Microsoft users might notice something different when they visit the company's forum community. There will be several changes coming to the Community Participation Center.
Support Forum Changes
Forum owner and moderator Michelle Mad posted a new announcement on the company's answers section on June 11. The moderator revealed that users would be unable to interact with Microsoft personnel on several different forums starting in July. While she added that Microsoft staff members will still patrol the old software forums, the staff members would only intervene when dealing with disciplinary issues.
Mad also wrote that the software company is encouraging their users to continue to ask questions. Microsoft hopes that the forum users would continue to use the affected forums. They believe that the users would assist each other by answering questions without Microsoft employees moderating the discussions.
No More Forum Updates
These new forum policies would affect several Microsoft software programs including Windows OS 7, 8.1, and 8.1 RT. Also, users will find that moderators will stop answering questions regarding both the antivirus software Microsoft Security Essentials and Internet Explorer 10, the 2012 update of Microsoft's web browser. All Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office 2013 users will also be expected to be impacted.
Users of four different Microsoft Surface devices will have to look elsewhere for answers. They would not receive help from Microsoft personnel who provided support for older models of the Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, and Surface 2. Both the Microsoft Band and Zune topics would be locked. Zune users will have the opportunity to browse the section, Microsoft Band users were recommended to bring their questions to the Microsoft Band 2 topic.
Microsoft Projects
It has been reported that the software company is developing a subscription-based streaming service for video games. Phil Spencer, Microsoft's Executive President of Gaming, announced at the E3 Conference that Microsoft's cloud engineers are working on the way to develop a streaming service that would allow players to play console games on Xboxes, mobile phones, and PCs. The service could be like Sony's PlayStation Now, which for $20 a month allow its users to play classic video game titles from the network's data cloud.
On June 4, Microsoft announced that it would acquire website building company GitHub for $7.5 billion in company stock. GitHub has over 28 million developers that use their services to build their web projects and that there was over 85 million coding warehouse on the platform. It is expected that Nat Friedman, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, would take over GitHub after the transaction is complete. GitHub's current Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Chris Wanstrath, is expected to have a new role at the technology company.
Tech Times contacted Microsoft for a comment on this story.
