Microsoft just launched its “I’m” campaign by hosting it at im.live.com. Coincidence or not, IM also stands for Instant Messenger, so whether they want to brain wash people’s understanding on “IM” is a question.

What’s “I’m”?

It might sounds naive but all you need to do to join “I’m” is by adding special text code in your Windows Live Messenger display name, to have a tiny icon like the one the right appear in your name. A few text codes are available on the campaign homepage, but there are still some other “secret codes” that still works but not shown in the homepage. Following are the official ones:

How does adding a text code help out charities?

This icon trick only works on Windows Live Messenger 8.1, so to spread the idea around means persuading your friends to update/switch to version 8.1. It is through this that the “I’m” initiative can save advertisement fees and use that portion of money to donate to the organizations. And it also help promote the organizations at the meantime too since users usually will do a bit of investigation to decide which organizations they will support by adding specific text codes representing them.

How is it going?

So far I’ve had about 11 contacts added “I’m” code in their names, and that’s been just a few days. But how would that go. At this point it might be cool to add something others don’t know of yet in your name. But as time goes along, many people will start to leave out the text code. How would the initiative keep this up, is a question for them.