Use of Student Plants to Pitch Products Rising

theodp wrote to mention a Seattle PI article about software and niche companies using college-age hucksters to get the word about their product out. From the article: "Microsoft is among a growing number of companies seeking to reach the elusive but critical college market by hiring students to be ambassadors -- or, in more traditional terms, door-to-door salesmen. In an age when the college demographic is no longer easily reached by television, radio or newspapers -- as TiVo, satellite radio, iPods and the Internet crowd out the traditional advertising venues -- a microindustry of campus marketing has emerged. Niche firms have sprung up to act as recruiters of students, who then market products on campus for companies such as Microsoft, JetBlue Airways, The Cartoon Network and Victoria's Secret."

Comments

Re:If this actually worked, then kids would vote

[Hao Wu]

"Kids will take what is pushed into their hand, especially if the pusher is attractive, and they don't stand to lose money immediately on the free product."

It's reflex. You are only annoying people when you do that, and once they figure out that you're just a salesman - they litter.

"I may not be attractive enough to market democracy,"

WOW - you're in college!?!

Yeah

[pHatidic]

I know at my Uni (Cornell) they pay kids good money to go sit out on the quad playing Xbox and PS2 to promote the latest games. It is something like 500 bucks for a day of playing video games, so all the undergrad business kids to compete to get the job. Talk about corporate whoring...

Re:Already a term..

[Arandir]

I think it's great. It teaches kids salesmanship and entepreneurship. Much better than sitting in Socialism 101 and hearing about how horrible the world is.

You don't like the product they're selling? Don't buy it!

Re:Already a term..

[killjoe]

To a republican there is no such thing as a "deceptive business practice". Oh and you are a socialist for saying there is.

Re:One Note, Part of a $500,000 Download at LSU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: Please note that "twitter" is a known fanatical sycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft bashing. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" or "fanboy" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, twitter is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.

I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.

If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".

Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.

Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.

More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.

Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.

M