SEO Egghead by Jaimie Sirovich: A blog about SEO, written for nerds, by a nerd.

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Wed
27
Dec '06

I Dream Of Miss Dewey

And so do you.  Miss Dewey is hot, she's viral, and she's ... in softcore.  Danny blogged about this viral experiment from Microsoft here.  Valleywag documented Janina Gavankar's "interesting" past appearances over here (not work safe). I posit that Microsoft was entirely aware of Miss Dewey's naked past.

Yes, nobody has really discussed it, but Microsoft must have known this.  Would anyone suggest otherwise?  Blue screens -- yes.  Clueless -- no.

Needless to say, such a subtle sexual undertone gave "Miss Dewey" increased viral appeal.  Thousands of undersexed nerds all over the planet, I'm sure, were passing around instant messages and emails just like the following:

 
"Hey check it out, this girl on Microsoft's site did *pr0n0* ... http://www.msdewey.com/!"

So kudos to Microsoft.  They subtly and successfully exploited sex, a universal favorite pastime to promote MSN search.  And they did it without the remote possibility of catching criticism or damaging their reputation.  Miss Dewey was a perfectly efficient buzz-generating machine.

Moral of the story.  Even Microsoft is using unorthodox viral methods creatively -- you'd better be doing it too.  I dream of the possibility of creating something as beautifully viral as Miss Dewey.  Yes, I think Microsoft outdid Burger King -- though I can see some similarity/emulation to give BK some much due credit.  30,000+ links, and counting. 

... and last I checked, search engines can't tell if the link was influenced by libido.

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