Tyson Kirksey

Today was the day…for 3 hours you could sneak into the MSN AdCenter program without an invitation. I put it on my schedule, and when I saw that little reminder window pop open, I headed straight for http://adcenter.msn.com. That’s when it all started…

I’ve never had a more frustrating time signing up for anything. First, I open the page up in Firefox:

MSN adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6.

What!? Errgh…that’s frustrating. But I can’t be surprised, right? This is MS. I mean, I had to quit using the Hotmail beta for the same reasons. So I reach down and pop open IE7 beta2, surely this will work. Nope, same message. Uh…ok, how about Opera? Strike three. And now I’m out of options…IE 6 isn’t installed on my machine. I guess most people would have given up at this point, but I was persistant. I’ll go to evolt.org and download the IE6 standalone…great idea, Tyson! Guess what? Still no worky. This time I was able to see the signup form, at least some of the time. But the entire time I received intermittent flashes of a box saying “Please wait until we download the reqeusted information…” or something, making it impossible to fill out the form.

I give up! I wanted to signup and spend my money with you, Bill, but you made it impossible for me! What am I to do!!?

(I think MSFT should take some cues from WinkFlash – best ecommerce transaction I’ve ever made. 2 clicks and you’re done.)

Tyson Search, Technology