Slashdot Mirror
Toys For The Rich To Cultivate Product Popularity
ChipGuy writes "Newsweek is reporting on a new elitist club called the Silicon Valley 100, an exclusive group of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs like Marc Andressen, Esther Dyson, Chris Shipley, and Ross Mayfield. The Schwag Set will get a lot of free stuff which they will either recommend or not, to unsuspecting masses. Dan Gillmor thinks 'it is oddly creepy', and urges people on this list to 'bow out of this exercise entirely.' Om Malik says it ironic that 'the first product being offered is a shitter! What Crap!'"
Sorry, slashdot community :(
this is no different from hiring someone for a paid testimonial.
except that the reviewers are not necessarily going to present a positive review. why is this important?
-mkb
and the people who practice it are the children of the devil.
becuase no one cares if random joe has it. sure it may eventually spread through friends, but if you give stuff to someone who might be (or pass along to someone) on tv or get talked about in a rag like people or us, then you have just hit a larger section of people at once.
always mosh clockwise
and urges people on this list to 'bow out of this exercise entirely.'
Honestly, can you really expect people not to take free stuff? Smart rich people get and stay that way by being cheap, what better way, then getting free toys.
Since the people getting these products should have a good amount of tech knowledge, hopefully their reviews will be well done and informative, instead of "This product is cool"
Boxing Equipment Reviews
You haven't lived until you've experienced the pleasure of a toilet-seat bidet. These are becoming a standard fixture in Japanese homes. If you think North Americans have a good sense of hygiene (Slashdot denizen excepted), think again.
You'll never just wipe your ass again.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
wake up dudes, the world works in a hierarchical fashion not because it can but because in fact this works well. Look at how scientific research works. Sure there might be lots of little folks that could be great seniour researchers if only they could get funded. But it costs too much to identify these folks. Its better in general to go with a trusted senoir researcher than require omniscience on the part of funding agencies.
that was the long recognized flaw of the command economy in russia. it could not effectively gather the information that a market economy could
thus elitism as a filter to diseminate useful information about a limited availability product in an optimal fashion is not a bad idea.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Unethical?
I really don't think so, unless there are some extenuating circumstances that I'm not aware of.
It's also a marketing technique that has been used for years.
For instance, in the early 70's, Chevy and Ford used to provide some of the high-profile street racers in certain cities with tricked out "super cars" that would blow anything else off the road, all in order to get people to want to buy those products.
I don't see how this is "unethical" in the least.
Sure, I'm jealous as hell that I'm not one of the "special" people being targeted to receive anything, but I think you're taking things a little bit to an extreme.
$0.02 (CDN)
I certainly was planning to be open about how I got products if I talked about them. I suspect most of the other folks are too. I jotted a brief note in my blog about it like some of the others.
It's really not some sort of elitist club, not even a club, nor much that new.
I do agree that by giving stuff to folks who write or are influentical, they do increase the chances that they will get written about. I presume that's their goal. There are certainly no requirements that we speak fondly of the products, but the historical tradition is people are far more likely to evangelize a new product they've seen than they are to curse something new nobody knows about, so on the balance it's been a win for vendors to do giveaways like this.
I know in the old days of magazines it was worse. Most software reviews were good for the same reason. If an obscure product came along and was bad, they just didn't write about it. If it was good, they might write. If it was famous or the company pulled enough strings (ie. bought lots of advertising) that got them a review, even at places with decent editorial firewalls, though it didn't assure a good one. If you saw a scathing review, it usually meant the company was so famous they had to review the product, or the company had pushed super hard to get one, good or no.
Truth is though, I, nor most of the people on the list aren't bought so easily. If you hear about something from somebody, you should judge how much you trust them in general, not whether they got the thing free.
If you think about it, what logic in there is giving a false good review for a bribe, if the bribe is a free version of the product you don't like very much?
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
...with this kind of 'behind the scenes' buzz-making is that
a) These people are not really trained to evaluate products properly and
b) They probably don't have the time to do it well even if they were trained.
The reason these buzz schemes don't want to use journalists or other professional reviewers is that journos know what to look for in products they're reviewing. They have the experience with similar types of product, and know of potential pitfalls which can slip past the amateur reviewer. That's not to say that 'ordinary' folk aren't useful for giving 'epinions' type evaluations, but for the most part if you rely on these reviews for an in-depth analysis you're leaving yourself open to all sorts of disappointment.
For example, just read the forums when any new mobile phone comes out. It will be full of generic comments like 'wow, the screen on this rockz' etc. What about if that screen only lasts for a year before the backlight blows it up, or it sucks up significantly more battery life than alternatives? Professionals will pick up on that kind of hidden danger much better than amateurs. They're not perfect, but I'd rather rely on a journalist appraisal than some rich tech celebrity any day!