Bill Gates will send money to charity every time you send a text message

[tongodeon]

Microsoft will give money to charity every time you send a message!

Reality imitates chain lettersyour computer could be destroyed by opening the wrong email on your computer" was a joke.

Comments

[rwx]

The "I'm" campaign is the apostrophe finally sticking it to bob the angry flower.

[flwyd]

All of the uses of "i'm" on that page are in lower case, but I don't see anything stating that messages starting with "I'm" will not donate to charity. I hope Microsoft isn't funding nonprofits at the expense of proper capitalization.

For that matter, it's not clear if you have to start a conversation with "i'm" the word (but not MS Word) or "i'm" the program.

[wisn]

Remember the 'Good Times' virus, and how the idea of mail clients treating any incoming message as an executable was purely something to bait newbies with? Oh, how we laughed.

[magpiebofh]

From the FAQ:

Q: How much money goes to the organization from each conversation?

A: Although the donation amount from each user is small, the power of the Windows Live Messenger network makes this donation significant. For competitive reasons, we can't share the per-conversation amount of advertising revenue that we will contribute, but every new conversation you have will lead to money being donated to the cause you select. Each organization is guaranteed a minimum of $100,000 for its involvement.

Also, "OMG! There's no cap on how much we'll donate! The sky's the limit!"

So the amount per conversation is probably fractions of a cent, and the $100,000 minimum isn't likely to be exceeded by much for most of these causes.