I'm 34 and Feel Like My Grandfather But Here's a Way to Make $$$ from Instant Messaging
Last night a friend in Europe wanted to transfer a large file to me. We started out as an http download. It went slowly so he IM'd me and said "Let me IM it to you". I was absolutely aghast -- it was a 65 MEGABYTE file! This is where I feel old -- I'd never even have thought of this. My first computer had 4K of ram and no mass storage (well tape but that really doesn't count). Times really have changed.
Note to people making IM software: Want to either make more money or cut your costs? Introduce an IM Pro edition (Yahoo Messenger Pro or AOL Instant Messenger Pro) that tells the sender "File too big. Do you want to upgrade?". Don't penalize the receiver, penalize the sender. This way you might not have anyone sign up, but the software dev costs are really minimal:
- Check file size before send.
- Check user account
- Prompt
Even if you don't get a single person to sign up, this will dramatically cut your bandwidth costs. I can't be the only person who got a way too large file this way. It had to cost AOL a bundle -- and I'm not even an AOL customer, just an AIM user. People who still need to do this won't be hurt that much, we have FTP, HTTP, etc.
7:33:59 AM 
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