subscription: "Ever since we got Microsoft Thred integrated into 365, our dev team's use of ALT+TAB has dropped dramatically! By nearly 98%! It's now so easy! Everything's right there in front of you! We are seriously considering removing those two keys from our keyboards, because.. well.. they just aren't being used anymore!"

If that's really what they are trying to do, they should fire their strategy team.