I read this post by Erica Joy the other day about her experience hosting a Windows 7 party.

In short, she mocked it.

Now, I’m a big fan of “house parties” having executed them very successfully with both Dan Pink for Johnny Bunko and with Yes To Carrots.

Given Erica’s obvious dislike of Microsoft and the fact that she works for Google, I am going to make a hypothesis here.

So, there are assumptions that could be false, but here’s my take on it.

Microsoft recognizes that Word-of-Mouth is the best way to spread information about a product. True.

The best Word-of-Mouth advocates are regular people and not the so-called influencers. Maybe not absolute truth, but certainly smart approach. (not that MS isn’t going after the ‘influencers,’ too, but they have the budget for both AND, in theory, the ROI on little people, is higher.)

Here’s where I think they fell down….they didn’t only ask Raving Fans to nominate themselves. They let anyone do it.

There was no “passion-o-meter.”

It became a mass (quantity) vs. a passion (quality) game and MS, being MS, thought “we need A LOT of people doing this.”

Which is how Erica got a Windows 7 party box.

That she promptly derided and ridiculed publicly.

Lesson: A community driven marketing strategy is great, but you need a REAL community of passionate people, not just a list of people who want to get free stuff from you.

P.S. I really like Windows 7, am a former MS employee and still own some stock.