Microsoft solicits Clippy comeback by asking the Insta-crowd and Twitter to upvote it as an icon
- Reference: 1626328504
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/15/microsoft_clippy_instagram_vote/
- Source link:
The software giant on Wednesday challenged Instagram users to like the [1]post depicted below a mere 200,000 times and it would then “replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy”.
Twitter users were given a lesser challenge: just 20,000 likes.
If this gets 20k likes, we’ll replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy. [2]pic.twitter.com/6T8ziboguC — Microsoft (@Microsoft) [3]July 14, 2021
Replacing the icon with Clippy won’t impact Microsoft’s wares other than perhaps making for a slightly larger image file somewhere deep within its products.
It may, however, enrage users who remember the original Clippy’s inane “It looks like you’re writing a letter” intrusions.
[4]Microsoft defends intrusive dialog in Visual Studio Code that asks if you really trust the code you've been working on
[5]Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button
[6]Get ready for Clippy 9000: Microsoft exclusively licenses OpenAI's mega-brain GPT-3 for anything and everything
[7]Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two
The Insta-action is not Microsoft’s only recent Clippy-related activity: on a recent slow news day The Register spotted that in June the company re-applied for the Clippy trademark.
Microsoft’s [8]filing for the renewed trademark described it as both “Software” and “Software as a service”.
[9]
That inclusion made no sense when we spotted it. Today’s Insta-action suggests Microsoft perhaps wanted to make sure it could add Clippy to Microsoft 365 without the possibility of legal entanglements.
[10]
At the time of writing, Microsoft’s Twitter challenge had blown past its target to record over 120,000 likes. The Instagram challenge had gathered 195,000 of the required 200,000 Likes.
Clippy therefore looks all but assured of returning to your desktop.
[11]
What a time to be alive. ®
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[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CRUHkCDg7H8/
[2] https://t.co/6T8ziboguC
[3] https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/1415370520888061955?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/07/visual_studio_code_workspace_trust/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/20/word_modern_comment/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/23/microsoft_will_exclusively_license_openais/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/15/microsoft_regism/
[8] https://trademarks.justia.com/907/82/clippy-90782096.html
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YPAHPXml@IiM3bH5Qw0ZNwAAAMU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPAHPXml@IiM3bH5Qw0ZNwAAAMU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPAHPXml@IiM3bH5Qw0ZNwAAAMU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"Oh how we laughed and laughed, except I wasn't laughing..."
There's always one blinkered tit who thinks their past boorish behaviour is "funny"...
Not only do Mshaft provide us with 'features' we have little desire or need for, they make it increasingly difficult to negate or remove said features by moving everything around, changing the name or description of things etc.
Since 10 made it's appearance I have been steadily finding ways to disable and remove clutter, now notwithstanding 'features' that appear after updates, I almost have 10 how I want it.
So now I have 11 to look forward to as a new challenge, except I won't, my new challenge is likely to be linux.
Microsoft's Telemetry. The Scottish phrase 'clipe' clearly had historic meaning.
Snitch; as in , "Don't be a wee clipe".
https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/scottish-word-day-clipe-2463906
I doubt it.
"meaning Clippy is all-but-assured of returning to your desktop."
Your desktop, perhaps, but certainly not mine.
Life's too short to be intentionally dealing with Redmond's broken-by-designware.
Up there with moving Outlook calendar buttons
This nonsense is up there with moving the Outlook calendar buttons way over to the right of Outlook, miles away from the relevant appointment data your eyes need to know which button you want. How do they qualify "what users want"? It's clear, apparently. A mere 20k of Twitter upvotes and they change the experience of the entire customer base. Wow. The contempt for user experience is palpable.
Re: Up there with moving Outlook calendar buttons
Several years ago, I was working as a software developer for a large multi-national company. A project was spawned somewhere at mid-management level to overhaul a largely automated process and make it more manual (despite the opposite being done 2 or 3 years ago, saving the company hundreds of thousands of pounds in labour costs). The middle manager championing this change declared that "it was what the customer wanted".
I went straight for the throat. I asked if he'd done any customer surveys. He hadn't. I asked if he'd gone through the analytics data and found any trends. He hadn't. I asked if he'd spoken to any customers, or even to customer services who were in pretty close contact with customers. Of course, he hadn't. So I then asked, very forcefully, how he had come to the conclusion that this was what the customer wanted. It turned out that, it was just what he thought the customer wanted. As a point of note, the manager in question had something of a reputation for screwing up every project he touched, yet he still managed to stick around.
Though the project never made any more headway in the year or so before I left, it was still alive when I departed.
When they made it possible to write your own animations for clippy, I didn't see any at all. No alternative graphics, no joke graphics, not even any pornographic ones! . Nobody at all was interested in the slightest.
"not even any pornographic ones"
Unfortunately, you are incorrect ...
https://www.amazon.com/Conquered-Clippy-Erotic-Digital-Desires-ebook/dp/B00UJ01WBW
That sounds like a painful read, in more ways than one.
"Hi I'm Clippy, It looks like you had an erotic thought. Would you like help with that?".
Paperclips clearly don't just get lost in office printers and {ahem}, stop them working.
Whatever next???
Clippy's coming back? Wow, what will they think of next - 3D skuomorphic UI instead of FLATTY MCFLATSO???
Re: Whatever next???
I do sort of miss the wooden bookshelf on an iPad, for ebooks. I know, it's just me...
What replaced it, was pretty meh.
the horror, the horror
The feeling of sheer, petrifying horror that pervades my being when I see that be-eyebrow'd paper clip can only be imagined by the people who weren't there at the time.
This is like realising that you can't kill Dracula, or that the Zombies will _always_ come back... Or that Aunt Alice will bring round her lemon drizzle cake.. again... (twitch)
Those 127k upticks are like 127k stabs to my very being.
I'm shivering now, I have the sweats... I don't know if I'll be able to continue working today this has simply....
the horror,
just,
the horror
Isn't there already a Turd emoticon?
Ah! But has it been polished and beglittered?
No? Well I expect Mshaft think theirs is.
The wisdom of Instgram, Clippy, Office 365
I took me a moment to realise something was different. Yep it was that last tiny spark of hope i had left, just went out.