Interview with Steve Ballmer, CEO: Microsoft Corp

Robert Stein of ActiveWin has posted up an exclusive interview with Steve Balmer of Microsoft. Robert met with Steve at the CES 2006 event and discusses some of the routes Microsoft are undertaking and Steves vision for Vista

Steve Ballmer is chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., the world's leading manufacturer of software for personal and business computing. Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. Since then, Ballmer's passion and leadership have become hallmarks of his tenure at the company.

ActiveWin.com: Microsoft has done some innovative things lately with community such as releasing websites like the Hive.Net, etc. How has Microsoft been so successful leading the way with online bloggers and websites when other companies are just learning about community?

Steve Ballmer: We have known from the very beginning that one of the most important success factors for our business would be our ability to build a community amongst our partners, developers and customers. From the start, Microsoft has looked to offer the ability for them to connect with one another and for us to reach them and hear from the directly. So, in many senses the blogging phenomenon is nothing new to us and has been very natural for us to embrace. Certainly, with the continued proliferation of the Internet and technologies like RSS, everything has been taken to an entirely new level. You'll see us continue to do even more, building on the success of sites like Channel 9, where we already have over 2.8M visitors every month.