Not too sure how social sama-ish this post will be, but I think it fits enough in with the web 2.0 world to count. And besides, I am writing it so I can decide what the topic is. At any rate, looking at Microsoft flounder around the social world and, let’s face it, the web in general, and watching Netflix kick ass, it strikes me that MSFT should buy up the online rental company. MSFT has been dying to make an acquisition, they throw off $4B in cash per quarter, and they need to get some new ideas into the company. Netflix is migrating to a download model while keeping the cash cow of its monthly DVD subscription business going. In so doing, Netflix continues to innovate from a technological perspective. Putting these two together seems to actually fit the definition of synergy (assuming the word has any validity at all). Netflix is trading pretty low right now, and MSFT could pick it up on the cheap.

Seeding, feeding, and weeding are three words we say often about communities and social media. We didn’t come up with the phrase, but we liked it so we are borrowing it and using it extensively. The sentiment embodied by the phrase hit me again last week at the Innotech Austin IT conference. There I heard a discussion by several folks who had made great use of social media tools well before the cool kids were doing it. In fact, these users probably weren’t cool at all (not that I am either). At any rate, the discussion included a founder of Solarwinds.