I just found out something(and I’m waaay late on this), askjeeves.com is just ask.com now. They took Jeeves out! Granted, I never used that site before. I find it interesting that more sites are ditching an avatar type of persona, but going to for anthropomorphic language instead. I think it’s a good practice.

As stated above, I too think we will begin seeing more anthropomorphic systems in place when more people start seeing the benefit and old legacy systems start to phase out. I can’t wait to see that in action.

Good article Jin!

@Ananya, I meant some Asian countries(at least the ones I’m familiar with like China, Korea or Japan etc). But I’m sure other countries have different customs. So we should do some research before building a personality.

@Dmitry, I think Steve Jobs is one of those victors who get to write the book. Imagine if he wasn’t famous, he’d probably appear on DailyWTF instead. :)

I think Twitter is really good with messages and the whole brand image. Light humor and friendly language helps to break the dry and generic wording people expect. When you read friendly messages you get the feeling that real people made this and you’re interacting with them to some extent, instead of interacting with a boring input form. And don’t forget the Fail Whale — those guys made errors look fun :)

I think this is big and we’ll be seeing more and more products that aim to be anthropomorphic because this is one of the key elements that shapes your experience with those products.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS0vZFPnksk

Very good post, sir!