A Little Help Here
You know, we’re having enough trouble trying to get things like instant messaging (appropriately used, of course) into schools. It doesn’t help when everyone’s concerns are justifed by the companies making the programs or services we want.
I just upgraded my Microsoft instant message client yesterday at the behest of the program. What the heck, it will only take a minute, and it offers new functionality, right? (Ok, it was a cute animation function. It sounded fun!)
This is already a robust messenger, with screen sharing, voice, video, and document sharing. Potentially a very powerful tool in a collaborative online environment.
So what is the first thing I notice after the upgrade? The advertising inserted into my buddy list.
Maybe there were ads there before and I never noticed - I do tune these things out. But it was difficult not to notice the young woman clad only in a small, red bikini in the ad for a “sexy singles” dating service with the big caption Sometimes it’s nice to be naughty!
Great. I can just imagine that ad popping up while I’m doing a demonstration on the power of online collaborative tools with a room full of administrators or parents. I’m sure I’ll be doing the demo sometime, but it won’t be with MSN Messenger for Windows. (The Mac version is still ad-free.)