Microsoft's PowerPoint Killer Is Here
Prezi is a web presentation app especially popular with the young folk. About 50 million people use Prezi, the site claims.
Microsoft hopes to stop that in its tracks with its own web app. Sway also works on mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone.
Sway lets you drag and drop photos, videos, files from your computer, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or cloud storage. It works via a web browser or an app for your phone, and the presentation is stored on the web.
Note the iPad staring in this Microsoft video for Sway:
Microsoft announced Sway in October and last month sent out a bunch more invites to various journalists, including us. We tried it and generally liked it. Although the presentations it produced weren't as slick as a Prezi, with that trademark zooming-around thing Prezi does, Sway was extremely easy to use.
It has some nice features like "change my mood," which lets you choose a new layout, background, and fonts. The "remix" button does that for you (a little like the "I feel lucky" button on Google).
Since then Microsoft added several features making it easier to edit/change/arrange text or import a PDF into a presentation.
Sway is still officially in Preview mode.
People seem interested. In the 10 weeks since Microsoft opened up the invite-only preview, it's had a million people come to Sway.com with over 175,000 of them requesting invites, it said in a blog post. Microsoft said those numbers are growing by "thousands daily.'
Here's an example of a Sway: