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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?"
i can certainly relate the advantage of word-of-mouth to a game site that i'm working for. 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.
Play iCLOD
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.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
Just look at the fan boys in the Open Source world. Look at what happens when I utter the words:
d ows????
vi
emacs
Gentoo
KDE
Gnome
Linux
*BSD
Win
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.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
> 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.
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.
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.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
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, all to promote this commercial product made by IBM.
And it worked great, too! That's why everybody uses OS/2 today... er, waitaminute.
\\'
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.
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.
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.
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.