If on the website of broadcast network RTL you want to see an episode of Dutch TV series Gooise vrouwen you can now first go through an interactive MS Office commercial (dc, Dutch). There are different versions. There is one version which you can just watch for several minutes, but there also is a version which requires you to click some buttons. You have to click, otherwise the commercial stops. At some point you ask yourself: why did I get here in the first place? In the unlikely case there are 'Gooise vrouwen' fans who still get a positive feeling about this totally unrelated product, who then visit the Office pages on the Microsoft website, then are shown a commercial for bra's there. Microsoft used to give direction to changes in the world, but since its strategy seems to be to just earn more money through advertising, it seems to hit a dead end in full force.

Normally in this web log I only write about the evolution of media, marketing, or brands. How people adapt, how the world adapts. I seldom write in the category dead end. Well, Microsoft managed to appear in this category. At its own website, at Office's Share Point Server pages, Microsoft nowadays has third parties advertise. René Janssen from WinkWaves
even managed to intercept a page with an ad for bra's (really, no typing error!). An incomprehensible action.

Worldwide internet pay service Paypal will send all its users worldwide a box to make internet payments more secure (em, Dutch). This is a dead end. THE biggest problem of the internet at the moment (actually from the beginning) is identification. Not just for payments but for anything we do: how to communicate with friends (Is this e-mail safe? Not sure? Then we first take out all multi-media, for security purposes), how to communicate with brands (securing your account), and how to make payments. These are just examples. Will we get a separate box from every company, for every site? Shelves full of boxes, instead of an endless list of passwords? I hope not. And I don't think it will happen.