I attended VON 2006, a trade show focused on VoIP from an enterprise perspective. I have an upcoming article or two regarding the show, which I will post on the site, but for now I wanted to comment on Microsoft’s presence initiative.

For those unfamiliar to “presence,” it is one of the latest buzzwords in tech. Basically, presence is a sophisticated version of “Away” or “Available” as used/found in IM clients. It has some fantastic potential, but remains something mostly in the works and used to attract VC.

At VON, a Microsoft rep provided a half-hour presentation on their presence, IM, and database iniativies, all of which seemed to take aim at Google, AIM, Yahoo!, and consumer-level services. As per usual, Microsoft speaks a grand game but probably will not deliver on their promises (it is not alone; Motorola’s “Seamless Mobility” initiative and Yahoo!’s music and IPTV personalization plans have been significant disappointments).

At the core of Microsoft’s efforts is a subscription-based model for contacts. You have your online identity (e.g., IM screenname) and you allow people to subscribe at different levels, such as friends, family, coworkers, and hobby partners. At any time, they can unsubscribe or, and this is what was emphasized, you can unsubcribe users (more precisely, re-subscribe them to different categories, including lower status ones). It was repeatedly emphasized that if you decided you did not like someone, you could move that person out of your inner circle outward toward less personal/connected circles.

While there was some cool components to Microsoft and its 13 billion strong database of online identities (nervous?), the notion that people would feel free to downgrade people’s relationship status is misguided. People are and have always been concerned about hurting others feelings, and this includes downgrading relationships. Whether it is not breaking up with someone or putting up with a former-friend’s behavior in the Externet or being torn over how to remove people from your blogroll on the Internet, people do not feel comfortable pushing people away.

If people dilute the value of their relationships, then the relationship-centric subscription model Microsoft is pursuing becomes significantly less valuable. After all, information designed for a specific group of friends will become moderated so that the undesired people do not find out about ongoings, etc. As a result, we can expect Microsoft’s initative to lead to another layer of well-intentioned but poorly-implemented/designed Internet novelty.