• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 19, 2016

Asked why a new social video sharing platform rumored to be coming from Microsoft is needed, a panel of agency executives speaking at OMMA Video this morning, said there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing -- especially when you’re getting paid to use it.

Citing reports that Microsoft is poised to announce a new video sharing platform called Huddle aimed at the business enterprise marketplace, moderator Ryan Hurley, Director of Performance Marketing,The Archer Group, asked the panel, “Do we need another platform? People can’t seem to get enough.”

“It’s like saying do we need another cable channel. The more places to publish fur is is ideal for us,” responded

Craig Elimeliah, Director of Creative Technology, North America, VML, adding, “because we make more money with it.”

He added that if the new platform “gives us more variety of data, not volume of data, then it is useful for us.”

Rachel Pasqua, Practice Lead, Connected Life, MEC Global, put it another way, suggesting it’s hard to understand the value of a new platform until it actually exists.

“We didn’t know we needed Pinterest until Pinterest came along,” she said, adding, “We didn’t know we needed Instagram.”

Or, paraphrasing automobile manufacturing pioneer Henry Ford: “If you asked people what they wanted, you’d just build a faster horse.”

So what value would Microsoft’s horse of another video color have to the content marketing marketplace?

“Most social networks focus on consumers and personal ways of communicating,” Trevor O'Brien, Partner & CTO, Deutsch, said noting that in the area of business social networking, LinkedIn is the only truly successful platform, indicating there is a genuine opportunity for Microsoft to focus on “video delivery for businesses.”

From my point of view, I don’t think people should forget that Microsoft also owns one of the world’s first and most distributed video sharing platforms: Skype.