Offending scene removed from KIN video

Apr 17, 2010 10:43 GMT  ·  By

Unveiled officially only a few days ago, Microsoft's new phones, dubbed KIN, seem to enjoy increasing interest from users. At the moment, the KIN Facebook page has over 50,000 fans, after gaining nearly 20 000 new fans within the past 12 hours or so. One thing that is certain is that KIN is rapidly catching attention, though it remains to be seen if the market performance of the two unveiled handsets is similar.

When unveiling KIN, Microsoft said that the phones were aimed mainly at very active users on social networking sites, and exactly this market segment shows interest in the new handsets. As a recent article on WMPoweruser notes, the number of KIN fans on Facebook is already far higher than the one attracted by Windows Phone 7, which counts under 2500 people.

In case there are some yet not familiar with what KIN is all about, here's what Microsoft says about it: “KIN is a phone that keeps up with everything that’s going on in your life - and gets your message out to the world. Get the latest updates from your friends on social networks, along with your favorite web sites right on the KIN Loop home screen. The KIN Spot makes it easy to share almost anything with almost anyone, all in one place. Everything you create gets backed up automatically to your own secure website called the KIN Studio, with all the storage you’ll ever need.”

In related news, we learn that Microsoft modified a KIN video that included an offending scene, after various people complained about it. The scene in question showed a young man putting the phone under his shirt and taking a picture which was then displayed on the phone's screen, prior to being sent to someone. The next scene shows a young woman looking at a picture on her KIN phone, most probably the photo in the previous scene.

There are a wide range of young men and women texting explicit pictures to friends, and the scene was considered to encourage KIN owners to act this way too, especially since the KIN handsets are aimed at the same age demographic group. Microsoft deleted the offending part of the video, and apologized for the situation.