Channel 9 was a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

website for hosting videos and podcasts that Microsoft employees create. Launched in 2004 when Microsoft's corporate reputation was at a low, Channel 9 was the company's first

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

. It was named after the

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

audio channel that lets airplane passengers listen to the cockpit's conversations unhindered; the site published conversations among Microsoft developers, rather than its chairman

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

, who had historically been the "face" of Microsoft. This made it an inexpensive alternative to Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, then the main public platform where customers and outside developers could speak to Microsoft employees without the intervention of the company's PR department. The Channel 9 team produced interviews with

Erik Meijer Erik Meijer may refer to: *Erik Meijer (politician) (born 1944), Dutch politician *Erik Meijer (computer scientist) (born 1963), Dutch computer scientist *Erik Meijer (footballer) Erik Meijer (born 2 August 1969) is a retired Dutch footballer. ...

, and

Mark Russinovich Mark Eugene Russinovich (born December 22, 1966) is a Spanish-born American software engineer and author who serves as CTO of Microsoft Azure. He was a cofounder of software producers Winternals before it was acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Ear ...

. On November 5, 2021, it was announced that

would merge Channel 9 into Microsoft Learn. The move was completed on December 1, effectively rendering the original site defunct. However, past videos from the former site can still be seen there. Channel 9, however, was not a community website and did not host any content made by the community. That had not always been the case. The site once hosted discussion forums, as well as a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

based on Microsoft's own

FlexWiki The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used ...

. The wiki had been used to provide ''ad hoc'' feedback to Microsoft teams, such as the

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

team.

References

External links

* (Redirect) * (Archived) * (new site for hosting content) {{Microsoft Microsoft websites Computing websites

See also

References

External links