MSNBC heeft een artikeltje over de snel groeiende Instant Messenger markt. AOL, Yahoo en Microsoft zoeken naar wegen om geld te verdienen met hun Instant Messengers (aan inkomsten ontbreekt het op dit moment namelijk nog):
THAT MAY CHANGE, as America Online Inc. and its ICQ subsidiary, Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. implement schemes to make instant messaging a profit center.“Monetizing instant messaging will be huge,” said Charlene Li, senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., and it will only get bigger after there’s an open standard for IM technology, she said.
[...] A spokeswoman said the service would integrate advertising for hip apparel for young women and students, and for music and entertainment. “It’s a perfect demographic fit,” she said. For the future, ICQ is exploring ways to target Instant Messages about special discounts that are of interest to individual users.
For instance, ICQ has a deal with eBay.com to distribute IM alerts about auction activity. That potentially drives traffic to eBay, which indirectly boosts sales. Yahoo! also alerts its Messenger users if they have been outbid on Yahoo! Auction.
Park says Yahoo! sees expanded commerce and communication opportunities down the road for instant messaging. Among the possibilities are users being alerted to when their stocks have reached the user’s preset level, and then the user can decide whether to sell the stock and make the transaction via instant messaging.
Check MSNBC voor het complete verhaal.
