Hasta La Gadget!

The blogs are buzzing over some tweets from a Twitter account run by the Office 2010 team, noting what looks like the outright announcement of a Zune phone. Something doesn’t feel right.

First, the tweets:

June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers.

Naturally, this got some other Twitterers a little excited. The followup:

New product launch, that’s all I’m allowed to say. Hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre.

Well, that’s a pretty clear statement: Don’t buy any of these popular phones, because we’re releasing a product soon. Wow?

Granting that this is a Microsoft-run Twitter and that the announcement is well-informed, here’s what it probably means: Microsoft could be offering up a combination of a Zune phone reference design and combination Windows Mobile/Zune software to device manufacturers, come June. But until these errant Tweets are addressed by someone who we know can speak authoritatively for MS (not some low-level marketing minion), this is about as convincing as any of the other countless Zunephone/Pink “reports” we’ve heard to date—that is to say, mildly.

Mainly, it’s the source of these rumors that bothers me. The info comes from a Twitter account that claims to be connected to Office 2010 The Movie, a Microsoft advertising page promoting the next version of MS Office. Thing is, I can’t find a link to this Twitter page anywhere on office2010themovie.com, nor can I find mentions of @officethemovie by any other notable Microsoft Twitter accounts. It is linked! Hmm.

There’s plenty more to be suspicious of. The Twitter account is brand-new, and their limited tweets regarding Office have been strange:

Office 2010 will include Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks integrated right into Word. That’s just a hint of what’s to come!

Social networking in Word? Not to mention that half of these Tweets were posted through Tweetie, a Mac client.

Beyond these superficial oddities, there’s a conceptual problem. Why would MS allow a Zune phone announcement to leak through a low-profile, unconnected Twitter account, especially when such an announcement runs directly counter to the company line?

UPDATE: This Twitter account is link to from the OfficetheMovie website, but at best that makes the Twitter account the official mouthpiece of a part of the marketing team for a Microsoft product with little-to-no relation to the Zune project, not an infallible voice of the Zune division, much less the company as a whole. It’ll be interesting to see how this is dealt with when Redmond wakes up. [Neowin]