Dear John,

We're excited to recognize your participation and feedback that have helped us shape the pilot of MSN� adCenter. To thank you for using adCenter to promote your business, we'd like to offer you an exclusive opportunity to refer friends and colleagues to apply for the pilot.

Obviously, they're not big followers of this blog, since I trashed adCenter in a post cryptically entitled: Microsoft is so lame. I've tried it a few times since, and I still think it, well, sucks.

If the adCenter team really was "excited to recognize your participation and feedback", they'd refund my $5 registration fee.

So I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except those crafty early adopters willing to put up with an IE-only interface that regularly breaks. If you can do that, you might be able to find some cheap traffic.

Make sure you track your ROI, though.

PS: I know from first-hand experience that it's painful to worry about capitalization in a product name. People never get it right. Let's count how many times we see "adCenter" capitalized differently than Microsoft intends.

PPS: I have no idea why there's a question mark in their email after "MSN". Perhaps the self-confidence level is at an all time low with all the VP reshuffling?

¶ 3/29/2006