April 16, 2008 3:39 PM PDT

Microsoft 1, blogosphere 0

Guys, the joke's on us. Big time.

Bloggers have been chortling all day over a goofy video made for Microsoft's sales team that made its way onto YouTube.

The video, "Rocking Our Sales," by "Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band," is painfully lame. How bad? A friend from IBM who viewed the video said it made him rip out his spleen. That's pretty bad.

In short order, Microsoft was getting pilloried for not having a clue about cool. The House of Gates was so square, it was beyond lame. Gizmodo put up a post titled "Internal Microsoft Vista Video is as Painful as Videos Get", while Engadget chimed in with "Microsoft burns our eyes with Vista promo video." Not to be outdone, CrunchGear added its 2 cents with "Don't shoot the messenger: Microsoft internal promo video about Windows Vista is hard to watch."

Truth be told, I thought pretty much the same thing. Only one problem. They were messing with your heads.

"This video was a spoof (believe it or not)," said a Microsoft representative familiar with the reason behind the production. Apparently, it was a way for Microsoft to have some fun at its own expense.

"They thought folks internally would get a kick out of not taking themselves so seriously all the time, but some people thought that's exactly what they were being--serious. Anyway, this little piece of art came to life and has caused quite a few laughs in Microsoft's hallways."

Who woulda thunk it?

Originally posted at Coop's Corner
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 5 comments (Page 1 of 1)
by Shaun822 April 17, 2008 1:52 PM PDT
Holy crap I couldn't even finish it and usually out of sheer morbid curiosity I will finish any amazingly bad promo video.
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by Notjub April 17, 2008 8:02 PM PDT
You say the IBM guy ripped out his spleen? I ate mine to get the taste out!
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by dark_angel_1016 April 17, 2008 11:06 PM PDT
Great SPIN job Larry, Moe and Curly? No wonder your stock price is flat. At least you have a ton of cash left in the bank after this little fiasco. Let's all hope that Kevin and the execs in charge have enough sense to spend our $$ more wisely in the future. It's shocking that Microsoft does not have the internal resources available able to "Start Something."
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by zboot April 18, 2008 10:13 AM PDT
SPIN job . . . really? Flat stock price. Hmm, considering that Microsoft, Apple, and a very small set of tech companies are the only ones whose prices haven't taken a dive in the wake of collapsing subprime mortgages and all sorts of other nonsense in the market, I'd say they're doing pretty well. I assume your post was a joke. It's too ridiculous to think otherwise.
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by dark_angel_1016 April 19, 2008 2:24 PM PDT
You're absolutely right - Apple Computer $161.04, Google $539.41 and last (but not least) Microsoft @ $30.00 - same as January 2004. Yup, sure has held it's value.
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