+ - Ms. Dewey: Microsoft's Attempt at Viral Marketing
Submitted
by
Broadwave
Broadwave writes "In an effort to gain popularity over google, Microsoft has unveiled a "personality" for its live search engine. The character Ms. Dewey is a fully animated search assistant who audibly comments on searched keywords and makes random actions when idle. While not actively marketing the site, it would appear Microsoft is attempting to create a viral marketing pattern to encourage internet users to use their search engine and gain market share. Imagine a more abrasive Microsoft Bob, only for the web.
Janina Gavankar plays the role of Ms. Dewey, which upon using the interface to search for her name, responds with gloating comments. In an interview with Janina, she indicated that since the site has come online, traffic to her own site has gone up exponentially. However, to track these statistics on her own site, she uses google."