Open Source Word-of-Mouth Advertising

An anonymous reader writes "Plenty of corporations are willing to hire shills to generate buzz for a new product. But what people don't need to be paid to promote? Boston company BzzAgent found that their volunteers promote products simply because it makes them feel good. The NYT Magazine interviews several 'agents'. The volunteers cite the feeling of being 'on the inside', like sharing opinions with others, and enjoy feeling altruistic. Has Madison Avenue figured out what open source developers knew all along?"

incentive is not always about money

[iclod]

i can certainly relate the advantage of word-of-mouth to a game site that i'm working for [iclod.com]. there's a strong community forming and new players are coming from word-of-mouth (or text-of-email) because of existing players' experience in the game.

of course a bit of incentive wouldn't hurts, but it doesn't have to be in monetary term. it can be in the form of being credited or recognized.

the only catch is you need to stay good, because of the old marketing saying - a good mouth told 3, a bad one told 10.

the article mentioned "revealing her (the marketer) identity, she said, would undermine her effectiveness as an agent.".

it's similar to teenagers never listen to their parents about what is good for them, but peers always have a greater influence.

Huh?

[goofyheadedpunk]

This is open-source how?

I didn't know that some company had developed a proprietary speech format that just happened to be good at spreading advertisements. I also didn't know that those of us that are in the OSS community developed our own speech format to be used freely by the masses.

I guess I learn something new everyday.

Well, duh?!?!

[FreeLinux]

Just look at the fan boys in the Open Source world. Look at what happens when I utter the words:

vi
emacs
Gentoo
KDE
Gnome
Linux
*BSD
Wind ows????

Love - Hate

[penguinoid]

So, do we love the new volunteer advertizers, or hate them for being advertizers? Myself, I think I will go on the side of hating them -- I mean, it is still advertizing.

On the other hand, these people (I think) all belive in what they are saying, so I might actually listen to what they are saying.

People are just too jaded and cynical these days

[Anonymous Coward]

> Has Madison Avenue figured out what open source developers knew all along?

This is only going to work well if there's no company getting rich off their altruistic efforts.

I don't even bother to report bugs to Microsoft, because I know that my efforts, ultimately, would just make Bill Gates richer.

I think it's important for people to know that their volunteer efforts are going to enrich the community as a whole, not just a few guys. That's why people get upset when they find out that charities they contribute to take a large cut for the management.

Madison Avenue can dream about volunteer marketing, but I can't see it becoming a significant cultural force. People are just to jaded and cynical now.

Re:incentive is not always about money

[Pandora's Vox]

Almost more important than the /. audience getting to see it is the boost to your Google pagerank that you get for having a post within the first 100 or so that doesn't get modded down. It's a SEO person's wet dream.

-Leigh

OMG...

[johansalk]

The whole idea of word-of-mouth is that it has some honesty that's not been tarnished by commercial interests. This word-of-mouth marketting association is one more reason to dislike unashamed capitalism that seeks to milk out everything.

Re:Love - Hate

[Umbral Blot]

Well I don't mind volunteer advertizers because, unlike other advertizers, they actually believe in the product. Also they tend to know a good deal about it and are very informed. Even if you dont switch to what they are advertizing you can at least learn about it through them, and I would never turn down information. My only quibble here is that this tends to promote the big projects and crowd out the small ones. As an admin of a small open source project I would love if I could at least have more people check us out ... but until more people check us out then we won't get any word of mouth press ... sigh.

Re:I've got five bucks...

[Jonny 290]

I hate to reply to myself, but a quick guideline that I often use is that if a Slashdot story is submitted by 'anonymous', it's probably an ad. You'll notice that except for this story, every single story on the front page (at least my front page) has a source listed.

I don't have a problem with Slashdot's masquerading as a news site, I just want to make sure they have the most educated readers possible :)

You are not the consumers of Slashdot. You are the product.

Re:Can't beat True Believers

[Scott Wunsch]

Remember OS/2? There were a lot of "true believers" trying to spread the word about OS/2 (myself included). Heck, they even formed Team OS/2 [teamos2.org], all to promote this commercial product made by IBM.

And it worked great, too! That's why everybody uses OS/2 today... er, waitaminute.

Re:incentive is not always about money

[iethree]

very true. I know lots of aps and games on the web that are free that people advertise, not for money or a sense of belonging, but becasue they're simply great. Example: Counter-Strike, when it first came out there was no profit involved, it was just good software that spread like wildfire through word of mouth (or keyboard) because it was just plain good. The same thing is happening with things like Firefox and mods like Natural-Selection. They grow and spread through word of mouth "advertising" simply becasue they are great applications and when people find something good they can help but share it.

Re:Huh?

[Eric Giguere]

Yeah, this kind of "viral marketing" is nothing new. Time Magazine published an article in 2000 about the viral marketing efforts for Christina Aguilera [bebeyond.com] that helped her "make it". Plenty of software companies already have "Team XXXX" or "MVP" programs that reward non-employees who answer questions and help others fix problems, and most of them do it for no payment. Those latter programs usually start as a grassroots, informal kind of thing, though, and these guys are trying to formalize the process to make it more predictable and more controllable.

Eric
Tired of MySQL? Develop with ASA for free [ianywhere.com] (that's my viral marketing plug!)

Re:Love - Hate

[RGRistroph]

If a foolish crowd-following chump believes in something, that isn't much of a recommendation.

And these people sound stupid. You say "I would never turn down information" but these people don't sound like the kind of people who would filter out mis-information before passing it on, especially if it made them feel important to be passing it on.

They have the kinds of personalities that would have been a trouble making town gossip a hundred years ago in some small village. In today's societies, they similarly cause trouble by spread a generalized distrust, as you have to figure out if each stranger you meet is trying to manipulate you in some way.

Ultimately, if you follow their recommendations, you end up doing other people's (unetheically unlabeled) advertising for free.

Re:Can't beat True Believers

[bluGill]

Ahh, but if you are in that narrow focused community... In the case of gentoo that is good. I use unix myself and am deep into it, but it doesn't take me much reading about gentoo to realize that it is only for hard-core computer people. Gentoo's word of mouth is actually perfect, it is spread by and to the people who would use it for the most part, in such a way that it turns off people who shouldn't use it anyway.

By contrat, for the average person on the street linux is ready for their comptuer - IF they install Suse, mandrake, or the like. Everything works out of the box and is easy. (easier than Microsoft Windows if you install yourself) However for someone like me who grew up with BSD (back when you were either BSD ot SysV), those two just don't cut it. The do everything for you additude gets in my way. I love FreeBSD, but the experts there have told me that Gentoo (or slackware) are the best linux distributions if you need something that FreeBSD doesn't support as well.

Re:Yes, let's breed distrust among our friends

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think it is based on whose interests you are primarily serving, or priorities. If you are providing recommendations because it will be in the best interests of the friend/relative/acquantance, I think it is fine, but if you are doing it to help the business, especially because of a vested interest, then I think that conflict of interest is fundementally dishonest unless declared.

What you describe really doesn't need Bzzz, because as you say, it already happens. If something works well or poorly, word of mouth already spreads by default, no need for an astroturfing organization.

Re:I've got five bucks...

[bluGill]

Its not MLM. Someone hires you to advertise a product. As in "five bucks (or some other amount) if you bring our saussages to the next pot luck you go to and tell everyone how much you like them". You are going to the party anyway, and you need to bring something. So it only costs a few words of your time to tell everyone what brand they are. You are not looking for other people who do the same, you are just trying to talk them into a brand.

It works because people trust word of mouth. You wouldn't tell me something is great unless you really liked it. Since you like it, and you are a friend I'll try it too, though I'm free to form my own opinion. It works because I, and most people I know, have tried something new and really liked it enough that we have done this to our friends without getting paid for it.

Several of the participants have said that they only do this for products they like. (that is they try the sassuages first, if they are junk they won't bring them). Though I wonder how much a little money helped them to like something?

I agree with you, about not wanting anything to do with it. However that wasn't your question.

Send my Five Bucks to charity please. If you don't know a good one I reccomend Ducks Unlimited.

In other words...

[Moraelin]

Yet another company has discovered fanboys and astroturfing. Yeah, that's sooo new.

Can't even say it has anything to do with OSS. Anyone who's played a game and ever posted on a gaming board, has already met the unpaid fanboy acting like he's Holy Defender Of The Publisher, Minister Of The Truth, Silencer of All Heresy. "You dare complain about bugs and crashes? Nooo! The game is perfect! It's your system! It's your drivers! You're too stupid to use a computer!"

Cretins.

And yet another set of corporate fucks are willing to plunder and rape public comms channels to line their pockets. Much like spammers do.

There's a reason why people would rather trust each other than trust the marketters and professional reviewers. I know _I've_ had enough of marketting lies and bought reviewers dutifully transcribing the hype that the vendor wants printed. And I don't even mean creative exaggeration, but outright bullshit, lies and snake oil.

But it used to be that at least there were public communication channels, in the form of bulletin boards and newsgroups and the like, where we could talk to each other about it. And about other stuff. And now a bunch of corporate fucks have basically discovered that "hey! We could make a profit by polluting these channels to carry our corporate message."

So what's the difference between that and what spammers did to a different public resource? Nothing. The exact same "hey, we can make a buck by polluting and poisoning a comms channel" mentality.