Yahoo Experimenting with In-Chat IM Ads
PrintIf ever there was a reason to consider switching IM clients to Pidgin or Trillian, it would be the concept of in-chat IM ads. That's exactly what Yahoo has been experimenting with in its Yahoo Messenger instant messaging software since last August.
"Ads in Yahoo Messenger will allow us to put even more resources behind developing and delivering valuable free features and services," Yahoo said. "Yahoo Messenger is a free service to our users, and our goal is to provide a useful and relevant experience while ensuring this is a profitable business for Yahoo. Yahoo is inherently an advertising-driven business."
The test ends this month, but Yahoo isn't offering so much as a hint as to what it will decide to do once the test is finished. However, it might not take much to convince the search company to implement in-chat IM ads. The company has been struggling financially and recently laid off over 1,500 employees. On the bright side, the ads don't appear to be terribly intrusive. Yahoo claim users will see ads at most once per day.
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winmaster
December 28, 2008 at 6:25pm
Did you guys just decide to spontaneously take a screen shot of your computer then say, "Hey, wait! I don't want people on maximumpc.com to see my user name!" I thought you could do better.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Paul_Lilly
January 07, 2009 at 10:20am
While I have no problem disclosing my own screenname for thousands to see (I use One4yu2c for pretty much everything), I'm not going to assume the same for someone on my contact list, which is the name that I blacked out in that screenie.
winmaster
January 24, 2009 at 11:56am
I can understand that, its just blacking out a name is sooooo 80's. Try pixelating that part of the image.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Azruelli
December 18, 2008 at 8:55am
Glad I won't have to deal with this. I hated the ads when they were on the bottom of my MSN clients, I don't think I could actually deal with them in the window itself. There's just a certain amount of neatness I expect from IM clients..
Pidgin FTW
HeartBurnKid
December 18, 2008 at 9:11am
I've been using alternate IM clients (first Trillian, then Gaim/Pidgin) ever since AOL decided to bundle spyware into AIM (not like it wasn't a shitty enough program already, right?). I don't see a single ad from these greedy bastiches.
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