Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site opus.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!hao!nbires!opus!rcd From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Re: CONCURRENT ad OR naivete', corruption and the net Message-ID: <293@opus.UUCP> Date: Sat, 7-Dec-85 03:41:10 EST Article-I.D.: opus.293 Posted: Sat Dec 7 03:41:10 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 10-Dec-85 07:19:57 EST References: <792@bu-cs.UUCP> Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO Lines: 109 Barry Shein (Boston U) on commercialism, naivete', etc. and the CONCURRENT posting: > ...academic sites tend towards 'it was a commercial and inappropriate' > and commercial sites tend towards 'forgive the guy, he was a little > overzealous'... > ...Is there more to this than meets the eye? Are commercial sites lusting > after the opportunity to push their wares on USENET?... I don't think so. For example, we at NBI would never think of using USENET to try to advertise our products, in spite of how useful they could be to a lot of the USENET community. In fact, let me just tell you a little about those products...:-):-):-) Seriously--(1) The CONCURRENT posting was in the wrong newsgroup and contained the wrong information--it probably belonged in net.net-people, where name/address changes normally belong, and it probably should have been limited to an "x is now y" note along with some minimal info to let current customers figure out what happened. Whether you consider that "inappropriate" or just "overzealous" might depend on what you perceive to be the commercial value of such a posting. From academia, it probably looks pretty commercial. From the commercial world (where I currently sit) it looks like it has pretty minimal advertising value even if you neglect that the way it was handled was dumb. (2) I don't think that commercial sites are really lusting after USENET as a market, because by and large the USENET community is not the group of people who will make the money decisions. In a serious marketing effort you try to focus as directly as possible on the people who make purchase decisions and who are in your perceived market. USENET has lots of students, short-term users, unpredictable readership (.newsrc's), etc. It's also a medium where tendentiousness is the rule and where your competitors or their partisans can jump down your throat with minimal attention to decorum. These factors override the consideration that it's "free" by some bizarre standard. > I have received calls from numerous companies asking me to trial their > product who have indicated that the reason they called me was that I > was 'visible' in the USENET technical groups. That might be a difference in effect between academic and commercial netters...I've had at most a couple of such calls in about two years on the net. A little discussion here? Have people who write in technical groups gotten a lot of ad calls as a result--if so, are you in academia or, uh, commercialia(?)? (I'll summarize if you email notes on this.) And one more on CONCURRENT: > ...(I replied with a personal note > which was never answered however, wonder if that's what their lawyers > recommended, or just too swamped? or rude?)... Which says that perhaps CONCURRENT isn't much interested in any advertising effect of USENET--or if they are, they're not following up as they should. If this current posting of Barry's doesn't get some response from CONCURRENT, I'd be surprised. > Honestly, I don't want to single out CONCURRENT (well, I do a little) > but didn't we just go through this with some new chip set and > shareware. Do you think this is the last of it? All are good illustrations of some tendency toward commercial abuse. However, I think they're only a tendency. As long as we slap them (?hmmm, us?) back into line when it gets heavy-handed, I think we can stay near the thin line where USENET isn't an advertising medium but nonetheless conveys useful TECHNICAL information about new products. Take the "new chip set" issue--I imagine that refers to a rather hyped-up posting from Intel about the 386 in net.arch. The problem was that what was posted was too rich in words like "powerful" and too low in technical content (e.g., it didn't even give a list of the registers/sizes in the new processor). A few people staunchly defended Intel; a few flamed like crazy...but if you average the responses, you come out with something like, "Hey, we'd like to hear about this new processor but could you cut the crap and give us some real info." I suspect that, in the long run, Intel got little advertising value out of that. It may have been slightly negative for them. How much discussion is "just tech talk" and when does it become "advertising". Here's a good example of the dilemma you can find if you're in the commercial world: I'm currently in a discussion of WYSIWYG document presentation/editing in net.text, and Barry has contributed as well. Now, I work for a company that's got a heavy commitment to WYSIWYG, so it would be easy for me to start plugging our products. I'm not about to do that--HOWEVER, my association with this company also means that I've talked and listened and thought a LOT about the issues; I've watched people solving the problems and building real products. I've spent untold hours working with wysiwyg and non-wysiwyg systems. It doesn't make sense that I should hold back from pointing out that some problems can be and have been solved, giving our products as an existence proof. Frankly, it wouldn't be any different if I had done and seen the same work in academia--I would want to contribute what I know to the discussion. I don't want to worry that any time I say something in favor of the way our products work I will get flamed for advertising--but I'll consider carefully when someone expresses an opinion that I'm being biased by my association with NBI. Fair 'nuff? Part of what I'm trying to say in this unreasonably long/rambling article is that netters in the commercial world are aware of the potential for commercial abuse, and I think most of us are sensitive to keeping things in balance. Occasionally you see some hype and some sniping but that's part of keeping the balance. But all of us get enough out of the technical content of USENET that we can't afford to let commercial abuse shut it down. -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Are you making this up as you go along? -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Are you making this up as you go along?