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Microsoft Taps Bloggers to Promote Longhorn

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."

8 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. great by geoffspear · · Score: 1, Troll

    Now Microsoft's stealing ideas from politicians, too.

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  2. Once again... by stubear · · Score: 1, Troll

    ...slashbots read what they want to read and interpret the article through their monochromatic lens. This is NOT underhanded shilling of the products, it's a way for Microsoft to distill comments from the community to learn how to better improve Longhorn, and I quote "All will need to sign NDAs cause there are things in Longhorn that we don't want to leak out, but they'll be your proxies. They'll tell us where we're screwing up, what we're doing well, and will be world's top authorities on Longhorn." The reason they want bloggers is becasue bloggers provide a two-way communication between the community of users and Microsoft. Bloggers will take the comments from their sites, distill them into meaningful suggestions for ways to improve Longhorn and Microsoft can then in turn provide these very same bloggers with access to updates on Longhorn to report back to the community of users. Simple enough but as usual slashbots prove they are dumber than your average bear and could do the world a favor by shutting up unless they themselves have something meaningful to add to the discussion.

  3. Re:Weird names by aichpvee · · Score: 0, Troll

    My Linux has a real name, like 8 or 9 or 10. What the fuck is an XP again?

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  4. Good For George Good For Bill by Ranger · · Score: 0, Troll

    Hey, if the Republicans can hire bloggers to promote their agenda, then Microsoft can hire them to promote their products. Besides fake bloggers are cheaper to hire than real journalists.

    bet this gets modded to troll. everytime I bash M$ I get modded down. so mod me down you bastards!

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    1. Re:Good For George Good For Bill by amightywind · · Score: 0, Troll

      Hey, if the Republicans can hire bloggers to promote their agenda, then Microsoft can hire them to promote their products. Besides fake bloggers are cheaper to hire than real journalists.

      The democrats have been able to safely ignore the blogsphere because they already have the 'mainstream media' shilling for them. That has been the case for 40 years. A major contributing factor to the growth of blogs in political discourse has been liberal hegemony over the traditional press. Thankfully, with the ascent of Fox News and the passing of the stalwart network news anchors this is no longer the case. To paraphrase Condi Rice, "The New York Times and Washington posts are still outposts of yellow journalism", however. I guess you mean them when you say 'real journalists'.

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  5. Re:Shut the fuck up you little turd by geoffspear · · Score: 0, Troll
    Actually, I don't say that.

    I'm happy to use the word "stealing", or any other word for that matter, to mean any of the various things it's taken to mean by speakers of the English language.

    I believe any native speaker will understand "you stole my idea" to mean that I had an idea and they used it, too, not that they committed the crime of larceny or the tort of conversion. I understand "you stole that movie" can mean, in context, either that a copy of the movie was copied in contravention of copyright law, or that a DVD of the movie was shoplifted from a store. It doesn't bother me in the least.

    Furthermore, I wasn't claiming MS stole a product feature from Apple; rather I was humorously comparing Microsoft's marketing practice with the practice of political operatives in hiring bloggers to espouse their views and/or endorse their candidacies. In either case (stealing features or stealing ideas), I don't think Microsoft's behavior is particularly bad qua stealing. In the latter case, however, I think that the actual idea they're stealing is unethical for both a corporation and a politician, and I wish they'd both stop. In the former case, I have no problem with Microsoft using features found in Apple's software.

    As for you anonymous morons who lump alol slashdot readers together and assume we all share the same opinions: you're reading slashdot. therefore, you must also share the same opinions, and are being quite hypocritical when you denounce people who, by your logic, you must agree with on every imaginable topic.

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  6. Re:Astroturf, Anyone? by snorklewacker · · Score: 0, Troll

    Right, anyone who isn't in line with the slashbot groupthink MUST be a paid shill of Microsoft. Or perhaps you're just being trolled. And have lost. Badly.

    Maybe mods are tired of seeing the same old canards and have marked them down as redundant or more appropriately overrated

    Get over your paranoid persecution complex. You simply aren't that important.

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  7. Re:curiously by snorklewacker · · Score: 0, Troll

    Speaking of malaria ...

    Of course, since it's associated with Bill Gates, it must be a bad thing, right?

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