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
This is why the Segway is so popular....
and the people who practice it are the children of the devil.
Just what the rich need... more stuff for free. How about giving the products to random Joes on the street with the requirement of getting a review from them on it?
but do most of them contain grammer this horrific? The linked article read more like a stream of consciousness e-mail (a poorly written one at that) than a published piece of literature.
Hey pal you gotta pay for Windows.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
I wonder if one of the invitees responded with this Groucho quote:
I refuse to join any club which would have me as a member.
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.
As any PBS junkie knows, there is a market for everyday people willing to hawk a merchant's wares. What is disturbing is that it appears such people are in no short supply.
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. What bothers me is that characters that push agendas under the guise of neutrality are becoming more prevalent all the time.
Here's hoping that one of the community's most revered icons never sells out.
That'd make for some great Schwag Set blogging!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
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.
So you're saying he's the tech community's version of Paris Hilton? Seems fitting, because although he might not have appeared in porn, he seems to be quite the connoisseur of porn.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
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)
The entertainment elite are constantly given free stuff in the hope that their wearing/using/talking about it will promote the product.
It's a truism in hollywood that nobody will give a dime to struggling actors who could really use a hand, but once they make it big and don't need anything from anyone, they are practically buried in freebies - free clothes, free cars, free tickets, free jewelry, free beer, you name it they get it all for free.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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
Yeah! For example, Linux.
[ducks and runs for cover]
Indeed, the high reputations of those on the list is what makes the whole thing so nasty. Bill Gates was just bragging about this kind of cheesy scheme in a BBC interview:
He was talking about the media center, the one that blew up on him in public with dismal sales. News flash, Bill, it has to work for people to say they like it.
I don't know if this M$NBC article is tied to that effort, but it is the lowest form of "influence" purchase I've seen yet. Microsoft has always pursued this strategy to one extent or another, giving product to people who they think will be influential. In the past, they pushed product onto business schools and other places that might not know better. That was low but fair enough. This effort, where the recipients are identified before receiving anything combines that game with another one, falsely attributing approval or endorsements. It takes the "smart people use M$" lie to a personal level and that's reprehensible.
It's not a spiff to a salesman or product to a writer, they are trying to hijack other people's reputations in an effort to push buggy crap. The company that gave us the "Apple Switcher" and forged letters to representatives is not above such things. If there's anything Microsoft is an innovator with, it's astroturf. We shall see where this goes, but where it comes from is clear.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...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!