Instant Messenger or Instant Advertiser?

Shadow2097 writes: "ABC News is running this moderately disturbing story about a new, highly targeted form of advertising. Two companies, SmarterChild.com and ActiveBuddy.com have teamed up to deliver interactive Instant Messenger bots that talk to children and deliver ever-so-subtle ads for various products. Just when you think market saturation has reached the limit, leave it to a greedy corporation to start targeting the most naive and vulnerable demographic there is."

It's been around for quite awhile.

[Yujenisis]

Active Buddy is the company that makes SmarterChild it's not two separate companies.

It's a shame they chose to use the technology for such sleazy purposes. I have known about ActiveBuddy and SmarterChild for awhile, infact Active Buddy's creation aptly named "SmarterChild" is on my AIM buddylist. When I first got it I was so amazed. You can ask it a limited number of questions through a command line-ish thing. Like Movie times, stock quotes, astrology, top stories, web searches, etc. I thought it was a very good use of technology. Go ahead add SmarterChild to your IM to see for yourself.

It's too bad they chose such cool idea (a Bot for AIM) to trick children. But I guess everyone has to make money somehow.

Re:How is this anything new?

[Suppafly]

Not sure about Active Buddy.. but SmarterChild is obviously not like talking to an eliza type program that convinces you to buy things. SmarterChild is more like an interactive program that can play text based games with you and give you information such as weather and stocks. You'd be hard pressed to trick anyone that can read that they are talking to anything other than a computer script.

Re:How is it...

[midendian]

Yes, it does have a decent calculator, but multiplying large numbers hardly proves it.

Here:

(18:42:30) SmarterChild: More calculator requests:

What is 7.1 * ((3.17 + 9.41 + 27.81) * 4) / 16.4) ?
shortcut: 7.1*(((3.17+9.41+27.81)*4)/16.4)
What is sqrt(3**2 + 4**2) * log(sin(pi / 2)) ?
shortcut: sqrt(3**2+4**2)*log(sin(pi/2))

Or how about:

(18:42:43) [x]: set output radix to 16
(18:42:44) SmarterChild: output radix set to 16
(18:42:59) [x]: #0f4 | 8#700
(18:43:01) SmarterChild: 500 8#764

These are of course slightly undocumented. The radix is similar to the emacs calculator.

Re:How is this anything new?

[rawb]

You guys are all freaking out... Smarterchild doesnt go IMing these children on its own. You have to IM it yourself, usually with a specific purpose in mind. The same is true of every active buddy bot. They arent trying to trick anyone at all; They provide a service and are hoping to get corporations interested in it. Their product does have real potential. Imagine each brand of detergent having their own IM SN, where you could ask them the best way to get a stain out, or could compare ingredients between each competing product. You won't hear any public outcry from me until these active buddy bots start amassing huge AIM lists and spamming people.

I work for ActiveBuddy

[rockville]

OK, OK, you got me out of hiding - I work for ActiveBuddy. I just want to take a second to respond to some of the things said about us in this article based upon that abcnews.com commentary.

1. ActiveBuddy targets children
This is not true. We do no marketing at all - all of our bots spread virally (companies we contract with might do marketing of their own, but that's it). It is unfortunate that the IM medium right now is dominated by kids in the pre-teen to teen range, but it's never been our intention to market to these age groups specifically.

2. ActiveBuddy ads are "spam" or "underhanded"
Our ads are less intrusive than standard banner ads, and much less intrusive than some of the things going on now on web sites trying to make money from internet advertising. ActiveBuddy bots never message the user first - the user has to begin an interaction with it. Ads are clearly delineated at the bottom of the page, separate from the other content.

3. ActiveBuddy is filled with greedy capitalists trying to make a buck
Look, we're just like you - we have a technology that's pretty cool, and that a lot of people like to use. We provide lots of advertiser-neutral interaction, but we do have some ads. So does Slashdot. So does almost every website out there.

4. This article is a useful introduction to our company/technology/way we do business
I love /. Really, I do. But this is one failure of the slashdot newsgathering system - you get an article from one point-of-view only. There are lots of other ways to look at our technology. I hope you'll look at SmarterChild and decide for yourself.

Re:How is this anything new?

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't hear any public outcry from me until these active buddy bots start amassing huge AIM lists and spamming people.

Have you ever used an instant messenger? Obviously not, otherwise you would know that they are already doing this.

Before I turned off accepting IM's from strangers I used to get IMed all sorts of crap I never asked for. Like spammers, only worse, because they sometimes interrupted real conversations I was having with friends.

Yeah, this is what kids *really* need...

[eaolson]

This is intended for children? WTF?

I was curious, so I fired up AIM, and added SmarterChild to my buddy list and after toying around with it for a while here is the exchange we had:

SmarterChild: OK, fine.

So moving right along...

What else is happening?

[me]: nothin

SmarterChild: K, no prob.

Check this out! Couple Tests Water Beds in After-Hours Romp (from Reuters.com)

With a link to: A Reuters Story [reuters.com] about a couple having after-hours sex in a department store. Just the thing I'm sure 7 and 8 year olds need to see more of.