David Pogue after prostitutes who blog with Acers from MSFT

David Pogue went after the bloggers who have agreed to whore for MSFT (about
90-100 maybe considerably more) by accepting laptops, desktops and other
goodies in the $2500 range. I know this is not the first or last time MSFT
has bribed bloggers with $2000-4000 worth of hardware. They've done even
worse, they paid $27,000 to Jack Abramoff facilitator and Siamese twin Ralph
Reed who was such a scum bag the Republican party repudiated him in a state
where 40% of the Voters are born again evangelicals and 79% of that 40%
voted for a conservative Republican governor who is trying to be the metro
area's poorly educated daddy by vetoing Sunday liquor sales voted on by
locality.

I thought about this for a month, read all the "I'm not a whore but I like
to sell myself and take the $2-3000 worth of swag in the form factor of
high end laptops when a good part of my blog is spent analyzing and
reviewing MSFT software" and I agree with Pogue.

This subset of bloggers that MSFT calls something like Windows facilitators
or whatever Nick White, PM for Windows Marketing Communications has been
calling them on his blog the past few weeks,likes to consider themselves
journalists. Journalists absolutely don't accept bribes worth several
thousand bucks while writing about the companies products in most of their
blog content.

One of the most effective and skillful Windows users and MSFT watchers is Ed
Bott who accepts none of this but could easily get it. That's because he
knows the difference.

If you're one of the whores and you've written some bull**** like this piece
of crap from Blake Handler who has been handled and greased by MSFT
marketing, you must think the rest of us are really stupid because we have
actually been able to use Vista and use it well without the new $3000 PC
that MSFT bribed you with:

"Being provided an evaluation computer from Acer is not a 'bribe,'" argued
blogger Blake Handler, after receiving one of the free laptops. "It simply
allows me to accelerate my evaluations, documentation and demonstrations of
Windows Vista."

Give me a break. "It allows [you] to accelerate [your] evaluations" my ass.
If you want to accelerate your evaluations, drill into Vista and write about
it or start reading and learn Vista better.

MSFT should issue a "Whore seal of approval" that would be the Windows Vista
logo with the Word whore emblazoned on it.

Pogue wrote (and I agree):

A Wake-Up Call to Microsoft's PR Team
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007...osofts-pr-team/


From the January 1, 2007, edition of The New York Times:

"Several bloggers reported last week that they had received Acer Ferrari
laptops, which can sell for more than $2,200, from Microsoft. A spokeswoman
for Microsoft confirmed on Friday that the company had sent out about 90
computers to bloggers who write about technology and other subjects" that
could be affected by the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating
system.

"Being provided an evaluation computer from Acer is not a 'bribe,'" argued
blogger Blake Handler, after receiving one of the free laptops. "It simply
allows me to accelerate my evaluations, documentation and demonstrations of
Windows Vista."

OMG! You've got to be kidding me, Blake. I guess just being *lent* a laptop
wouldn't have been enough to accelerate your evaluations? I guess only being
given a freebie from Microsoft would do the trick.

Now, I realize it must be hard to send a shiny new laptop back to the mother
ship just because it's the right thing to do. Still, I think very little of
the bloggers who are keeping Microsoft's bribe laptops.

Clearly, they're exploiting the lawless, Brave New World of the blogsophere,
where, since they're Not Quite Journalists, they don't feel constrained by
any of those pesky journalistic ethics guidelines. Like the one that says,
"You don't keep $2,200 gifts from the subject of your review. You might
think you can still write an impartial review, but it's highly unlikely-and
either way, nobody will believe it."

But Microsoft gets much of the blame, too. It deliberately exploited a weak
spot in today's court of public opinion: how bloggers influence consumers,
but generally don't have conflict-of-interest policies.

Now, I realize that this isn't exactly breaking news; in fact, it's three
weeks old. I wasn't even going to bring it up, but yesterday I remembered
something: this isn't the first time.

In fact, Microsoft has tried to buy public opinion in secret over and over
again in the last few years. Here are a few examples-mainly, the ones where
Microsoft was caught:

In 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported that Microsoft, during its antitrust
trials, hired PR companies to flood newspapers with fake letters of support,
bearing ordinary individuals' names but actually written by Microsoft PR
staff.

Later, during the antitrust trials, Microsoft attempted to prove the
inseparability of Windows and Internet Explorer by playing a video for the
judge. But the government's lawyer noticed that as the tape rolled on, the
number of icons on the desktop kept changing. Microsoft had spliced together
footage from different computers to make its point.

Then in 2002, Microsoft's Web site featured a testimonial called
"Confessions of a Mac to PC Convert," a first-person account by an
attractive brunette "freelance writer" about how she had fallen in love with
Windows XP.

Unfortunately, a Slashdot member discovered that the identical photo was
available for rent from the stock-photo libraries of GettyImages.com. Sure
enough: Microsoft had hired a PR firm to write the testimonial. The
"switcher" did not actually exist.

I am not, and never will be, a knee-jerk Microsoft basher. I'll give its
products good reviews whenever they're deserved (as I have with, for
example, Media Center, Windows Vista and Office 2007).

But for goodness' sake: Why is Microsoft so insecure? Why can't it allow its
software to stand on its own? Why does it feel the necessity to spin public
opinion using these phony "grass-roots" marketing tactics?

Here's a wake-up call to the Machiavellis on Microsoft's PR team: bribing
bloggers, fabricating reviews and making up letters to the editor makes the
company look worse, not better.

If Microsoft really wants to earn high marks from the public, it might want
to consider earning them the old-fashioned way: By creating products people
love.


http://www.nytimes.com/technology/p...ml?8cir&emc=cir

http://www.davidpogue.com/

CH