Tech Shout!

People bored or exasperated of seeing various ads displayed on the MSN Messenger window now have a better option, the users can resort to video clip instead of the ads. The launch of Windows Live Messenger had made Redmond Company to go in and test a feature it calls ‘ The Video Carousel’ which replaced the graphic ad content with interactive video content from MSN.

Windows Live Messenger is the descendant of MSN Messenger and entered beta testing earlier this month. The new client includes features such as offline messages and PC-to-phone calls. File transfers are beefed up through online drop boxes called “Sharing Folders” that store the data on a Microsoft server.

Live Messenger team member Daniel Feies said, “The video part shows a thumbnail of the video, a short description, a control bar used to play the video and to move back and forth between clips. Also we borrowed the gleam concept from the MSN Spaces integration to make it easy to know which videos you’ve already seen.”

Since Messenger is sponsored by advertising, Video Carousel was developed to make the ads more interesting for users. At the same time, Microsoft will have the ability to place MSN content in front of millions of people and direct traffic to its Web properties.

Video titles are loaded with the help of RSS feeds, which are similar to the MSN Video feeds Microsoft currently offers. Microsoft says that as of now, MSN Video will be the only content provider for the messaging client.

Those interested in being informed when new videos are available for viewing can enable a new alerts feature. On the other hand, those who are not interested in the new feature at all, Video Carousel can be disabled, which reverts the client to the standard graphical ad used in MSN Messenger 7.5.

Feies maintained, We know, looking at ads is not on the Top 10 things I like to do for most people but we think there is value for the users in ads and we can make them attractive. He added, One of our PMs, Jody suggested to put some puppies in there - everybody loves puppies but I don’t think that would have worked out.