I'm not sure I really understand the whole persona idea, but it seems to me like it's a bunch of data collected on the target audience and then it's further segmented into individuals and then people would act as those individuals to see if they would generally like something or not. If this is right, I don't like it for a few reasons: it feels like an extra, pointless step, although it's based on real data, you aren't designing for fictional people so how will you get a genuine reaction to it unless you can really put your mind into their's.
Judging from the products mentioned in the reading, personas don't work that well. I mean, MSN Explorer? not even sure what that is if it's still around and we all know how Windows has been consistently going downhill with it's users.
In the end they explain that personas were helpful in the beginning, helping them think about the audience in a more quantitative way but it's very hard to tweak in order to get the right personas. So it seems to me that the setbacks outweigh the positives when it comes to personas, however if used correctly it could be helpful, especially with larger projects.
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