MICROSOFT VINE 2009

Microsoft is launching a new product into a private beta with the aim of keeping friends and family in touch during emergencies. The idea for product, called Microsoft Vine, came to Microsoft GM Public Safety Initiatives Tammy Savage four and half years ago during Hurricane Katrina. Development started a year and a half ago.

Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication infrastructures, and Vine is designed to be as hardy as possible to keep people connected. Vine can be accessed via a desktop client (Windows only for now), text message or email.

Vine also gives you status updates from Facebook for close friends and family. Twitter and other social network news feeds will also be added over time. This lets you see what people are up to, as well as their location on a map if they share it.

Users view and post alerts to some or all friends/family. These can be quick messages to family in the case of emergency, or a church or sports club for meetings or practice. Each person defines how they want to receive alerts - the client, email and/or text message.

The product is very early and Microsoft is stressing that this is an early beta, designed to get feedback from a small number of users. Eventually the client will have some limited functionality even when offline (which is a likely scenario in a crisis), and new interfaces will be built on other platforms like Mac and Silverlight.

People tend to like stuff like this, and it may eventually turn into the place that you keep your true friends list - the people you absolutely want to be in touch with when things go badly.

-aRCie-