Tony Healy writes:
Microsoft and PR firm Edelman have been sprung in an embarrasing pseudo astroturf operation intended to promote the forthcoming operating system Vista.
Microsoft gave $3,000 laptop computers to a number of generally inexperienced bloggers, ostensibly so they could review Vista. The action was unusual because software firms don’t usually provide computers to reviewers. Even computer makers, who do, generally require them to be returned. So Microsoft was clearly providing an unusual and expensive gift to the bloggers. Second, the campaign excluded normal reviewers and journalists.
It thus seems to have been designed to develop enthusiasm and loyalty among a seed group of bloggers that were seen as pliant and gullible, and who could be used a foil against any criticism by professional reviewers.
Edelman has been involved in other blogging astroturf operations, including one for low-paying US retailer Walmart, where the firm funded a cross country trip by supposed bloggers that regularly featured interviews with happy Walmart workers. Edelman employs well known blogging consultant Steve Rubel who, in 2005, told Business Week that:
companies have to learn to … pinpoint influential bloggers, and figure out how to buttonhole them, privately and publicly.
The early posts of Microsoft’s laptop recipients seemed to bear out this strategy. Blogger Brandon LeBlanc, on receiving his laptop on 23 December 2006, wrote as if he had bought the new computer himself. He made no mention of the fact it had arrived in the post from Microsoft. LeBlanc wrote:
During the holidays I’ll be busy playing with my new laptop – the AcerFerrari 5000. Yup, I traded in my Dell XPS 1710 for a little something different.
We would never have known that many Vista enthusiasts had received generous freebies if one of the recipients, Long Zheng, hadn’t told us, and if reporter Dan Warne hadn’t drawn international attention to the campaign.
The international attention brought condemnation from slashdot and renowned software industry writer Joel Spolsky, who described the campaign as a bribe to bloggers.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that this is ethically
indistinguishable from bribery. Even if no quid-pro-quo is formally required, the gift creates a social obligation of reciprocity. ….The blogger will feel some obligation to return the favor to Microsoft.These gifts reduce the public trust in blogs…This is the most frustrating thing about the practice of giving bloggers free stuff: it pisses in the well, reducing the credibility of all blogs. I’m upset that people trust me less because of the behavior of other bloggers.
Microsoft itself clearly understands the dangers of free gifts, because it warns intending suppliers that they must not offer gifts of more than $200 to Microsoft employees. Its instructions to vendors warn that:
… the Vendor and/or its Representatives will refrain from giving Microsoft employees an individual gift or a combination of gifts with a value greater than $200.00 and never offer a bribe, kickback, bartering arrangement for goods or services, and/or any other incentive to a Microsoft employee in order to obtain or retain Microsoft business.
With its campaign having been exposed, Microsoft has now instructed the bloggers to return the laptops, confirming that it sees no legitimate defence for its campaign.
If nothing else, Microsoft’s behaviour exposes rank hypocrisy.
Much of the popular discussion of the campaign misses the point, concentrating on the bloggers’ behaviour, and excusing the campaign as normal marketing. But the behaviour of the bloggers is not the main issue because they didn’t initiate the campaign. Microsoft and Edelman did, and they did it with the intention of compromising the independence of those bloggers.
Many of the bloggers don’t seem to understand this ethical subtlety, and the way they themselves are victims of this campaign. Consultant Mitch Denny, for example, has written several self-serving justifications.
Similarly, firms are free to market any way that’s legal. But as customers and citizens we also require that marketing not be deceitful. Many corporations also hold to those practices, and Microsoft in the old days was one of those companies. Microsoft’s involvement in a campaign like this suggests those days are past.
Busted!
A report in The Australian says that blogs secretly manipulated by advertisers break US law (by misleading consumers) and could face prosecution.
It’s also instructive to contrast the amateurish defences of these practices in the IT industry with much sterner treatment in the pharmaceutical industry. Medicines Australia, itself an industry group, has fined pharmaceutical companies $260,000 and ordered several to withdraw advertising from magazines. It says:
Microsoft never marketed like this… probably because it never needed to. It has several problems – the biggest of which is sheer inertia. For most, XP is just “good enough”. What do people really want to do with their PCs? Play games, chat, email and browse the internet, plus editing the odd office document. My father is still happy enough with Win2000. He sees no real reason to upgrade. Nor do I. (And if I did, I would be more tempted to go to Ubuntu instead.)
Plus with all its alleged architectural improvements, which do you need a top of the line computer to run it? As Spolsky says – you shouldn’t even take an existing XP computer that’s Vista-compatible. He recommends you take a new computer with Vista installed. Great, so that $320 (Aus or US) for the software, plus another 1000 or 1500 for the actual machine.
Actually, I think I can guess the reason why you need top of the line computers – Microsoft’s arse-ended approach to digital rights management – or DRM for short. Degraded performance, degraded quality of playback, software bloat, and all to prevent people copying HD-DVDs and streaming files. Some people have gone so far as to call Vista the longest suicide note in history. So would that make it Microsoft’s equivalent to Fightback?
The link above? Essential reading, BTW. It makes Vista sound less like an upgrade, and more like a degrade.
The bottom line is that Microsoft’s bottom line isn’t going to be too healthy with Vista for the first few months. Especially when a lot of professionals are aware of this rule of thumb in the industry: Wait until the first service pack is available.
If Microsoft cured AIDS and offered free vaccinations for the entire world, people would still complain.
Note to Microsoft: I like you plenty already, but I am lazy. Send my free laptops and I’ll blog about Vista until my fingers bleed.
And of course, astroturfing has never been conducted through the mainstream media…
Down and Out, yes, I think this behaviour marks a sea change at Microsoft. It’s a change that’s been occurring for the past few years.
Yobbo, this is not a Microsoft bashing post. I am a big supporter of Microsoft’s achievements and of the role of IP in software.
This is about sleazy marketing practices. Have a read of the first three links in the post, regarding Edelman’s previous operations.
Robert, you agree though that astroturfing is bad whereever it occurs?
Down and Out in Sà i Gòn said: “My father is still happy enough with Win2000. He sees no real reason to upgrade. Nor do I. (And if I did, I would be more tempted to go to Ubuntu instead.)”
You’d have to be crazy to buy anything Microsoft makes today……..
This is sent from a Linux Suse 10.1 machine. All the software in it was FREE. An entire office suite, a ‘photoshop’ like program, etc etc. $FREE.
My wife’s machine uses Ubuntu 6.1. It’s even better than Suse!
Cop this: once installed, Ubuntu has a program built into it called Synoptic. You click on ‘add software’, it reads your hard drive, compliling what’s already on it, and then asks you what you would like to have from a list of, I don’t know, 200 programs?
The list reviews the software, gives a popularity rating and links to their creators’ websites. You just tick the boxes opposite the programs you want, click OK, and it downloads them all from the ‘net AND installs them automatically while you have a cup of your favourite poison. And you don’t even have to re-start your computer, because Linux is like that. Bomb- proof.
Furthermore, Ubuntu runs just fine on our antique P433 (yes, that’s 433 MHz!) computer.
The days of having to be a ‘geek’ to use Linux are over. Maybe that’s why Microsoft is getting worried.
Mike S.
Tony, that is an eloquent and compelling summary of the whole sorry fiasco.
Microsoft’s policy for vendor gifts is particularly interesting. “Don’t bribe us, we’ll bribe you”…?
It’s also a powerful point that you make about the bloggers being the real victims here of an orchestrated under-the-table marketing scheme that has badly backfired.
I feel for Brandon LeBlanc who has attracted endless vitriol from readers for breaching ethical standards, when it’s possible that he simply hadn’t spent time thinking through the impact of accepting vendor gifts.
It’s a bit like theft: most people who see the big picture realise that stealing from your employer puts at risk your whole livelihood and career. Accepting a gift worth thousands of dollars from a company you write about it is a bit like that, and I think Brandon and other bloggers have now learned that the hard way (though most have also been contrite and organised to dispose of the laptop, which goes a long way to mitigating the situations.)
What I’m now wondering now is who the 90 bloggers who received the laptops were. We probably know of about 15 of them that have disclosed… what about the other 75!?
From a Mac user’s POV, this whole thing is so funny.
This is a curious little piece quoted on Microsoft.com (obviously it’s not core Microsoft policy but it’s something to reflect upon when evaluating the overall culture at Microsoft):
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480154.aspx
It’s from “The Art of Project Management — In this chapter excerpt from his book, The Art of Project Management, Scott Berkun recounts what it took for him to be successful at Microsoft as a project manager.”
“Call in favors, beg, and bribe. Make use of the credibility or generosity you’ve developed a reputation for. If you need an engineer to do extra work for you, either because you missed something or a late requirement came in, ask her to do you a favor. Go outside the boundaries of the strict working relationship, and ask. Offer to buy her dinner ($20 is often well worth whatever the favor is), or tell her that you owe her one (and do hold yourself to this). The worst thing that can happen is that she’ll say no. The more favors you’ve done for others, the more chips you’ll have to bank on. Also, consider working three-way trades (e.g., in the game Settlers of Cattan) if you know of something she wants that you can get from someone else. It’s not unethical to offer people things that will convince them to help with work that needs to be done.”
Thanks Dan.
Another issue here is that many of the laptop recipients, like Denny and LeBlanc, were actually MVPs [1], so they already had Vista and good computers.
To do reviews of Vista, those people didn’t need the package Microsoft sent them. Microsoft and Edelman knew that. The conclusion can only be that this was intended as a bribe.
Many of the recipients argue that Microsoft made no explicit demands, but that’s naive. They don’t need to. The recipients know which types of coverage Microsoft would condone and which it would punish.
It’s like trying to bribe police. A speeding driver who hands over wads of cash to the officer who stops him will be charged with attempted bribery. He doesn’t have to state the reason for the cash, because it’s obvious.
LP’ers interested in the history of this expose can see Dan Warne’s initial responses on Long Zheng’s thread.
trackback.
Microsoft’s AIDS cure would probably entail a world-wide transmission of Bird Flu hybridised with Mad Cow Disease.
Of course I think astroturfing is bad. And anybody that think that Microsoft are virgins at it are kidding themselves (I am an unashamed Microsoft basher). I was just trying to make the point that claiming that the existence of astroturfing in blogs is highly unsurprising, and doesn’t uniquely condemn the medium.
Blogs are classic examples of Sturgeon’s Law in action.
Eric Raymond reckons that 2008 will be a watershed year, as firms go from 32 bit computing to 64 bit computing. Who can gain control of this – Microsoft, Apple or Linux – will have control of operating systems for the next 40 years. Again, I’m not too convinced – as I argued before, inertia will be the main victor for the first few years. But perhaps there are people in MS who are panicking at the moment – fearing their loss of dominance, and so launching into dodgy astroturfing campaigns. It explains a lot.
Mike: it’s still an advantage in being a geek to use Linux. I installed Ubuntu on a partition of my machine, and I like it – but there are a lot of rough edges that needed to be sorted out: getting the ethernet/Internet working, and recognizing the NTFS partitions on my machine. Plus the resolution never got beyong 600 x 800, even with open source drivers provided by Intel. And if I get wireless, I hear it’s a bitch to get working. It’s one of the things where the Open Source world falls down – people writing the setup routines lack empathy with the end user.
@Dan,
You have crossed the line, you can’t go back. The value doesn’t matter, the fact that they included a computer with it doesn’t matter. I fail to see the difference between a hardware company providing it to your company to review. It would be the same as a company sending a PS3/Xbox/Wii along with a the game to review… Trying to say “They aren’t a hardware company” just it look like you feel they should have sent you one.
For the same reason, at least one of the schools I have talked to about this doesn’t pay a cent for any of the MS software it uses, and it uses a wider range that most would. No other company gets the same sort of look in because of this…
@Down and Out in Sà i Gòn,
Microsoft where one of the first tech companies with external blogs and realised earlier on the interaction that this could help create. Just look at blogs.msdn.com for an example. Then, look at Scoble and what his job previously was, Paul Thuriott and his site, along with positive relationships that MS had with the numerous tech magazines in Australia when they where previously the only way to get information (now I realise how mistaken half of them where).
As for the DRM and it’s longest suicide note in history. Firstly, the link is to the register… Enough said. Secondly, Microsoft want to be your lounge room (either via the machine or 360), and if it didn’t provide people with the opportunity to view Bluray/HD-DVD at full content, then people would complain. MS are more of a pawn in the DRM debate in this case (Plays for sure/… is another case).
As for Linux, I have heard for the last 5 odd years that it is close to taking over the world… Still hasn’t happened. Still won’t happen. It doesn’t have the traction, it won’t get the major support it needs in the corporate world and therefore it won’t flow down from there.
I’m a casual Ubuntuist also, on an elderly Mac laptop. Yes, getting networking right is a pain in the arse. Yes, you must read the manual. Yes, it’s rough as guts in places.
What it does as a desktop OS (and why I like it so much) is keep ageing and secondhand computers going indefinitely for nothing. Linux isn’t likely to take over the world as an OS for flash new desktops, but I can see it doing very well in third-world countries, in non-profit organisations, in businesses starting up from scratch, and in the hands of cash-strapped people everywhere.
“With its campaign having been exposed, Microsoft has now instructed the bloggers to return the laptops …”
But legally if you make a free gift of something, you cannot change your mind later and demand it back, can you? I hope those bloggers tell Microsoft to get stuffed and hold on to the laptops!
Most of those places where it’s rough as guts, it’s because the hardware manufacturers/other operating system developers/etc. etc. are deliberately making it tough for Linux to play nice with their stuff.
Robert, if you wanted, you could see this as a success for blogging, because it was exposed and rapidly examined via blogging.
That doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft and Edelman seem to have targeted people naive in using the media, and likely not to apply critical skills either to bribery or to the product Microsoft wished to see promoted. Generally speaking the people who received the laptops fit that category.
Strategically this is part of a bigger picture. For about three years Microsoft has been creating independent-seeming user communities that it controls via selectively resourcing and flattering selected “leaders.” I hadn’t realised this until the laptop scandal broke.
Down and Out in Sà i Gòn said:
Mike: it’s still an advantage in being a geek to use Linux. I installed Ubuntu on a partition of my machine, and I like it – but there are a lot of rough edges that needed to be sorted out: getting the ethernet/Internet working, and recognizing the NTFS partitions on my machine. Plus the resolution never got beyong 600 x 800, even with open source drivers provided by Intel. And if I get wireless, I hear it’s a bitch to get working. It’s one of the things where the Open Source world falls down – people writing the setup routines lack empathy with the end user.
Well that’s got me miffed…. Not only have we had no issues at all over networking, we network XP machines with Ubuntu with Suse AND VoIP telephony.
And I’m no geek.
Mike S
How is this any different from what companies do with most of the trade magazines? I remember years ago, PC Magazine reviewers often got free hardware and software. The company I worked for regularly sent them such, yet we see fair and honest reviews all the time from such places.
It seems somewhat strange to me to criticize a common industry practice simply because they’re targeting non-traditional reviewers.
Mike,
I’m sorry if I’ve got you miffed – but that was my experience. I could have taken a little bit more time to fix some things (like the resolution), but I was also in the process of moving house back to Oz.
Speaking of which, if you were one of those bloggers that got the free PCs, would it have been ethical to erase the partitions, and install Linux over it? (Probably not.)
pbkg,
I don’t know what you’ve got against El Reg. Insulting, inflammatory, etc. – but generally sceptical, which I appreciate. I’ll take it over the boilerplate “20 new features in Product X” [that I'll probably never use] articles – so common in the computer magazines – which often appear culled from corporate press releases.
Whatever you may think of that publication, it’s not so bad that any link positing via there makes it automatically bogs. The information comes originally from Peter Gutmann, a security researcher in Auckland, who likes cracking encryption algorithms for fun.
As for Open Source – I’d say it’s not doing so well on the desktop, but it’s in rude health on the server side in corporateland.
PBKG – There’s no question that the IT media gets a lot of free stuff — but usually not whole computers, and if we do, it’s usually a long term loan.
I think there are two key issues that delineate this particular gift from Microsoft from all the others:
- Microsoft doesn’t make or sell laptops, so giving them away makes it clear that it’s a genuine ‘gift’, not a product sample
- The fact that these were not product loans, but rather gifts with significant financial value.
It’s also curious that Microsoft only approached bloggers, not journalists, with this offer. I’ve tended to avoid using this point because it has the obvious comeback of “you’re just sour because you didn’t get one.” But if you can overlook that (rather obvious) response, isn’t it telling that Microsoft didn’t try the strategy with journos?
I personally think it’s because Microsoft knew there were ethical problems with the strategy, and if they offered it to a journalist, the potential scandal would be much greater than the potential benefit of having the hardware in the hands of journos. Bloggers on the other hand may not realise the risk to their reputation in accepting such valuable gifts.
It is also devious the way Microsoft and Edelman turned this around into being about the bloggers, when it was their own behaviour in providing the gifts that creates the ethical quandary.
Microsoft’s local manager for these “evangelism” programs, Frank Arrigo, thinks it’s a big joke.
I left this comment on his blog.
Frank, it’s great that you take ethics so seriously.
There are a number of questions you need to answer about this.
First, Microsoft’s own policy towards vendors bans them from giving gifts to your staff, so you clearly understand the problems with expensive gifts. So why did you give expensive gifts to bloggers from whom you expected reviews of Vista?
Second, if your aim was to assist in reviews, why did you exclude professional journalists and experienced reviewers?
Third, if you argue the bloggers needed the gifts to do the reviews, why did you send them to MVPs who you know have Vista and good computers already?
Fourth, why do you try to shift the blame for this onto the recipients of the laptops? It is Microsoft and Edelman who made these donations, not the bloggers. The bloggers have done nothing wrong, although your actions have exposed some of them to considerable stress.
tony
long time no talk
i don’t see it as a joke.
i do think it is a storm in a teacup
but what would I know – i am not a journalist
once the news from ces and macworld hits, all of this will yesterday’s news.
Down and Out in Sà i Gòn,
I rank the register up there with the herald sun in terms of it’s overall reliability and correctness. I have been hunting for the latest article where they messed up, but I can’t find it at the moment. But it has a long history of just not getting technology.
And the same thing goes for the linked article/site. Apart from the horribleness of the site (hyperlinks have been invented for a good reason, particularly when using footnotes, and I wish people would use them more!!! grrr), the article suffers from a lack of knowledge of things, and as well a relatively high bias. Just because someone knows encryption relatively well, doesn’t mean though know anything about other computer technology. It all comes from an approach which is anti DRM, anti MS, and anti the PC moving into the lounge room. I just think the whole thing is a joke, because all of this is going to have a similar effect on Apple as well with the next release of OS X also including these sorts of updates. But, the author just seems to want to jump on the MS bashing bandwagon. Fair enough if it is valid, but in this case it isn’t.
@Dan,
Yeah, I read that already, and responded already. Here is another example of MS providing top of the line hardware to test on. The TV being a top of the line for people to test. No, they didn’t get to keep it, but see below.
So where does companies providing free hardware to give away in a joint promotion fit into this? Where does corporate hospitatility fit into this? Where does flying journalists to IDF, CES, E3, fit into all of this? There is nothing different between this and anything else.
Haven’t you heard the latest, bloggers are taking over the world</slightly-tongue-in-cheek>
Is this the changing of the guard, the rise of the little people over the corporate giants… (yes, I realise the irony of this statement since MS is a corporate giant). For sure, most bloggers won’t have the same level of thought into their ethics, but how is this any different from alot of journalists. One just needs to look at cash for comment for an example of this. There are also reasons why I don’t like some of the bigger hardware review sites…
Add to this, the relatively shallow nature of the reviews from the major sites/journalists. One review of the beta of Vista promised to show you all the latest and greatest screenshots and was the biggest and most exclusive, and was published on a bigger website, and yet, it barely covered anything. It had 40 pages of screenshots (note quite 1 image per page 100 adds like normal, but close enough), but half of the screenshots where of various stages of the setup wizards. It didn’t delve into any depth of the system, nor did it highlight any other the new and better software. Whereas, another site dealt with the new photo gallery software which I was more interested in at the time (works much better than almost ever other gallery software for what I wanted at the time). Also, it allows for things to be discovered. I have been using XP since before it was released to stores *thank you to the corporate world*, and yet I am still finding new things that have been there all along. Giving Vista a head start in the community with people talking about, so it isn’t just the geeks that know about it at release is exactly what they are aiming at. Things you just can’t get from traditional journalists/major websites. It’s getting the non-geeks discussing Vista that MS is trying to get from this, and when it is discussed on sites that are normally political blogs, I guess that is working…
@Tony,
You want to add an .aspx onto the end of the link to Frank.
pbkg,
I am intrigued as to the basis of your comments that the article linked to by Down and Out in Sà i Gòn, notably
“the article suffers from a lack of knowledge of things, and as well a relatively high bias. Just because someone knows encryption relatively well, doesn’t mean though know anything about other computer technology. It all comes from an approach which is anti DRM, anti MS, and anti the PC moving into the lounge room.“ (my emphasis)
and that
“the author just seems to want to jump on the MS bashing bandwagon.”
as I see no evidence in what he has written, nor in his bio to support your assertions.
Perhaps you have an (undisclosed) agenda which you have not revealed to the blog ?
Certainly, many of those users concerned with “early uptake” and “cutting edge” technology wrt computing seem to think along similar lines here
Frank, if you don’t see it as a joke, why did you try to dismiss it as one?
You also haven’t answered any of the questions. If you’re not up to it, perhaps you could get Aaron Coldiron to answer. This is not about the bloggers, and not about journalism. It’s about the behaviour of Microsoft and Edelman. You are a senior executive and I presume the executive responsible for this program in Australia.
pbkg, far from this being a triumph of the bloggers, it’s an attempt by the “corporate giants” to further entrench their power by cynically exploiting bloggers. Companies like Microsoft would like nothing better than being able to do an end-run around reviewers, and instead get their puppets to provide most of the coverage.
pbkg, thanks for the URL fixup.
Well we’ve all seen Vista being heavily promoted on all forms of media.
On a product revue (ABC Perth radio), the techo trialled Vista OS on his PC, encountering numerous problems, being lack of integration with non MS software, difficulty with high speed broadband connectivity (apparently this is a problem with new PC’s ex shop).
Perhaps this is why MS loaded the OS into 90 laptops, it had a heads up on the connectivity issue.
Any one else???