Unfolding Origami - it might not un-wrap the way you think it will

Michael Gartenberg | February 27, 2006, 02:13 PM

It's the middle of the night here in Tel Aviv and I've just spent a jet lagged day running around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I've got to wrap up a big presentation for tomorrow but before I log off a little more on the unfolding of Project Origami. First, as Todd Bishop of the Seattle PI correctly points out, no one said Microsoft was announcing anything this week. In fact, the site seem to make it pretty clear that there's more to be revealed over the weeks ahead.

Second, Scoble talk about the danger of not letting your internal bloggers know what's going on and the fear of getting "origami-ized". Robert, is something bad happening here? After all, there's a little company in Cupertino that never talks about what it's doing in advance, let's the web run wild with rampant rumor and speculation and then introduces products, that would never SEEM to match the expectation but does anyhow.

No one should hold MSFT accountable for overpromising anything here, since to the best of my knowledge, MSFT has made no claims about what Origami is. As for meeting the hype, does anyone who really knows what Origami is, saying anything? Do you think all the details are out? Do we know what markets it's aimed at and what features it might or might not have? In fact, the only thing we know is what's in a year old concept video.

It sort of reminds of me of last fall, when the web was buzzing about Apple introducing a new flash based iPod. No one predicted that product was the Nano or the impact it would have. It's being correct but totally wrong. That's about the same level of information that we seem to know about Origami at the moment.

I think there are other, far more interesting questions to ask. Given Microsoft's usual habit of announcing stuff that's half baked at CES, waving around a mock up and announcing partners for stuff that won't ship for months, years or in some cases ever, what's different about this launch? Why is Microsoft being so tight lipped about this? How did they pull this off?

Think there might be some lessons here? Might there be other "Origamis" out there lurking in some dark corner of Redmond? Is Microsoft changing the playbook? Those are the real questions to ask over the next few weeks.