You have seen people selling their personal signature space for text links in Internet forums but a company in China has gone a step further - they are paying MSN Messenger and Microsoft Live users to place advertising text in their user names. For example, a user like john_q_public on MSN messenger could change his profile display name to "Buy Cheap Viagra - visit fake-viagra.com" and the more he chats, the more money he makes.
The only pre-condition to participate is that you should be an active chat user and have atleast 50 MSN contacts. The program is very much alive and kicking in China and some $2.8 million in advertising revenue has already been distributed among IM users.
The company awards points based on the amount of time the user is online with that name. The user can then exchange the points for cash or products from the advertisers whose services they have been promoting.
Members must be online for at least three hours between 9am and 6pm on weekdays to earn any points. They also have to add 5Sai's MSN bot to their contact list. The company uses the bot to check that members are online and confirm that advertising messages are being displayed.
A good option for unemployed folks who get online for job hunting. But what's next ? Ads on Orkut profile names ?
