Microsoft Understands How IT Guys Feel

Microsoft suddenly has a fantastic sense of humor.

First, they sent flowers to the funeral of IE6. Now they’re rolling out a new webcomic series called “Where’s the ‘Any’ Key?” The site allows IT professionals to share their worst fail moments from their time doing tech support. From there, users can vote on these anecdotes.

The highest-rated anecdote every week wins its author a Sony Vaio X, £100 in gift certificates to the Microsoft store, and the anecdote is turned into the site’s weekly comic strip.

Why has Microsoft suddenly gotten a sense of humor?

It’s actually surprisingly simple. Microsoft knows that it has to do something to shake its reputation as being both the butt of jokes and the evil empire at the same time. By poking fun at its own flaws, it’s managed to put a human face on a previously imposing corporation.

As you can see from the above comic, it seems like Microsoft’s finally sticking to its core competencies regarding humor, as explained in this page (yes, that really is a MSFT page).