Montgomery points developers to Microsoft’s Web Platform and Xbox development program as all projects that were created using Popfly will effectively be discontinued completely.

TechCrunch got an early look at the Silverlight-powered application when it debuted in private beta mode over 2 years ago. At the time, mash-up and widget creation tools were all the rage, with Yahoo introducing its Pipes web app just a few months prior. Google got in the game with its Mashup Editor a bit later, but that service never left private beta and the company ultimately announced it would be axing the product last January. Two days ago, the team even reminded developers that it would soon be shutting down.

ProgrammableWeb in its coverage of the discontinuation of Microsoft Popfly points back to a February 2008 article in the NY Times, in which the newspaper talks about Montgomery and Popfly in a positive light, with the product manager being lauded as “an example of how it just might be possible for someone to teach dinosaurs to dance”.

Last fall, his team introduced an intriguing software Web service called Popfly that is intended to make it possible for nonprogrammers to plug together Web components and data sources quickly to create useful new Web services. For example, news feeds could be added to digital images, or data lists to maps.

Introduced at the Web 2.0 conference last year by Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, Popfly was picked by PC World magazine as one of the most innovative computing and consumer electronics products of 2007. It has garnered more than 100,000 users — the company says the exact number is confidential — and now has a library of more than 50,000 “mashups”: new components or Web pages that have been created in a visual snap-together fashion, like Lego blocks.

Web 2.0 Conference organizer Tim O’Reilly also gets quoted in the article, and he apparently expressed skepticism early on:

“Popfly shows me that Microsoft still thinks this is all about software, rather than about accumulating data via network effects, which to me is the core of Web 2.0,” said Tim O’Reilly, the founder and chief executive of O’Reilly Media, a print and online publisher. “They are using Popfly to push Silverlight, rather than really trying to get into the mashup game.”

Seattle-based tech blog TechFlash got a bit more information out of Microsoft regarding Popfly’s sudden death. In an e-mail to editor Todd Bishop, Redmond says Popfly was simply no longer part of its refocused strategy, which was outlined in light of the dismal economic situation.

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in as a tip)

When it comes to casual games online, they tend to be built in Adobe’s Flash (see Kongregate). But Microsoft wants people to start creating Web video games in its competing Silverlight.

Today, it is taking a step to make that easier by introducing the Popfly Game Creator. Microsoft launched Popfly last year as an easy way to create widgets and mashups using Silverlight. With Popfly Game Creator, it is adding a simple Web-based authoring environment for creating casual arcade-style games.

The tool is built for non-programmers so that anyone can create a game, and is particularly aimed at kids and teenagers. It is entirely browser-based. You create a game using predefined templates that can be modified, and when you are satisfied, you hit play to run the code. The games run in Silverlight and will be hosted at Popfly, but are embeddable anywhere on the Web. Here’s a game Microsoft created for us with Michael as the main character.

The Game Creator starts off with templates for about 20 different types of games—from space invaders and breakout to racing games and shooters. Game makers can populate their games with hundreds of characters, background scenes, sound effects and objects, or create their own from scratch. More details can be found on the Popfly wiki.

Microsoft Popfly could demonstrate part of a new relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft.

The private alpha test of mashup and widget creator Popfly was announced May 18 and is pitched as a Yahoo Pipes competitor. It’s expected that these sorts of services focus strongly on the respective creators products. Popfly doesn’t include one pre-set “block” relating to any Google property, yet offers a range of Yahoo blocks including Yahoo News, Traffic, Answers and blocks for the Yahoo owned Flickr and Upcoming.

Some Yahoo blocks could be offered due to Microsoft’s lack of home grown coverage of some verticals, and yet Yahoo News is offered alongside MSN News Feeds, Flickr along with My Live Spaces Photos.

If Microsoft is aiming to provide a more inclusive product with Popfly, why are there no Google blocks? There is any number of Google related products that could improve the mashup experience on Popfly. It’s difficult to believe that exclusion of all Google products was anything other than intentional. Conversely the inclusion of Yahoo related blocks that compete with Microsoft offerings must have been decided upon by someone, and the purpose of this is questionable: why Yahoo, why now?

All of this is not to take away from Popfly, it looks like a great service, yet even from small things, one can find hidden meaning.

Popfly is a big leap forward from the competitors above because it lets you do so much more, and it is one of the nicest web application interfaces I have ever seen. With Popfly, you can create applications, mashups, web pages and widgets (gadgets) and it is all tied together in a social network (as part of the Live Spaces platform) where you can connect with other users and publishers of applications. Mashups are created by dragging in and connecting ‘blocks’ which produce an output. Blocks are modules that connect to various web services API’s, and even today there are dozens of different blocks that work with a whole variety of different web services.

See additional screen shots and a link to a screencast on the Popfly overview page here.

Seeing applications like Popfly coming out of Microsoft is something that I couldn’t have imagined all too long ago – and together with the recent Silverlight announcements (which we were also very excited about) the new Microsoft is really starting to come out through their product releases. Popfly so far seems to be another potential big hit from the new Microsoft under Ray Ozzie (Ozziesoft).

Invites: While the private beta is very limited (even within Microsoft), we do have TEN invitations to send out. Leave a comment about how you would use Popfly and the best (or funniest) ten will be sent an invitation to the application.