Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy

Tivo tries out PayPerPost- essentially pseudo viral marketing where you pay people for creating advertising for you and getting it out on the net. Unsurprisingly, when this all came out, people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.

It's "TiVo".

You didn't capitalize the V.

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I'd be more worried about the "stretegy"/strategy/strategery [wikipedia.org] mixup....

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Also it's supposed to be spelled "stretegery".

New Funding for Slashdot?

Maybe Slashdot should try this. Let's see,
1. Charge per post
2. ???*
3. Profit

  (*everyone leaves because we all spend too much time on Slashdot to earn enough money to pay for our posts)

Damn ads

people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.

Yeah, real professional commentary there. Anyhow, why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is? Everything from credit counseling to floor polish seems to have them these days. Seriously, can't they come up with something more original? I don't want to see a bunch of paid actors gushing about how fantastic a product is, I want to know what it does and why I should buy it. The most amusing one I saw was for a product that helps you store your kitchen roll by hooking a container over a door. The people were like "it's changed my life", "life is so much easier now"...I mean, what the FUCK? How messed up does your life have to be that where you store your kitchen roll has a profound impact on the quality of your life!?

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They're banking on the social "word of mouth" style of advertising. It's the old psychological thing of "Oh hey! Bob's using it and he's doing well. I might as well too so I can do well!" That's why they have these "real" people give testimonials about the

Re:Damn ads

I'm concerned now, as I have no idea what a kitchen roll is, and apparently, I could be using one to change my life.

(I'll jump in here and ruin the joke myself, to beat the inevitable interlopers to it, 'kitchen roll' is apparently how some British people refer to paper towels)

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Kitchen roll is a, usually perforated, roll of absorbent paper for use in the kitchen hence the term "Kitchen Roll".

Toilet roll is a, usually perforated, roll of abosrbent paper for use in the toilet.

Paper towels are squares, or rectangles, of absorbent pa

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In the house I grew up in Paper towels came in a two foot long roll.
asswipe, toilet tisue, tp, whatever came in a 6 inch roll.
paper napkins came in a stack.
tissues came in a box (and let's not have any banter about what comes in a tissue)

that doesn't mean

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Vive la difference !

In my house we didn't have a Moma, the matriarch was referred to as Mum or in northern parts as Mom. It's possible some households referred to toilet paper as arse-wipes but never asswipes and they would be presented on a 15.24cm carboa

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Incidentally, is your toilet paper really 6inches wide ?

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We've got some big assholes over here. They tend to be very publicly visible and hold a wide variety of elected positions. I'm surprised you're not familiar with them.

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I'll thank you to leave my tiny, child like hands out of the discussion.

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If you aren't going to read the comments, you should go ahead and get an account.

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You made my day.

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> why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is?

My fav is a Car Trade-in one... the guy talks about how he didn't have time to sell it himself or shop around, so he just went to [Co

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I have four words for you: most people are stupid. That's why they fall for the same advertising strategy time and time again. The more intelligent among us just want to know the facts: this is what the product is, this is what it does, this is why you

It's money

C'mon, folks, Lindsay Wagner is a washed up actress with no career left. She said it worked well for her on TV because they paid her lots of money to say it worked well for her on TV. Duh.

The logic here is that a company that has the money to pay an actress to promote her product is a company that also has the money to potentially handle the engineering and support correctly.

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McDonald's has historically had the cash to pay lots of actors, big-name sports stars, etc., to promote their product. Do you think that their product is 'engineered' and 'supported correctly?'

And, no, it's not an exception -- it's the rule. Companies ma

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"If you could figure out a way to market sh** well, you'd make a gazillion dollars selling your turds."

http://www.moodoo.com/moo_doo.htm [moodoo.com]

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I have four words for you: most people are stupid.

That's not four words!

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On my website I have a lot of "reviews" of restaurants in my area. Many of these I write about before they even open their doors to obtain a good Google search ranking so that when they do open I can capture many of the first searchers for them. When I d

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And if you call in the next fifteen minutes, shipping is free!

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I hate GWB, but any video on youtube with Yakety-Sax in the background is serious business!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cMO8Pyi3UpY [youtube.com]

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It needs the crowd of mostly naked women and a small ugly bald man, running around chasing the star, and vice versa.

But it's still surprisingly funny.

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Stairs?

Woe be to TiVo

I hate to say it, but I can't say I'm surprised. Seems that in recent years TiVO has been losing support from their most-ardent fans -- the longtime TiVo owners (like myself). Tivo has squandered a lot of the goodwill from their own community.

• There have been a lot of crazy pricing structure changes, all of which are more expensive than previously.
• Tivo now wants a minimum one-year "lock-in" similar to the cell-phone dealers. You cannot try the service for a couple of months to see if you like it.
• They ended the Lifetime Subscription option which was popular with folks who hate recurring bills.
• After a year on the market there are serious questions about the performance and reliability of their newest and most-expensive HiDef units. And its incompatible with the new SDV (Switched Digital Video) being introduced on a lot of cable systems.
• Encroachment of more and more insidious kinds of advertising on a machine already expensive to buy and maintain.
• Customer service leaves a lot wanting. For the cost, you'd think they would have better/more-knowledgable CSRs without the long wait-times.
• And most-dangerously... inexpensive, competing units direct from the Cable Companies and Satellite vendors which have moved from "outright horrible" to "moderately usable". TiVo is fighting a war of attrition.

Tivo's biggest problem seems to be losing evangelism from their (former) biggest fans. It's too expensive and the lock-in seems abusive. And without the Lifetime to fall back on, I can't really recommend it anymore. I'm not the only old-timer who feels this way.

It's no wonder they need to turn to astroturfing.

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Seriously, there's no reason to buy a TiVo any more. Most people already pay their cable company for the only thing that TiVo actually offers, which is the TV guide.

Otherwise, you're always better off renting a DVR from the cable company. Hard drives last

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The cable dvr is != tivo.
It's not the TV guide that is the "Tivo" stuff it's the interface to the guide info. That's the trick that makes me go back to my regular def tivo vs a hi-def box from comcast. Tivo has a lot of obvious features that the other int

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It's no wonder they need to turn to astroturfing.

As opposed to just making things better.

I guess that's why they call them "the good old days."

There's still a lot of potential in TiVo, but, unfortunately, the company as a whole has gotten kicked around pretty good by analysts and profitability and the w

ReplayTV was better

I disagree that "TiVo certainly was the best of class for a while". TiVo was the most popular, but ReplayTV had a much better interface and automatically skipped commercials if you wanted it to. I had a 1st generation TiVo, but ditched it as soon as I sa

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Agreed. TiVo had that magic branding. I couldn't even mention my Replay most of the time without saying "it's like a TiVo". Also worth noting is the fact that it records in MPEG2 and had a NIC for easy transfer to my PC. For the record mine is still runn

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You forgot that the term TiVOization was coined to fit the worse Evil(TM) TiVO has been doing... ;-)

TiVo has finally awakened.

Well just going by your list of bullet points it seems TiVo finally woke up and joined the rest of the corporate world. Same shit, different company.

TiVo Jumped the Shark?

Does this mean they've Jumped the Shark? Are they doomed now?

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The piss-slow processors they put in these things is infuriating. Press 'guide' and it takes a full 3-seconds for anything to happen. Same for changing channels, etc.

MAN!

Who really cares about TiVo? I switched from them to the DirectTV DVR (HD) and never looked back. Sure, I miss some of the functionality, but then I don't miss them deleting shows I recorded because they have "Timed Out". TiVo can suck it.

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"Because they have timed out"? Do you mean, because you're too lazy to manage your hard drive space and set "Keep until..." and/or look in the "Deleted Items" folder, and you tend to ignore the large easy-to-read icons that are placed there to let you kno

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You know....You don't even know me so how about you gofuckyourself?

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You honestly think DirecTV DVR is better than Tivo? Or are you a paid viral marketer for DirecTV?

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I honestly think it is better. I had all kinds of problems with TiVo, it would freeze up, there was a very bad delay between when I pushed a remote button, and when it actually received and processed the command, sometimes up to 30 seconds. Tuners went o

Tool video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiV_ue-PbL4 [youtube.com]

stupid covert ads

I hate it when companies like Tivo do dishonest things like paying people to write crappy covert ads for them. At least when I get stressed out like this, I can calm down by smoking Laramies or Laramie Extra-Tars. The clean refreshing taste of Laramie. Start smoking them today, or you'll live to regret it!

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Start smoking them today, or you'll live to regret it!

Are you implying that Laramie smokers won't regret their decision, or just that they won't live long enough to regret it? ;-)

For years I have know how Slimy TIVO is

Hence my screen name. They royally screwed an avid fan at version 1! ME!

I've been rooting for them to go down in flames ever since.

Love my 3 yr old HD-PVR from Brighthouse!

Tools ...

...made from high grade steel with ergonomic rubber grips. I use them all the time and they're great. Can be found at your local Home Depot.

(Where's my money?)

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It's not about marketing, it's about TiVo.

Slashdotters tend to be heavy in the fanboi stuff - which is why TiVo and Apple come up so often. Note that TiVo is linux based and Apple is a computer company...mostly, so they technically fit the nerd mold, but r

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Tivo is a very interesting bit of disruptive technology.

It's ability to disrupt is directly proportional to how
well Tivo Corp does the whole "being a company" thing.