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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."
...Longhorn...Team 99....how do they come up with these unusual names?
My favorite quote FTA (and I'm not making this up):
"Longhorn got its name from the bar that's between Whistler and Blackcomb up in British Columbia. 99 is the road you drive from my house to get up to the Longhorn bar. So, Team 99 is the team that'll take us to Longhorn's launch," he said.
And people make fun of Linux names!
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Microsoft doesn't have the best record in this area, having been caught astroturfing numerous times. At least when you read an 'official' blog, you are aware that you are getting cooperate propaganda.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Whoever is part of this "Team 99" will be consider shills and rightly so. There's one thing using the Internet to express your point of view. It's quite another to extol a companies product for their backing.
If this group was treated as an unbiased reviewers, I'd have more sympathy but as it is, it seems just another corrupted media.
-Teiresias
It's a good idea to recruit bloggers to advertise your product.
It's not a good idea to publicize that you're doing it.
They just created Astro-blogging!
There was an article posted less than a week ago about PR companies harnessing bloggers.... Gee, maybe Microsoft DOES read Slashdot.
My little site.
... 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."
;)
That's a safe bet - MS could release a patch for XP that cured cancer and they'd still be accused of doing something underhanded.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I've often wondered how many Slashdot accounts are operated by paid shills and their ilk.
It's paid-for advertising maskerading as opinion. It's misleading and unethical, and incredibly stupid of them to admit they're going to do it.
I, for one, after reading this, wouldn't trust the opinion of anyone who says in their blog that they like Longhorn; who's to say whether they actually used it and thought it was good, or if Microsoft paid them to lie about it?
All this does is create an environment where you can assume that bad reviews are probably objective, and that good reviews are quite possibly just advertising.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
that just the other day was reported as threatening people who posted screenshots of Longhorn?
Which is it to be? Do they want it publicised or not?
No, let me guess; only favourable publicity.
It also follows the long Microsoft tradition of providing an innovative product that people not only want to use, but actually look forward to using.
Longhorn truly completes me. And I say this as a former Linux power user for the last twenty years. Really. Now I know that Linux blows and it has nothing to do with that bimonthly check from Redmond. Nothing. Really.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
... and how much more I prefer working on my Mac. I don't outright refuse to use Windows - I've used all three major platforms - I just honestly and simply do prefer OS X. Lack of security headaches is a large part of that. MS still hasn't been able to keep the crackers out. When they totally redo their OS to be more secure, I'll feel more comfortable about using it.
i am a soviet space shuttle
"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."
Blogging was nice while it lasted. Corporations are quickly going to flood the channel with paid content. If you think the PR machine is powerful in major media, which has lots of people looking for bias, has some regulation, and which does not see $10,000 as any more than pocket change, think what's going to happen to blogs over the next five years.
Suppose Coca-Cola offered to pay Joe Blogpack $2,500 to do a column talking about a dead rat found in a storage container at a Pepsi bottling facility, how quickly do you think he would jump? Do you think he would care if the story is true? And if he did, would he have access to the resources to find out if it's true? Suppose news.google.com is running 200 links to other bloggers who didn't take the time to fact check - our honorable Joe Blogpack checks his facts against the tainted stories and even thinks he's doing the right thing.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You know, you have to wonder. If you gave a shitty review, would they let keep your Longhorn 99 or whatever status? I'd be more than happy to start a blog to promote MS products if they paid me! Then I can buy that Mac I've always wanted!
Slashdot has been doing the same for Linux
What we were doing wasn't all that sophisticated (we had an evangelist program as well, which who were far better than us at promoting our messages). There were several viral advertising firms out there that were posting in fake blogs, in real blogs, on multiple forums using fake ids, etc.
While you could argue that viral marketing of this sort is unethical or at least questionable, it really is no different than paying people to walk around with your product in public. Online viral marketing, and placement in a blog, is just another form of PR placement.
Of course there is an ethical question to be answered if blogs are truly a form of news protected by the laws and practices of journalists. If that's the case than these blogs are practicing yellow journalism, which would then throw into question their role as independent journalists (then again if you can find me a 100% untainted all the time news source these days I'd be pretty impressed (especially if they have over 100 readers)).
Compared to Linux, Longhorn is an extensible paradigm shift in operating systems that is designed to facility business agility while improving new customer acquisition. Offering the most secure federation based authenticity validation system Longhorn improves the value proposition while streamlining your business processes and enhancing shareholder value.
Longhorn r0x0rz and Linux sux0rz.
Shocking! Shocking! A blogger might have an agenda? Next thing you know, there will be gambling in the casino, and prayer in the church...
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Microsoft Office
Microsoft XP
Microsoft Flight Simualtor
and any other Microsoft products out there!
And of course Microsoft's notorious "Mac to Windows" switcher website was the one the took the cake. What took them down was using a stock photo... Sheesh!
I mean, really. How hard is it to find ONE photogenic woman in a company the size of Microsoft? Hell, Apple used a LOT of folks in their ads... And they didn't look like models either (nor did their words sound like PR text).
Yup, look to a LOT of "Longhorn allows me to do things the way that make me more productive" blah blah blah...
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
At last we have a nice concrete example of a large corporation admitting that they're going to spread their propaganda through blogs. It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was reading an article about how blogging was the new trusted, untainted source of information as compared to magazine articles. Hmmm, I said to myself, that doesn't seem very believable. Looks like journalists for traditional print-media might get a second chance after all as being some sort of independent voice.
Not worth my time [April 20th, 2005]
Today at the airport I saw a $100 bill, but left it lying there. It's just not worth it.
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Sweetest Thing [April 25th, 2005]
Bono stopped by for a visit. You can never tell what he's thinking though. I think that's why he wears those sunglasses. Ballmer kept trying to iChat me like every five minutes trying to talk with Bono, but I didn't didn't want to completely negate the Bono's coolness, I know how he can get when he's excited.
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Tiger Fever! [April 29th, 6:31PM]
Just installed Tiger (waiting for the FedEx truck was *torture*!). I can't believe how great it is. I can't stop hitting F12. Oh, and Spotlight! I'll post a more in-depth review later. Until then, check out the one at Ars Technica, it's really good.
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Microsoft marketing, if you're reading this, these marketing ploys just make you look pathetic. Stick to what you're good at and play up the heartless corporation aspect of your corporate image. Honestly...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... the fact that Slashdot hypes it up is hardly surprising. If anything burns Microsoft it is that Slahsdot, a ton of other geek sites on the net and an army of bloggers hyped up Apple's OS.X 'Tiger' a proprietary OS without Apple having to pay them off.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
WTF!!!!! They won't do secret stuff, but they legally obligate their volunteer shills to do secret stuff!!!! That's very funny.
Remember, you can't spell propoganda without NDA.
On the plus side, Last Call won't mean the end to your drinking at this bar. After they lock the doors, I'm sure there'll be windows or some other back entrance that can be easily opened back up.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
If that makes sense, you're too drunk, and should go home.
I forget what 8 was for.
I was part of one of Microsoft's attempts at getting people who were active on the Internet involved. At the Pocket PC, Wireless, and Beyond shindig in 2000 Microsoft invited 35 people - mainly Palm users - who were active online to Redmond, gave them each a couple of Pocket PCs (and mailed them a couple more over the years), and asked for feedback.
There was no NDA.
There was no attempt to encourage people to be pro-Microsoft or even actively promote the product. I certainly wasn't, I was more than ready to highlight the shortcomings of the products, and they still kept me on their list and sent me units to try on.
And most of all, they didn't just talk... they listened as well.
Three things struck me:
First, all the Palm users immediately got together and beamed all their contact info to each other. The Pocket PC users mostly didn't know how to do it, beaming was difficult and the handhelds were generally larger and less comfortable to use and even the Microsoft people on the handheld team didn't tend to have theirs with them.
Second, getting the mail set up on the LAN they were demoing on was really hard. By the second try people were saying things like "this isn't supposed to be rocket science, and besides, we're all supposed to be rocket scientists".
Third, the handwriting recognition was clumsy. It required a lot more strokes and a lot more tries to reliably recognise text, compared to Graffiti.
The really amazing thing, the thing that made me a total fan of Beth Goza and Derek Brown was thet the next version of the Pocket PC software actually fixed all these problems. Not all the changes were improvements, and not all the problems we pointed out were fixed, but so many of them were I was stunned. In fact, since Palm replaced Graffiti with Jot the Pocket PC does a better job of implementing Graffiti than Palm OS does.
Unfortunately, while they made many changes the Pocket PC still has all the deeper flaws that I wrote about back then. Oh well, this isn't about the Pocket PC. This is about Microsoft.
What was key with the PPCWB shindig is that Microsoft set up a two-way discussion with us, and didn't try and control what we said in it or to other people. This wan't an "Astroturf" campaign, it was a real engagement with the community, and they got a huge win out of NOT creating a conduit for synthetic adulation.
Microsoft's done it once. Can they do it again?