So Microsoft has decided to close down its free unmoderated chat rooms. And also decided to make a PR exercise out of it.
The former is a good decision. The latter, in my opinion, is bad. If all other businesses are there to make a profit then so are the Internet businesses. Microsoft has no reason to feel defensive and offer reasons that many feel are only partially correct.
But what has Microsoft done? It has decided to close down free chat rooms across the world except in Canada, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia and the US. In the US, these will be available as a paid service. In other regions, they will be moderated. The reason–to prevent unrestricted access to young children who get exposed to sex chats and worse. Not unexpectedly, the move has been criticized by users and competitors as yet another way of increasing Microsoft’s dollars.
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Shyam MalhotrA |
“The Net is becoming a commercial proposition. And that is good” |
Leave that debate to the critics and admirers of Microsoft.
More important is that this move signifies another step in the Net becoming a commercial proposition. And that is good. There is absolutely no need to offer freebies endlessly. That is only taking away the power of this amazingly powerful tool in many ways.
Free chat rooms have no doubt brought millions of users to the Net and inculcated the chat habit. That has also brought about the perils of plenty. Try having a sensible and sober interaction on the Net. There are a huge number of surfers flitting from one room to another–like a huge party where everyone talks but there is no conversation. Chat rooms will be populated by serious visitors the moment users have to pay and this change in visitor profile will certainly improve the quality of chatting, thereby making it more meaningful. It will also ensure responsible conversation since the visitor will no longer be anonymous.
The free and anonymous nature of the Net has also plagued the email service. Email is a powerful communication and marketing tool–the most powerful that this planet has seen so far. But these two ‘qualities’ have made spam an uncontrolled epidemic. On an average, more than 30 billion emails are sent each day. Of these, less than 20% are to known people. The rest are untargeted marketing messages. A large percentage of these messages are sent straight to the dustbin. Imagine the cost of bandwidth being choked and the millions of minutes being wasted each day in downloading and deleting this inane stuff.
Move on to content. Just because it is free there is loads and loads of it. Most of it is useless to the task at hand. Suppose there were sites that actually gave you what you wanted with a few keystrokes. Gave you well-defined search results. Helped you locate content that you could trust and use. Would they be worth paying for? People would pay and are paying. Data shows that this is happening. The Online Publishers Association has determined that American users spent $748 million in purchasing online content in the first half of 2003 compared to $264 million in the same period in 2001. When people pay they extract their money’s worth. They are the serious users–the ones that publishers want and the ones that advertisers target for. And it is that cycle which helps in creating new and useful content. Gibberish posted by everyone from the Arctic to the Antarctic is not content.
The free character of the Net has brought in the hordes. Of both providers and surfers. That has also made business nonsense. Thankfully, there are signs that Net business is emerging. Paid chat rooms are one such business. Not that Microsoft has made all this happen. There are many others who are making the Internet a commercial success. But when Microsoft takes a decision it leads to a debate and discussion. Hopefully this debate will conclude that all that is free is not useful. And that will be good for the Net and its users.
Thank you, Microsoft.
Shyam MalhotrA
The author is Editor-in-Chief of Cyber Media, the publishers of Dataquest.