An Open Letter To Scott Guthrie.

(I saw someone else write one of these -- so i thought i'd give it a go)

Listen Here Scott!

I have an idea that might help microsoft overtake google for online ad revenue.

Why not place text-based advertisements on the default 'yellow screen of death' error page that comes with asp.net.

Just little one-liners, right down the bottom of the page, are all you'd need, something like this:

• Website troubles making you depressed? Change your attitude to life!
• Website development taking too long? Try Ruby in your browser!

I know many companies that would pay a premium to be included on such oft-visited pages.

Say there are 100 million asp.net sites, visited 10000 times a day each, erroring just 0.01 percent of the time, that's 100 million impressions per day!

Slip a few bugs in the next release of asp.net -- you could easily push it up over a billion impressions per day!

I don't ask much. The usual 30% commission will suffice.

take care,
lb

(image snaffled from coding horror. Ta Jeff!)

'Eric D. Burdo' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:59:26 GMT, sez:

Now, if MS did a revenue sharing model with that, I think you'd find lots of developers willing to earn some ca$h by promoting this ad mechanism.

I mean seriously, people already promote this method right now. Why not incentivize it?

'lb' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:29:26 GMT, sez:

i've done my fair share of promoting the YSOD. I slip it in somewhat more often than is reasonable.

a little financial encouragement/profit sharing would be nice about now ;-)

good thinking eric.

'lb' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:29:27 GMT, sez:

i've done my fair share of promoting the YSOD. I slip it in somewhat more often than is reasonable.

a little financial encouragement/profit sharing would be nice about now ;-)

good thinking eric.

'Michael' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:16:21 GMT, sez:

Why not take this a step further and take advantage of the "monopoly" Microsoft has on the browser market?

The new IE7 404 page looks nice, but why not pump in a few search results from live search and a couple adverts too? The people are already lost, why not take advantage of the situation? It all means cash for Micro$oft!

I think Jeff also had a few words a couple weeks ago on other improvements to the 404 as well.

'Eber Irigoyen' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:42:22 GMT, sez:

this has been suggested/discussed somewhere else already, can't remember where...

'Haacked' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:15:30 GMT, sez:

Yeah, I'd place my bets on the 404 page. I can see the ads now.

"Couldn't find what you're looking for? Maybe you meant http://secretgeek.net/"

Though Google might buy up all the ad-space there.

'SenseiLoco' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:05:52 GMT, sez:

Funny, I just ran into one of those myself when trying to pay my water bill.
-----
[COMException (0x80040154): COM object with CLSID {D1CB0D81-7D2B-4064-9AC7-D0D88DEC3D16} is either not valid or not registered.]
ADMFS.ProcessOnlinePayment.ProcessPayment() +232
-----
Fuuny thing, the site charges me a US$2.50 'covenience fee' for paying online. Truth is, the site is everything but convenient to navigate through!

'lb' on Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:01:23 GMT, sez:

@Eber: "this has been suggested/discussed somewhere else already"

Damn, you're right. I googled for 'BSOD advertisements' -- and some people did some jokes about ads on the BSOD, quite a while back. Ah well.

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