Home Messages Index
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index

Re: [News] Astroturfing Carries On, Microsoft Included

flatfish+++ <flatfish@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:04:22 -0500, Oliver Wong wrote:
>
>> 
>> "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
>> news:3626885.KhivHDgZUz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> __/ [ Oliver Wong ] on Thursday 11 January 2007 18:24 \__
>>>
>>>> "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>> news:10181412.LsVkh6K5l2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> Yelp reviewers paid for their opinions
>>>>>
>>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>> | The Los Angeles Times in 2001 reported that Microsoft arranged
>>>>> | to have hundreds of letters criticizing the US Justice Department's
>>>>> | antitrust action against the software maker mailed to newspapers
>>>>> | across the country. In some cases the screeds bore the signatures
>>>>> | of dead people and non-existent addresses.
>>>>> `----
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/10/yelp_reviewers_paid/
>>>>
>>>>     Roy, you claimed that if the subject lines were misleading, it was
>>>> unintentional because you skimmed through the articles too quickly. So 
>>>> I'm
>>>> pointing out to you now that this subject line is misleading. It implies
>>>> that Microsoft is "carrying on" astroturfing, but the article you posted 
>>>> is
>>>> about an unrelated company called Yelp, and only mentions Microsoft in
>>>> passing for something they did 6 years ago (2001). (Incidentally, the
>>>> article also accuses Netscape and Sony of astroturfing).
>>>>
>>>>     MS may or may not be astroturfing currently, but the evidence 
>>>> presented
>>>> in this article do not support the claim either way.
>>>
>>> Have you read the related stories at all? This is still going on, at 
>>> immense
>>> scale.
>> 
>>     No. From past experience, I assumed you posted one new article, made a 
>> few comments, and then reposted a bunch of "related" articles which you had 
>> already posted in the newsgroup. So I tend to skip over those latter 
>> articles, as I've probably already read them the first time you posted them.
>> 
>>     Now that I've taken a glance at your related stories, it seems you are 
>> trying to make it look like astroturfing is carrying on at an immense scale 
>> by posting lots and lots of articles and hoping nobody actually reads the 
>> articles. For example, you write:
>> 
>> <quote>
>> Notable examples of viral marketing
>> 
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | # ilovebees.com - viral marketing for Halo 2
>> | # Hotmail, promoted largely by links at the bottoms of emails sent by
>> | its users, is the classic viral marketing example
>> | # Microsoft's Origami Project campaign
>> | # Microsoft's Xbox 360 campaign, called OurColony
>> `----
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
>> </quote>
>> 
>>     And yes, these are examples of viral marketing, but they are not example 
>> of astroturfing. "Hotmail, promoted largely by links at the bottom of 
>> e-mails sent by its users", is not an example of Microsoft posing as 
>> bloggers who support Microsoft.
>> 
>>     Viral marketting is not in itself bad. From the Wikipedia article:
>> 
>> <quote>
>> Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use 
>> pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, 
>> through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of 
>> pathological and computer viruses. It can often be word-of-mouth delivered 
>> and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and 
>> can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.
>> </quote>
>> 
>>     Note that this is the kind of advertising that Linux typical employs. If 
>> you tell your friends to switch to Linux, and then they do, and then they 
>> tell THEIR friends to switch to Linux, and so on, that's a form of viral 
>> marketting.
>> 
>>     - Oliver
>
>
> Roy Schestowitz's new technique is "The Ballard method" which in a
> nutshell means he is trying to baffle the user with quantity of words,
> links etc in the hopes that the reader will give up, accept the message as
> gospel and move on.
>
> How this bozo, Roy Schestowitz, has the time to do this is beyond me.
> Maybe he has his undergraduate students doing it for extra credit.
>  

This Roy is a professor of Computer Science by a University or
something? This is goodnews of a large amount when this is true. More
students to be using the Linux is better no?

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Author IndexDate IndexThread Index