Revenue generating features in Pidgin

[Marcus Lundblad]

Hi.

I gave this some thought.
And I think there is a risk of alienating users by force-feeding ads on
them.
I think one way to do this in a more nice manner could be to add someis
kind of "dictionary" plugin that has f.ex. support for right-clicking on
words in a chat to look them up. This could have support for example
Wikipedia and About.com (who would pay for this, given they accept such
a solution). This way it could perhaps feel more as a feature that could
bring value to the user.
Also the plugin might add a search bar to the buddy list, but this might
be more questionable.

This was just some thoughts from me

//Marcus

tis 2008-02-12 klockan 02:28 -0500 skrev Mark Doliner:
> Someone from Ask.com contacted us and asked if we'd considered adding any sort
> of revenue generating features into Pidgin.  He didn't go into specifics.  If
> I had to speculate on what's possible these two features come to mind:
> 
> 1. Add a little search bar to the bottom of the buddy list or something that
> performs a search.  If lots of people perform searches (and maybe click on ads
> in the search results?) then we're given small kickbacks.
> 
> 2. Similar to the above, but we could link random words in IM conversations to
> search results pages.
> 
> Any revenue generated would probably go to the Instant Messaging Freedom
> Foundation, since it's pretty much impossible to divide incoming among
> Pidgin's developers.
> 
> I'm basically against adding those features, since I don't think users really
> benefit from them.  But I didn't want to be the sole decision maker, so I
> figured I'd see how other people felt.  And of course, if you have other ideas
> on ways to generate revenue that you think would benefit Pidgin users then by
> all means share with us.
> 
> -Mark
> 
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Marcus Lundblad
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