The Microsoft publicity machine steamrolls forward

So, picture this situation. I'm sitting in my living room poking around catching up on news feeds and reading the latest of my favorite comic strips. In the background is one of those cheezy star-watching shows like Entertainment Tonight or whatever - I usually let those shows slip into the background as 'white noise' so imagine my surprise when my geeky sense (similar to spidey sense, only instead of warning me about impending danger, it alerts me to the presence of possible technology nearby!) starts tingling.

"I must be going mad... I could've sworn that not 30 seconds after hearing the phrase Britney Spears on TV, I heard someone say Microsoft Silverlight."

So, I look up and my ears perk up. Then I hear it again, and this time I know I'm not imagining things. The guy from this entertainment show is talking about this "amazing new technology from Microsoft" (quoted because this actually came out of the guy's mouth). He goes on to give a 30 second speach about the benefits of the rich, streaming technology that is Silverlight and my mouth is just wide open in shock. Not because I am shocked at the benefits of Silverlight, but that this guy is reading stuff from his teleprompter that couldn't possibly have been more out of character for him. I mean, picture Jessica Simpson in full-on Daisy Duke costume saying, "I personally like to use grep from the command line than using GUI search tools like Spotlight". yeaaaaaaah.

So, it turns out that Silverlight did some kind of huge thing where video from the Emmy awards is available on some website and I guess the video is being powered by Silverlight... or something. Bottom line: I couldn't possibly care less. I feel insulted and demeaned that Microsoft would flat-out buy their way into this situation. I have nothing against things like "Microsoft Silverlight is the official streaming media provider of the Emmy awards!" ... but when you get this entertainment reporter to read somewhat technical stuff from a teleprompter and try and pass it off as if those words had any business coming out of his mouth in the first place, then you're insulting your audience.

This brings up the second wave of Microsoft publicity: blogs. Microsoft has stepped up its blogging action a lot lately. I don't have hard figures, but I know what my reading pattern is like on google reader - and I'm pretty sure that the number of blog posts related to new Microsoft technologies that are entering "someone else's" market have nearly doubled. This means that every single time I am looking around and I find posts about Flash/Flex/AIR , I find double that amount of blog posts by people evangelizing Silverlight. While I don't mind people evanglizing technology (considering how much evangelization of it I do myself....), but what I do mind is when people are bought and paid for and told to post specific things by their employer and they try and hoist those blog posts off as original opinions or editorials when they are nothing more than advertisements - that pisses me off.

In short what I'm seeing is that advertisers and people who need to spread warm, fuzzy vibes about their company or their company's product are increasingly turning to more viral forms of advertisement. Everybody loves the funny/interesting YouTube stuff that brands put out - but we all know it for what it is. When people pretend to be unbiased bloggers who are taking incentives to spread the party line, that's crossing the line. When you get an entertainment reporter to actually say the words streaming and Silverlight in the same sentence without also mentioning that it's a paid advertisement, you're crossing another line.

Am I old fashioned in thinking that if your product actually does kick a huge amount of ass, you don't need to pay people to pretend to like it and troll message boards to spin positive things about it ... or am I really just old fashioned and that's the way everyone operates today?

tags: microsoft  silverlight  publicity  

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