A new initiative from Microsoft Windows Live Messenger allows students to choose one of nine non-profit, philanthropic organizations to receive a portion of Microsoft's advertisement revenue each time they have a three-minute instant message conversation, said Brittany Gray, Penn State brand ambassador for Microsoft.

"If everyone at Penn State [participated], more money could be donated than [is raised] at Thon," Gray said.

Of the 35 universities taking part in the program -- called i'M Initiative -- Penn State has the fourth highest amount of downloads of Windows Live Messenger for the i'M Initiative, Gray said.

The initiative's Web site, imforacause.com, directs visitors to select their school and allows them to download Windows Live Messenger, a free IM service and converse with other users, said Eric Schoenberg, account supervisor for RepNation, which is in charge of coordinating the i'M Initiative. Users can enter a text code, listed on the Web site that corresponds to their chosen cause, next to their display name located in their IM conversation box.

"[The i'M Initiative] provides an opportunity to message like you would with any other [IM] service, and know that Microsoft is using this to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to a cause," Schoenberg said.

The organizations involved are American Red Cross, UNICEF, Sierra Club, StopGlobalWarming.org, the Aids Fund, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Boys and Girls Club of America, NineMillion.org (UN refugee agency) and Susan G. Komen for the breast cancer cure, Gray said.

"I think [the i'M Initiative is] going to interest students because we all have different people we'd like to help, different causes we'd like to be behind," Gray said.

In addition to the portion of revenue received from Windows Live Messenger conversations, each organization has already received $100,000 from Microsoft -- an amount that was guaranteed to each organization prior to the initiative's launch on March 5, Gray said. There is no cap on the number of donations that can be made to any one organization, Gray said, and no end date for the initiative has been established.

Students will likely be interested in the initiative because it allows students to engage in habitual IMing while making donations they may not otherwise be able to do, Schoenberg said.

"Microsoft, via Windows Live Messenger, is affording [students] the opportunity to make a difference without making them change their budgets or lifestyles," she said.

While no changes were made in the Windows Live Messenger service for the launch of i'M Initiative, the service still has a "rich feature set," Karin Muskopf, Windows Live product manager, wrote in an e-mail message.

Among the service's features are video-calling, which allows users to view and talk to their friends in full-screen video format, peer-to-peer file transferring with an integrated anti-virus scanning system and Windows Live Call -- a service that connects a computer user with someone using a phone, Muskopf said.

Although it may be a challenge to get students to use Windows Live Messenger instead of, or in addition to, other popular IM services, Schoenberg said students won't have a problem making the shift if they understand the benefits to using Windows Live Messenger.

"[Microsoft is] analyzing the way students are communicating," Gray said, "and IMing is going to have a great impact worldwide on a lot of people."