NYT On Online Reputations

prostoalex writes "New York Times analyzes the importance of online postings for the company images and product success/failure rates. Intuit's TurboTax DRM "feature" is mentioned as one of the bad ideas, that was quickly and vociferously opposed by the Internet folk. The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding got quite a nice cash flow even though the advertising budget was low, but opinions on the Internet regarded the movie highly. Rating systems of Epinions and Slashdot are also discussed briefly."

Comments

Its not only the online reputation

[benito27uk]

As I'm sure the NY Times is aware of.... http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/922499.asp

Low ad budget??

[freeweed]

The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding got quite a nice cash flow even though the advertising budget was low

I live in Winnipeg (where Nia Vardalos is from, originaly, and yes, that's in Canada). I think they spent their entire advertising budget in my city alone, if the above quote is accurate.

I'm enough of a movie buff that I see about 2-3 movies in theatres a week, and let me tell you: 6 *months* before MBFGW was released, I was seeing trailers for it every few weeks. The month before it came out, the onslaught started. Every single movie I went to had a trailer for it, and I do mean *every*. During its run here, ditto. Of course, I could somewhat ignore this, until the TV campaign started in about 2 weeks before it premiered. Suddenly everyone I knew was talking about how 'good' this movie looked, well before seeing it. By the time it actually was making any money in theatres, very few people I knew hadn't yet heard of it (hell, even my parents were asking what all the fuss was about, and it's been several years since they've seen a new movie).

In a city like Winnipeg, all they had to do was mention once or twice that a film created and starred in by a 'Pegger was coming out, and the local media would have done all the free promotion they needed. Instead, we were bombarded with more trailers than I saw for Spider-Man and LOTR:TT combined, and yes, that's a lot :) I didn't even know anything about Vardalos until after the movie had premiered; until that point I just figured this was the latest 'Hottest Romantic Comedy of the Year!' to be placed on the hype-mobile.

Maybe the rest of the world was spared from this, but up here it was insane. Then again, maybe a 'low advertising budget' just means no superbowl commercial these days.

doesn't always help

[Random Walk]

I remember long time ago there was a ./ story that was basically an advertisement for a product called FreeVeracity. The product is dead now ...

Re:Reputations of people, specifically teachers

[Anonymous Coward]

Simong - you should check out the site. Contrary to your hypothesis, most reviews are actually positive, from students who want to let other students know about their best professors.

Could these positive reviews don't come from the professors? No - because the system has a unique verification system that other professor review sites do not have that makes it difficult to post bogus reviews without it being obviously known. Even when bogus reviews are posted, it is typically obvious when you read a generic gleaming review or two for a professor that has otherwise extremely detailed negative reviews.

TeacherReviews.com is also very different than other professor review sites because it is the only one that requires verification information and detailed paragraph-long reviews, as opposed other sites which are basically just an anonymous vote-as-often-as-you'd-like survey systems.

Re:Reputations of people, specifically teachers

[WeeLad]

When I was an undergrad, every class had a survey at the end of the semester where the students provided feedback on the professor. I suspect many schools do this.

The survey was performed by the dean of the department, and was somewhat anonymous (i.e., no names assigned, but certain guesses could be made by class rosters). This has the benefit of not being available for any Joe Internet user from falsely adjusting the statistics for a specific teacher, but the drawback was that the general student population was never really made aware of the results.

I suspect the school as a whole would not want these results posted for anyone to view, as it could potentially paint the school's faculty in a negative light (and in my experience, anything that made the school look even somewhat questionable was usually oppressed). However, the data probably more accurately reflected the opinion of the students. Maybe if this survey taking became standard on an inter-university level, some sort of governing body could institute some sort of web ranking of professors (and even schools for that matter). Okay, I'm done rambling...for now.

Re:And brace yourself for a major bloom of astrotu

[GMontag]

As for man-on-the-street interviews, "The Paper of Record" has one of these on perminant retainer: Greg Packer. For example,

Another average individual eager to get Hillary's book was Greg Packer, who was the centerpiece of the New York Times' "man on the street" interview about Hillary-mania. After being first in line for an autographed book at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble, Packer gushed to the Times: "I'm a big fan of Hillary and Bill's. I want to change her mind about running for president. I want to be part of her campaign."

It was easy for the Times to spell Packer's name right because he is apparently the entire media's designated "man on the street" for all articles ever written. He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public. Packer was quoted on his reaction to military strikes against Iraq; he was quoted at the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Veterans' Day Parade. He was quoted at not one â" but two â" New Year's Eve celebrations at Times Square. He was quoted at the opening of a new "Star Wars" movie, at the opening of an H&M clothing store on Fifth Avenue and at the opening of the viewing stand at Ground Zero. He has been quoted at Yankees games, Mets games, Jets games â" even getting tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones. He was quoted at a Clinton fund-raiser at Alec Baldwin's house in the Hamptons and the pope's visit to Giants stadium.

--Ann Coulter

Re:Shaping how movies are made, as well

[Deagol]

Speaking of that movie, I wish I had heard someone (anyone!) badmounth the movie. That was 2 hours of my life I will never get back, and I will mourn their loss! Online criticism may have saved me $10.

Re:Reputations of people, specifically teachers

[weave]

I was a college instructor (evening) for 10 years. In the beginning, I was too easy and gave out too many A's. I rated my quality as an instructor initially as crap. I got great reviews. As time went on and I got more comfortable teaching and got better at helping students learn the topic (and graded their ability appropriately), my ratings went down into the toilet. And the ratings tended to map the distribution of my grades. That is, students who did well rated me excellent, students that did poorly rated me poorly.

The only portion of student-submitted ratings that were helpful to me were the free-form comments where some took the time to make constuctive criticisms and suggestions. That was the feedback that helped me improve, not trying to boost my score to college's most favored instructor...

So, to get back to topic, ratings without some sort of backing context, removal of biases and favoritism, planted comments, and consideration of reputation of reviewer, is next to worthless.