Microsoft Taps Bloggers to Promote Longhorn 415
Tim writes "With Beta 1 of Longhorn less than two months away, Microsoft is looking at a new marketing tool to help promote its new Windows: bloggers. According to BetaNews, Microsoft's "Team 99" evangelism effort will be composed of bloggers that will become Microsoft's voice to the masses. Robert Scoble said Team 99 was once secret, but has been revived and Microsoft is now accepting nominations. It's nice to see Microsoft recognizing the power of blogs, but the move is likely going to draw accusations that Redmond is trying to buy off bloggers to hype Longhorn."
A little bit of history (Score:3, Insightful)
Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
If this group was treated as an unbiased reviewers, I'd have more sympathy but as it is, it seems just another corrupted media.
Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a good idea to publicize that you're doing it.
Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Likely? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a safe bet - MS could release a patch for XP that cured cancer and they'd still be accused of doing something underhanded.
Bile Blog (Score:2, Insightful)
signed the MaD HuNGaRIaN
Do I hear a second to that motion?
Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
It's paid-for advertising maskerading as opinion. It's misleading and unethical, and incredibly stupid of them to admit they're going to do it.
I, for one, after reading this, wouldn't trust the opinion of anyone who says in their blog that they like Longhorn; who's to say whether they actually used it and thought it was good, or if Microsoft paid them to lie about it?
All this does is create an environment where you can assume that bad reviews are probably objective, and that good reviews are quite possibly just advertising.
Is this the same Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is it to be? Do they want it publicised or not?
No, let me guess; only favourable publicity.
Sure, I'll blog about Longhorn ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Another reason to despise blogs (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one who thinks blogs and bloggers the most over-hyped thing to come along in years?
Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)
Blogging was nice while it lasted. Corporations are quickly going to flood the channel with paid content. If you think the PR machine is powerful in major media, which has lots of people looking for bias, has some regulation, and which does not see $10,000 as any more than pocket change, think what's going to happen to blogs over the next five years.
Suppose Coca-Cola offered to pay Joe Blogpack $2,500 to do a column talking about a dead rat found in a storage container at a Pepsi bottling facility, how quickly do you think he would jump? Do you think he would care if the story is true? And if he did, would he have access to the resources to find out if it's true? Suppose news.google.com is running 200 links to other bloggers who didn't take the time to fact check - our honorable Joe Blogpack checks his facts against the tainted stories and even thinks he's doing the right thing.
Shut the fuck up you little turd (Score:1, Insightful)
Fucking rashdots.
Re:Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)
And this, kids, is the difference between 'reporting' and 'journalism'. We've just had our standards lowered by the willingness of our mainstream media to report anything - rumors, opinions, lightly edited press releases, as "news" and run on to the next hot topic and pray that you don't change the channel during the ads.
Blogging isn't going to replace journalism because of these exact problems. Blogging might do a lot of harm to the mainstream US news media but it's their own damn fault for abandoning true journalism and resorting to showing the same video clip everyone else has, just 2 minutes earlier and with more sensationalistic or opinionated commentary.
"The news is just a TV show, get past it" - Dilated Peoples
Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Shocking! Shocking! A blogger might have an agenda? Next thing you know, there will be gambling in the casino, and prayer in the church...
Re:Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
If you RTFA, it appears that they're well aware of the drubbing they took from their last showing to a handful of bloggers, and are expecting the annointed "team 99" crowd to expressly do more of the same, as they get feedback from the wider community. If the software is crap, what possible good will it do MS to pump up demonstrably false notions about the presence or absence of a feature, only to have it turn out not to be true when everybody gets to look at the release? They seem to be going to a lot of trouble to announce, well in advance, that they're going to skip over certain features, or delay others. The bloggers will be an echo chamber for some of that, and a feedback channel. Other than the NDA (which presumably these folks will actually read before signing!), I don't sense any means by which MS would be able to make someone convey a better impression of the OS than they've personally experienced. I work with an MS partner (our firm sells accounting apps and does large scale systems integration, among other things), and we play very much the same role - we scream at MS when end users scream at us, and we preach the solutions when we're comfortable with them ourselves.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Bloggers vs. other 'traditional' outlets (Score:2, Insightful)
Day 1: Microsoft hires blogger x for Longhorn adverts/hype.
Day 8: Microsoft unsatisfied with blog commentary.
Day 12: Microsoft pulls funding citing services paid for not provided.
Day 15: Blogger now blogs to anti-hype Longhorn out of spite.
Now, I'm sure that Microsoft will be using the medium in a way that probably won't bite them in the butt later on, but the possibility still exists. With traditional advert companies, losing the client means simply losing an account. With blogging, losing the client means making an enemy in many cases.
All that to say, "Why is this even a story on
Re:Mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
Having said that, per your original point - the PR nightmares that stem from being caught astro-turfing are worse than if you publicly announce that that is what you are doing in advance. It's still a really dumb idea, though. Oh well.
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux isn't proprietary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
People are getting paid to hype up Linux on Slashdot? Funny, they must have forgotten to mail my check...
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
"No secret stuff anymore" "sign an NDA" (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF!!!!! They won't do secret stuff, but they legally obligate their volunteer shills to do secret stuff!!!! That's very funny.
Remember, you can't spell propoganda without NDA.
Re:Another reason to despise blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. It was a great idea until it got renamed from "journaling" to "blogging" (that term still makes me cringe), and until the angst-ridden teens got hold of the idea. I still write one, but at least I spell-check the damned thing and try to keep the "angst" to a minimum. But I don't spam it all over the place or plaster it full of ads (Google text ads are as far as it'll ever go) either.
There are some well-written ones buried amongst the mountains of drivel (I'd like to hope mine is one of the better ones), but finding them is a true bitch. You generally don't want to read about someone's personal life unless they can make it sound more interesting with good writing. "I shampooed my dog today" is boring. "My dog made sure I took a bath too as I washed his filthy carcass today" is better. The boring minutes of a person's day aren't worth it unless there's some good humor or "educational" value mixed in. "I wrote neat code today" versus "look how much faster and smaller this Python snippet is than the equivalent in PHP" will start flamewars and keep people interested.
Re:Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Just an observation that most bloggers I know or read were ingeniously suckered into giving gmail free advertising.
Re:Longhorn Rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
"I really like linux but lets face it it's not ready for grandma. Nobody wants to compile a kernel just to make a game work and besides gimp is not nearly good as photoshop. Oh and autocad doesn't run on linux.
Windows used suck but it's never crashed on me since 2000 came out and let's face it XP has solved all the security issues with windows.
I love linux and sometimes its fun to spend five hours messing with config files but I use windows when I just want to get things done. "
The trick is to pretend you like linux while saying bad things about it.
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
I dunno, I've seen people that stupid. They usually have overview of microsoft technologies only, nothing else.
Re:Shills (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
And Linux is not desktop ready yet. If most people think configuring Windows should be left to the experts, what will they think when they're faced with arcane version numbers of this thing everyone calls the kernal (sic). And to burn CDs and DVDs, I have to add the what line to my bootloader what? Vertical and horizontal sync rates to change my refresh rate? You gotta be kidding me.
There's also the fact that Windows is well established and ingrained in all corners of computing: the most software is made for Windows, and everyone else uses Windows. Windows won the OS was at a critical time when general computing was taking off, and having gathered all that market share right at the root of the evolution, it will take a lot of things coming together in order to amount to a significant change.
Microsoft welcoming bloggers... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what are Microsoft thinking bloggers should write about?
"WOW I JUST SAW THIS NEW UI AND LONGHORN LOKS SO COL AND IT WIL KIK APLAS BUTT SO HARD!11!1!!1 WTF DID U HAAR ABOUT TEH NEW COOL DOT NET TECHS!!111!!1 WHAT F3ATURAS THERE PLANNIG?????!!?? OMG I HAEV NO IEDA YET BUT IMM SURA ITL B AEWSOM31111 OMG WTF"
Re:Bloggers? (Score:2, Insightful)
I seriously doubt Microsoft is in need of a PageRank boost, or the miniscule effect a bunch of incestuous bloggers would have on the same.
Blogging, and bloggers, is one of the most grossly overrated technology realm currently - everyone seems to imagine a world of hyper-influential bloggers who'll gesture a certain way and the sheep will follow (such as "Longhorn really is l33t!"). This is so absurdly incorrect, and fails based upon a couple of simple fundamentals of blogs.
-The only people who read a given blog are the people who already agree with it. Liberals aren't out reading the conservative blogs, and hippies aren't reading The Man's blog. Windows developers aren't reading a Linux kernel developers blog. These blogs have zero influence outside of the already converted.
-Blog readers have an enormously short patience. If someone doesn't honour the prior fundamental, and decides to do something other than gently assure their readers that they're the smartest, more righteous people's on the Earth, their readership will go elsewhere.
This isn't sour grapes, and I'm not yet-another "why do these people think anyone wants to hear them"er, I'm just saying it like it is - blogs are just an bunch of incestuous chatter of trackbacks and circle jerking.
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing that he believes this stuff, and I honestly can't find the motive. It seems that he has actually convinced himself that he likes Microsoft, the company, Bill Gates, and most of their software. He doesn't use any form of anti-virus or firewall, because "no one will ever come after me."
Knowing this guy, I could believe that not all pro-Microsoft comments here are straight from the horse's mouth. But, I'll second this anyway, because I can't believe that Microsoft doesn't astroturf Slashdot. They'd be stupid not to.
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
But it seems that some FOSS supporters just can't resist the chance to spread FUD and lies. For example, here's the editor of MozillaNews, no less, accusing Opera of lying [burntelectrons.org]. When people point out his contradictions and errors he refuses to retract his false statements, but instead bans people or he removes their comments.
When I see crap like this, and it isn't all that uncommon, I get this sinking feeling that FOSS is attracting too many zealots. They are doing the community a disservice by pushing people away. People like your friend.
I don't like Microsoft or Bill Gates, but I continue to use Windows. That's what I'm used to, and even though I've installed lots of different Linux distributions, including Slackware back in the days before you had menus or a GUI to configure X, I find myself sticking with Windows. With 2000 and XP, Microsoft has produced stable operating systems, and they work well for me. Yet FOSS zealots continue their jokes about bluescreens, etc.
Now, anyone who has read my comments will see that I actually flame Microsoft shills on Slashdot. I'm not a zealot either way. I use Windows because I can't be bothered to switch over, and 2000/XP actually works well for me. I also play games every now and then, and Windows is the only realistic alternative for people like me. But I hope SCO is beaten to a pulp by IBM in the court room, and that Microsoft gets slapped around hard for their anti-competitive practices.
I also use Opera, and I'm getting annoyed with the FUD and lies [burntelectrons.org] spread by Firefox zealots. So yeah, I can understand where your friend is coming from.