Obama Praises Twitter, Google & Facebook — But Not Microsoft's Xbox
But Not Microsoft's Xbox — Does today's speech from President Barack Obama to school children across the United States need any more controversy? Having listened to it, I personally can't see many parents objecting. But I could see one tech company not happy: Microsoft.
Context & Ripple Effects
The timing matters more than the snub itself. Microsoft enters September 2009 running its widest consumer-courtship in years: a Windows 7 launch built around Tupperware-style home parties hosted by employees and enthusiasts, a senior lawyer pushing for a single global patent system, and Silverlight 4 feature previews slated for the International Broadcasting Conference in Amsterdam on September 11 — all aimed at making Microsoft feel like a household brand, not just an enterprise one.
Against that backdrop, President Obama's address to US schoolchildren — a speech Search Engine Land notes arrived pre-loaded with parental controversy — naming Twitter, Google and Facebook while skipping Xbox reads less like an oversight and more like a snapshot of which consumer platforms were considered culturally normative in 2009. Microsoft's exclusion is confirmed in the speech text itself.
First-order effects
- Microsoft's omission lands squarely on its consumer push: the home-party Windows 7 campaign targets exactly the family audience Obama addressed, and the speech handed rivals Twitter, Google and Facebook a presidential stamp of familiarity with that demographic instead.
- Xbox — Microsoft's most consumer-visible product line — is left unnamed even as web-native brands get cited, sharpening the perception gap between Microsoft's software enterprise and the social platforms students actually use.
Second-order effects
- With no official nod coming, Microsoft's counter-move is narrative control through its own channels: the Silverlight 4 previews at IBC Amsterdam days later keep attention on products it demos itself rather than endorsements it waits for.
- Twitter, Google and Facebook gain a cheap legitimacy asset — presidential citation in front of a captive student audience — that costs them nothing and reinforces their default status in classrooms and homes.
Third-order effects
- If presidential rhetoric keeps functioning as an implicit ranking of mainstream platforms, tech brands acquire a new competitive surface: cultural visibility with policymakers and parents, not just market share — a dynamic that pushes consumer-web companies toward Washington long before regulation forces them there.
The trend: Presidential name-checks are becoming an unofficial status ladder for consumer tech, rewarding web-native social platforms while legacy software giants like Microsoft fight for cultural relevance through their own marketing.