Flickr/n.bhupinderMicrosoft CEO Satya NadellaSway, Microsoft's answer to PowerPoint killer Prezi, is now open and available for anyone to try. It was previously an invite-only thing.
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:
YouTube/Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Sway YouTube ad featuring an Apple iPad
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).
Business Insider/Julie BortMicrosoft Sway is easy to use.
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: