Microsoft Live Event - My Real Time Notes
UPDATE: My Windows Live full profile is up on TechCrunch. — Well, it's started. I'm sitting about 20 feet from Bill Gates, who's speaking now. Next to Niall Kennedy. Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor and Dan Farber are at the table next to me.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Michael Arrington's real-time notes from Microsoft's November 2005 event where Bill Gates unveiled Windows Live, written from the front row alongside Dave Winer, Dan Farber, Steve Gillmor and Niall Kennedy — a snapshot of the blogger-elite era of tech coverage. The immediate follow-up came when TechCrunch published its full Windows Live profile the next day, turning these raw notes into the launch's defining analysis.
First-order effects
- Gates' remarks put Windows Live — Microsoft's web-services push — directly in front of the most influential bloggers and journalists of 2005, seeding the narrative before traditional press cycles caught up; Arrington's next-day TechCrunch profile converted the live notes into durable coverage.
- The event itself demonstrated the power of real-time blogging: notes filed minutes after being spoken, 20 feet from the speaker.
Second-order effects
- The format proved sticky across the industry — a decade later Microsoft was still running the same playbook, from its live-blogged Windows 10 unveiling to Build 2016 keynotes covered in real time, making live coverage a default expectation for every major vendor event.
- For Microsoft, the Live branding forced a public repositioning from packaged software toward ad-supported online services, setting up competitive pressure on how the company priced and delivered its consumer products.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, keynote events evolve from press briefings into broadcast products themselves — Microsoft eventually streamed events directly, as with its 2019 Build keynote livestream — shrinking the gatekeeper role of the bloggers in the room.
- Structurally, the 'Live' moment marks an early data point in the migration of desktop-software companies onto the web-services model, a transition whose competitive and regulatory consequences unfolded over the following two decades.
The trend: This is one early data point in the shift from closed, boxed-software launches to web-delivered platforms announced through live-blogged, then live-streamed, keynotes.