SmarterChild

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SmarterChild is an instant messenger chatterbot available via MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and ICQ that is owned and operated by Colloquis, Inc. The company is now owned by Microsoft since October 12th 2006.

SmarterChild was initially introduced to AOL Instant Messenger by ActiveBuddy in early 2001, but after a while, was turned into a premium, $9.95/month service, which perturbed many IM users. After the business plan tanked, SmarterChild went completely offline for several months. This did not garner much attention from the instant messaging community, because non-subscribers had already lost access to the bot long before. It was ultimately re-designed and introduced to the public for free once again in April 2003, and has remained free since. When asked for its age, SmarterChild counts only the time since its second launch in 2003.

SmarterChild is able to converse with other contacts and do certain things when prompted by commands. It displays advertisements in its messages relating to the discussion, and often will state random information regarding its features in order to initiate further conversation. One can start a conversation with SmarterChild by messaging it.

SmarterChild attempts to learn about its contacts, even talking in either text lingo, or in proper English. It generally answers questions with questions, but recently has improved its conversational abilities. It remembers details about a user's opinions and has a few opinions of its own on certain controversial characters such as Osama bin Laden. When asked why it does not like Osama Bin Laden, it replies by saying that many people it speaks with dislike Osama Bin Laden, so it is possible that its opinions on things are based on what the majority of people think. When asked if it likes Tony Blair, it replies "not really actually" or yeah I guess.

[edit] Popularity

During its peak performance, SmarterChild has delivered over 500 queries per second and over four million messages on a daily basis, according to its creators.

When SmarterChild is asked how many people it has spoken with, it replies with the figure. The counter surpassed 20 million in late May 2006, and stands at over 22 million as of November 2006.