You might have heard that Microsoft accidentally leaked its new Social Media project, Tulalip.
What you might not have heard is that the Tulalip are a First Nation native to the area of Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft’s headquarters.
I sincerely wonder if nobody in the Board meeting that must have taken place when the project was initiated didn’t think this was an unfortunate choice. Sure a company like Microsoft, often accused of imperialist commercial practices, monopoly, cultural dominance, etc, realizes what a bad idea this is? I mean, metaphors are everything in marketing; in fact, metaphors are the basis of the whole concept of advertising. Microsoft picks the name of a Nation that was forced to live in reservations, whose children were forcefully removed from the community to assimilate them into mainstream American culture, whose lands were taken away from them (land where Microsoft headquarters are currently located, I might add), etc.
I’d just like to know who were the executives that looked at this and thought “Yeah, great idea, let’s call our next project with which we hope to dominate vast chunks of the internet, Tulalip”.
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