Gus What?!

AIM lets you create BOTs. BOTs are essentially custom clients that can sign-on and appear on the AIM Network so that anyone can send them IMs and put them on their buddy list. BOTs generally respond to commands and send their results back.

Here is an idea I doubt would be allowed by AOL’s Terms of Service (TOS). However, I am not a lawyer and like most ideas go, they can always help with the next big idea.

What if you had a Screen Name (SN) that you didn’t need it anymore? Rather than letting it go away unused, why not trade it (remember: hypothetical)?

So here is my BOT idea. First, some simple definitions: The Dealer is the one running the web site and BOTs used to trade SNs. The Seller is anyone who has a SN to trade. The Buyer is anyone that wants a SN that is available for trade.

Sellers register their SN with the Dealer and hand over the password (again: hypothetical). The Dealer takes control of the SN (that’s called assignment, right? It’s a no-no in AOL’s TOS, bummer) and turns it into a BOT.

The Dealer has a BOT and web site that Buyers go to and search for a screen name they want. SNs can be tagged with attributes so that you can search for things that the SN stands for like, sports, football, animal, celebrity, random guy, etc. Each SN that is for trade is also running as a BOT and you can IM the BOT your offer to trade. Buyers know the SN is for trade because the BOT keeps saying “This SN is for trade. Please make an offer”, and provides a verification link on the Dealer’s web site.

When the Seller likes an offer, he tells the Dealer to close the deal. The transaction completes and all parties are happy.

It definitely makes use of the AIM Network in an interesting way.

WDYT?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 6:24 am and is filed under BOTs, Ideas, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.