Thursday, 17 Nov 2005

AOL doesn’t get it

The commercial IM networks have long been relatively careful about preventing intrusions from people pestering or worse. AIM, ICQ and Yahoo have “so-in-so wants you to be their buddy, do you approve?” The next-generation open-standard network, Jabber, is even more explicit about granting permission to even let someone see your presence.

This morning when I fired up gaim, I discovered this:

AIM Bots ?!?

No request, certainly no approval. AOL just automatically added them into my buddy list.

You’d think the trashing that Sony is getting this week would have given people a hint. But there are obviously companies out there that still don’t get it when it comes to privacy — let alone the power of the consumer in the network age.

Right Click -> Remove Buddy. gone

So much for AOL spy bots. More to the point,

Customer -> Tell friends all over the world about above stupidity -> All decide to switch to a different system. gone plural

Of course, these are the same media companies that want to install cell phone jammers in movie theatres so that kids can’t SMS their friends saying how lousy the film they just watched is. Here’s a hint: if you don’t make bad movies, then you won’t have to figure out how to force people to go to them.

AfC

aol-doesnt-get-it, posted by Andrew Cowie in comment at 2005-11-17T12:36:59Z

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