problogger

I Dream Of Miss Dewey

And so do you. Miss Dewey is hot, she's viral, and she's … in softcore. Danny blogged about this viral experiment from Microsoft here. Valleywag documented Janina Gavankar's "interesting" past appearances over here (not work safe). I posit that Microsoft was entirely aware of Miss Dewey's naked past.

Yes, nobody has really discussed it, but Microsoft must have known this. Would anyone suggest otherwise? Blue screens — yes. Clueless — no.

Needless to say, such a subtle sexual undertone gave "Miss Dewey" increased viral appeal. Thousands of undersexed nerds all over the planet, I'm sure, were passing around instant messages and emails just like the following:

"Hey check it out, this girl on Microsoft's site did *pr0n0* … http://www.msdewey.com/!"

So kudos to Microsoft. They subtly and successfully exploited sex, a universal favorite pastime to promote MSN search. And they did it without the remote possibility of catching criticism or damaging their reputation. Miss Dewey was a perfectly efficient buzz-generating machine.

Moral of the story. Even Microsoft is using unorthodox viral methods creatively — you'd better be doing it too. I dream of the possibility of creating something as beautifully viral as Miss Dewey. Yes, I think Microsoft outdid Burger King — though I can see some similarity/emulation to give BK some much due credit. 30,000+ links, and counting.

… and last I checked, search engines can't tell if the link was influenced by libido.