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AIM Bots: Useful or Spam?
An anonymous reader writes "Imagine my surprise this morning when AOL AIM popped up a window and introduced me to two bots that it automatically added to my buddy list. " Two seperate issues- one is simply auto adding robots to your friends list, which is very uncool. The second is a corporation using bots in an official capacity. This is an interesting trend, although technically speaking, not that far from the eggdrop of old.
I see this as the future of advertising. Everyone is now using GAIM or some other alternate client, so people miss all of AOL's annoying (yet profit-generating) ads.
AOL had to think of something new -- some way of profiting off of their protocol. Sticking interactive ads, that people think of as their "buddies"! What could be better?
These bots sneak in to your list, pretend to be your friends, and if you send them a message, BAM! Custom ads delivered right to you.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
At IBM we use Lotus SameTime internally as our IM infrastructure. Several enterprising folks have written various sametime bots that allow us to look up acronyms (WhatIs Bot), look up employee info from our directory (BluePages Bot), and others I can't think off off the top of my head.
Michael C. Hollinger
Apparently once you've installed someone's software or used someone's product on your computer, they have the right to tinker with your machine and settings at will.
I was more than a little distressed to find these things appearing on my Buddy List. Like any "feature", don't I get the right to refuse it? Of course the cute little system message tells me I can right-click and delete them, but that's not the point. If you're going to add capailities to something, fine, but give the opportunity to say yea or nay first.
While not as bad as Sony's rootkit fiasco, it does point out the growing hubris of we, the software users of the world, when we believe that we still have control of how our systems work and how they are configured. It's not just worms and viruses now, but wholesale invasion by any company that feels you're not using their product most effectively. Pretty soon I expect Adobe Reader to ask me "Should you be reading that?" or IE to say "Sorry, no Slashdot for you today!"
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'm just surprised that AOL has taken this long to begin sending you advertisements via AIM. They have a near-monopoly on IM communications...
AOL has 56% last time I looked. 56% a monopoly does not make.
As an aside, can we please move out of the dark ages of text chatting? Multiple, incompatible formats on different networks, without publicly available bridging is pathetic. Please everyone, switch to Jabber and set up a bridge until it gains most of the market. It's as if MSN users could not e-mail AOL users who could not e-mail Yahoo users. Remember when the internet used to be about standards and used for communication, instead of lock-ins and sending you ads?
Wrong. We'll know from Google's search results. Mark my words, one day the following search result will cease to be returned forever:
That's when we'll know.
Here we are... found a list out on the intranet... I didn't know a few of these existed. I'm sure other corporations have some as well.
Who Is - do BluePages name and phone info searches
Helpline - Helpdesk FAQs searches
What Is - Definitions of acronyms
StockQuote - IBM and all other stock quotes
Dictionary - English language dictionary
SkillTap - contact others that may be able to help you
W3Alert - send broadcasts out to selected groups
Michael C. Hollinger
I'm with you on this one. These are services that acutally add value to the AIM platform. Why on earth are we all complaining that they've added features. If you don't want to search for products, or get movie times in your area, don't use 'em. If they offend you, delete them from your buddy list. Don't go complain they shouldn't be adding resources for us all to use.
Now, if these things start initiating conversations with me, unsolicited, that's going to be a problem, and I will be the first to complain (and loud). As it stands now, though, aside from a short message informing me of a new feature, these things are non-intrusive, USEFUL resources. That's more than I can say for that irritating ad window above the buddy list, and no one's lobbying to get that removed.
What am I missing?
Has anyone tried "Warning" the bots?
Perhaps a well-orchestrated campaign would send a message to those responsible for this bit of obnoxiousness.