Microsoft Taps Bloggers to Promote Longhorn 415
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."
Weird names (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:Weird names (Score:5, Funny)
MS said they stole the name from a bar.
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Funny)
last call (Score:5, Funny)
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.
No, see... (Score:4, Funny)
If that makes sense, you're too drunk, and should go home.
Re:Weird names (Score:5, Funny)
Note I didn't even get to any of those lesser distributions with funny names [distrowatch.com]...
Even better, those are the names of the distributions - some have funny names for their versions, too!
So, yes, people make fun of Linux names.
--LWM
Re:Weird names (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Informative)
In some parts of South Africa (same country as Ubuntu is from, incidentally) "gentoo" is a slang word for a prostitute.
Re:Weird names (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Funny)
More like LONGWAIT.
Re:Weird names (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Weird names (Score:2)
Re:Weird names (Score:2)
What's in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.
All the descriptive names are taken.
I'm distrustful and disdainful of marketing practices that dumb down a product's appeal. Changing a product's name to be "real" (or in other words, focus-group vanilla) makes my teeth itch.
P.S.: I find it i
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Funny)
So says "RealProgrammer." Now that's irony.
Re:Weird names (Score:3, Funny)
How much are they offering? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How much are they offering? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A little bit of history (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A little bit of history (Score:2)
Yup (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:Yup (Score:2)
Microsoft marketing, if you're reading this, these marketing ploys just make you look pathetic.
Remember, it only looks pathetic to the people who know their geeky stuff, and well, it's not like those kind of people are really influenced by those marketing ploys...
Re:A little bit of history (Score:2)
Heh, a somewhat appropriate typo. I think you meant "corporate" propaganda, but "cooperate" points to the conspiracy involved.
Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
If this group was treated as an unbiased reviewers, I'd have more sympathy but as it is, it seems just another corrupted media.
Re:Shills (Score:2)
is like saying "going out and shooting people is likely to draw accusations that you're a murderer."
Likely. Duh!
Re:Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shills (Score:5, Funny)
Shill!
Re:Shills (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shills (Score:2)
Dear Internet User!
To celebrate the upcoming launch of Longhorn, we are asking bloggers to talk favourably about it in their blogs.
Microsoft has some cool technology (Google) that will enable them to find your entries, and the best one will win $1000000!
Bill Gates
PS. This is not fake! A friend of mine tried it, and got a check
PPS. If you don't forward this email in the next 60 seconds, you will have bad luck all day, and your crush will hate you forever.
Re:Shills (Score:5, Insightful)
If you RTFA, it appears that they're well aware of the drubbing they took from their last showing to a handful of bloggers, and are expecting the annointed "team 99" crowd to expressly do more of the same, as they get feedback from the wider community. If the software is crap, what possible good will it do MS to pump up demonstrably false notions about the presence or absence of a feature, only to have it turn out not to be true when everybody gets to look at the release? They seem to be going to a lot of trouble to announce, well in advance, that they're going to skip over certain features, or delay others. The bloggers will be an echo chamber for some of that, and a feedback channel. Other than the NDA (which presumably these folks will actually read before signing!), I don't sense any means by which MS would be able to make someone convey a better impression of the OS than they've personally experienced. I work with an MS partner (our firm sells accounting apps and does large scale systems integration, among other things), and we play very much the same role - we scream at MS when end users scream at us, and we preach the solutions when we're comfortable with them ourselves.
Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a good idea to publicize that you're doing it.
Re:Mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
And Linux is not desktop ready yet. If most people think configuring Windows should be left to the experts, what will they think when they're faced with arcane version numbers of this thi
"No secret stuff anymore" "sign an NDA" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Mistake (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Just an observation that most bloggers I know or read were ingeniously suckered into giving gmail free advertising.
Free Advertising (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Shocking! Shocking! A blogger might have an agenda? Next thing you know, there will be gambling in the casino, and prayer in the church...
MS is innovative (Score:3, Funny)
Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite noticeable, but not very effective. There are a number of users who post straight-out pro-Microsoft comments without any hint of irony. Such as "people hack IE only because it is popular", or "Microsoft make excellent software".
Then, there are the astro-moderators, who will mod-down obvious anti-Microsoft comments. These are quite common but usually get hammered out in meta-moderation.
Lastly, there are the trolls who take delight in disrupting the serious ongoing conversations at Slashdot. I'd not be surprised to discover that some of these are sponsored by Microsoft.
Yes, Microsoft reads Slashdot.
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:2)
Of course, what proof do you have for it, other then the sneaking suspision.
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing that he believes this stuff, and I honestly can't find the motive. It seems that he has actually convinced himself that he likes Microsoft, the company, Bill Gates, and most of their software. He doesn't use any form of anti-virus or firewall, because "no one w
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll ad another:
The "XP is only crashes becuase of all the different hardware it supports" astroturfer.
the completly miss the fact that FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux support most of the x86 hardware that XP does --- AND PowerPC AND Sparc AND Aplha AND Mips etc....
*BSD and Linux manage to be stable, why can XP??? Hmmmmm...
Re:Astroturf, Anyone? (Score:2)
That's a LIE!!! We never...
[Connection reset by peer]
Likely? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Likely? (Score:5, Funny)
curiously (Score:2)
stupid bit of OT trivia, syphilis is a cure for malaria.
source [amazon.com], a good read, the history of quinine is particularly fascinating.
Re:Of course... (Score:2)
The licensing terms would be so prohibitive as to render it useless.
Accusations? (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately this will be just for the big boys. Gonna have to start watching Wheaton's site. With all the vet bills and mac troubles lately I expect his next release from O'Reilly will now be "Lovin' Longhorn" or something like that. Don't blame him a bit.
Bile Blog (Score:2, Insightful)
signed the MaD HuNGaRIaN
Do I hear a second to that motion?
How many Slashdot accounts? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what you're ... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Office
Microsoft XP
Microsoft Flight Simualtor
and any other Microsoft products out there!
Re:How many Slashdot accounts? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget... (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this the same Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is it to be? Do they want it publicised or not?
No, let me guess; only favourable publicity.
Longhorn Rocks! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
You said "leverage"! (Score:3, Funny)
Also, you forgot to mention:
- how incredibly secure Longhorn is, compared to Linux (measured by patches released so far)
- how Longhorn is considerably cheaper than Linux
- how Longhorn promotes industry standards (such as MS Office)
- how Longhorn runs in a smaller footprint (if you balance your PC on one corner).
Secure, cheap, standard, efficient! That's the message you're supposed to be spreading.
You can get your check anyhow. Usual address, I take it?
Indeed, leverage. (Score:3, Funny)
Longhorn r0x0rz and Linux sux0rz.
Re:Longhorn Rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
"I really like linux but lets face it it's not ready for grandma. Nobody wants to compile a kernel just to make a game work and besides gimp is not nearly good as photoshop. Oh and autocad doesn't run on linux.
Windows used suck but it's never crashed on me since 2000 came out and let's face it XP has solved all the security issues with windows.
I love linux and sometimes its fun to spend five hours messing with config files but I use windows when I just want to get things done. "
The trick is to pretend you like linux while saying bad things about it.
translation (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, I'll blog about Longhorn ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sure, I'll blog about Longhorn ... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, it IS. Have you seen the price of those things? You need to be like a millionaire to buy one. For what you get for your money, they should be about £50. Although it doesn't matter to me, I stole mine from some kid who wasn't exactly being discreet about the fact that he had one. Note: change the headphones. They look awful and showy, and just lead to muggings.
Another reason to despise blogs (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one who thinks blogs and bloggers the most over-hyped thing to come along in years?
Re:Another reason to despise blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. It was a great idea until it got renamed from "journaling" to "blogging" (that term still makes me cringe), and until the angst-ridden teens got hold of the idea. I still write one, but at least I spell-check the damned thing and try to keep the "angst" to a minimum. But I don't spam it all over the place or plaster it full of ads (Google text ads are as far as it'll ever go) either.
There are some well-written ones buried amongst the mountains of drivel (I'd like to hope mine is one
Remember "Team OS/2" (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but will you be allowed to make screenshots? (Score:2)
Oh, FYI, the "pull these for patent reasons" is bogus. They already HAD their public disclosure, the clock is now ticking on anything in there they would want to patent. So its a bogus excuse for the "The UI is still 1AM3"
Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:5, Insightful)
And this, kids, is the difference between 'reporting' and 'journalism'. We've just had our standards lowered by the willingness of our mainstream media to report anything - rumors, opinions, lightly edited press releases, as "news" and run on to the next hot topic and pray that you don't change the channel during the ads.
Blogging isn't going to replace journalism because of these exact problems. Blogging might do a lot of harm to the mainstream US news media but it's their own damn fault for abandoning true journalism and resorting to showing the same video clip everyone else has, just 2 minutes earlier and with more sensationalistic or opinionated commentary.
"The news is just a TV show, get past it" - Dilated Peoples
Re:Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:2)
However, it's becoming quite clear that blogs aren't anymore trust worthy than traditional journalism. And once the public becomes aware of that fact, blogs will die a pretty quick death.
Re:Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:2)
I don't think blogging is going to fade in the slightest - today's bloggers aren't paid to do what they do, and very few are trying to change the world. They exist because opinionated people and depressed 16 year old girls like tal
Re:Time of Death: 10:30 AM EST, 2 May 2005 (Score:2)
How about this? (Score:3, Funny)
"You will feel much better about that Mac, once you realize that you could have waited a lot longer for a lot less."
Now, where is my money?
Hey, check this out! (Score:2, Interesting)
Kinda reminds me of the way McDonalds pays rappers for rapping abo
Re:Hey, check this out! (Score:3, Funny)
Listen to my DRM on my Dell pimpin' my Longhorn straight outa Redmond
Here's a Novel Idea... (Score:2)
So what? (Score:5, Funny)
Linux isn't proprietary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
People are getting paid to hype up Linux on Slashdot? Funny, they must have forgotten to mail my check...
This isn't too surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
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)).
bloggers and MS (Score:2)
Why is it "nice" to see that Microsoft is "recognizing the power of blogs"? Was the blogging world hurting before now due to lack of respect from Redmond? Were bloggers stinted by a lack of support from Microsoft? No, bloggers did just fine without showing up on Microsoft's radar, thank you.
Will Blog For Cash... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
I don't see the value (Score:2)
They will be primarily preaching to the choir as far as users go, so I guess their role is to convince people that they need to upgrade. This ought could be an interesting experiment, if not a humorous one.
Blogging down the tubes just like print media (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing's for sure... (Score:2)
Bill Gates' blog... (Score:4, Funny)
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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Re:Bill Gates' blog... (Score:3, Interesting)
Today at the airport I saw a $100 bill, but left it lying there. It's just not worth it.
Bzzt. Bill is the kind of guy who would pick it up and put it in his pocket. In Bob Cringeley's Accidental Empires there's a good example of this sort of thing where he waits in line at a 7-11 to get his discount stamps and gets ribbed by the cashier to the tune of "come back when you make your first million."
Bill was already a billionaire by then.
Bloggers vs. other 'traditional' outlets (Score:2, Insightful)
Day 1: Microsoft hires blogger x for Longhorn adverts/hype.
Day 8: Microsoft unsatisfied with blog commentary.
Day 12: Microsoft pulls funding citing services paid for not provided.
Day 15: Blogger now blogs to anti-hype Longhorn out of spite.
Now, I'm sure that Microsoft wil
capitalism/commercialism is dirty indeed (Score:2)
This is stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
A question (Score:3, Funny)
The possibility of real engagement. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Microsoft welcoming bloggers... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what are Microsoft thinking bloggers should write about?
"WOW I JUST SAW THIS NEW UI AND LONGHORN LOKS SO COL AND IT WIL KIK APLAS BUTT SO HARD!11!1!!1 WTF DID U HAAR ABOUT TEH NEW COOL DOT NET TECHS!!111!!1 WHAT F3ATURAS THERE PLANNIG?????!!?? OMG I HAEV NO IEDA YET BUT IMM SURA ITL B AEWSOM31111 OMG WTF"
Re:First "Comparison to GW" Post (Score:3, Funny)
Re:great (Score:2)
Yeah, I was expecting the New York Times to sue bloggers for plagiarizing their business model, but then I remembered that so much of the New York Times is plagiarized to begin with that they wouldn't stand a chance.