Microsoft's charitable bribe for Silverlight--UPDATED

Bill Gates has long been one of my favorite classroom examples of someone who grasped the value of network effects--commonly referred to as the bandwagon effect--in building a business. In short, the more people who use your product, the more other potential users will see it as valuable. Back when web browsers and office software were relatively new, Microsoft used free distribution and price-competition to gain significant market share.

However, now that other companies have used the same strategy to gain dominance in areas where Microsoft had little presence, what can the company do to catch up?

One strategy: get people to feel that downloading Microsoft software is a charitable way to help children.

This online charitable outreach from Microsoft Australia that has folks there buzzing about Microsoft's generous digi-do-goodery. After all, Microsoft offers to give a dollar to charity merely if you watch a video for Microsoft Office, which is not much of a self-serving pitch because you probably already have it!

But look carefully and you'll see a brilliant bit of corporate strategy. In order to watch the video, you have to download Silverlight, Microsoft's attempted Flash-killer. That charitable download adds one more user in Microsoft's bid for market share. As this article indicates, the battle between Adobe and Microsoft is going to be so fierce, and it appears that charity is Microsoft's weapon of choice.

UPDATE: Digital Influence Group, a social media marketing group, ups the ante here.