01.23.09
Quick Mention: Sony is AstroTurfing, Just Like Microsoft
Sony games the Web
Makers of exploding batteries and deadly CD-ROM DRM are still up to no good. Belkin got busted for breaking EU law some days ago by AstroTurfing (under product reviews). It turns out that Sony’s spiel ain’t much better and it resembles Microsoft's.
What’s probably most fascinating is the reason why it came to light.
in 2006 Zipatoni was the company behind the disastrously stupid “fake” viral marketing campaign known as All I Want For Xmas is a PSP. After that was exposed, blogs went to town making fun of Sony… and Zipatoni. As part of that, people went to the whois and “outed” Meyerkord, including calling him a “douchebag.”
More details are here.
Unfortunately for Sony–and Meyerkord–the campaign did not go well. Bloggers and others got suspicious of the overly colloquial site, unmasked the astroturfing and decided to “out” the people involved. They pulled up the Whois records, saw the outdated information that Meyerkord was the registrant, and mistakenly assumed he was involved in the campaign.
Waggener Edstrom is responsible for similar services that it offers Microsoft, as we noted in past writings (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]). Microsoft employs other, similarly unethical ‘marketing’ agencies such as Edelman. With the potentially sharp decline in Microsoft's contractors spendings (Microsoft offshores its AstroTurfing, primarily for ‘buffer zones’), there will hopefully be a lot less of its slanderous Web pollution. █
“Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of the computer industry.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
The Mad Hatter said,
January 24, 2009 at 1:18 am
No, they will cut programmers first. Microsoft knows what is important.
Pardon me if I’m a bit nasty tonight, lot of pain, took extra pain killers, and now I’m more than a bit stoned.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 5:59 am
A cynic would say that the core of the company is marketing and law, so programmers are just a luxury.
“Usually Microsoft doesn’t develop products, we buy products.”
–Arno Edelmann, Microsoft’s European business security product manager
The Mad Hatter said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:37 am
Roy,
No one in their right mind would consider Microsoft a marketing company. Microsoft’s incompetence at marketing shows up time and time again, for example:
1) Seinfield Commercials
2) Windows 95 “Start me Up” commericals
3) MSN butterfly commercials
The only reason that Microsoft has the market share that they do, is that they negotiate with the OEMS to prevent other operating systems from being installed. If it wasn’t for that, they’d have diddly.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 24, 2009 at 10:49 am
It’s that part too which there were found guilty of.