slogs: zune marketing
Mentioned before, Zune in Microsoft’s new protable media player built to go head-to-head with the iPod. Despite planned launch on Nov 14, there seems to be no official site, except this lame-o page with text links and some photos whose display was arranged, one presumes, by a 13 year old who just been foolin’ a bit with FrontPage. In addition they have this site, whose purpose is pretty mysterious.
But:
There seem to be a whole host of zune “blogs” out there. I think they are all phoney, is there a name for this? How about slogs (short for spamblogs).
For instance ZuneNation has a forum … the admin of which posted this intro:
Hey guys…just wanted to be the first to introduce myself. I am one of the admins here at ZuneNation. I’m not normally a big microsoft fanboy, but Zune has gotten me excited. I am a big techie, but so far I’ve held out on buying an iPod. It just seems to be missing some of the cool factor that techies like me want. Zune looks like the device I’ve been waiting for and my credit card is waiting and ready! I look forward to getting to know everybody here over the next few months.
The other sites are as cloying:
WiredZune.com, known to the community more as Wired Zune or WZ is a Zune blog/community that strives to provide the Internet users with the latest Zune news.
and:
Hi there, The name is Charlie, and I’m launching this blog because frankly, I find the Zune vs. Ipod battle to be very interesting…and I think that it’ll be a fun ride to blog about. Now that the introductions are out of the way we can really dive into things. Hope you enjoy the blog, -Charlie
More forums including posts like this:
Hey guys whats up? Well to tell the truth and to be honest I am actually clueless whats this forum is about (saw the link from Blur sig and thought it would be pretty interesting) so can anyone give a quick headstart/intro of what the forum is really about?
answered like this:
I’m not too sure if you’ve heard of the new Microsoft Zune? Check out the news forums and blogs updates forum below for more information. Anyways ZUNE is supposed to be Microsoft’s new mp3 / entertainment system that is supposed to take down the large iPod market share. It hasn’t been launched yet, we are just a community of ZUNE fans that are waiting for it to be released
Also: clubzune, zuneuser, zunescene, and if you can believe the cheek, zunedose.
etc. etc. … anyway, interesting campaign. Let’s see how it plays out in Pretoria.
Hi,
This is Charlie…the “slog” over at Zunelicious. I was wondering if you’ve actually checked out the blogs that your talking about. I’m not going to defend the many blogs that are obvious “slogs”, but there are a few, mine included that do provide quality content and insight in the Microsoft Zune initative and the future of Digital Audio Players.
I’d appreciate it if you look at the content on my site and read some of the articles before deciding that I am on Microsoft’s payroll.
My email is zunelicious@gmail.com if you want to discuss any of this further,
Thanks,
-Charlie
Comment by Charlie — October 15, 2006 @ 3:28 pm
hey charlie,
well, the question is: are you on the payroll of microsoft? or edelman? just curious…
in any case it is an interesting marketing technique (if indeed that’s what it is), but i think you guys need to tone down a bit, and clean up your copy … it looks too much like forum spam. if you aren’t on the payroll then that’s cool - you are right the battle could be interesting.
and actullay, I am glad zune is coming along; it’s high time someone gave apple some competition in this space. They have too much control and that;s not good. & they have been doing many things that drive me crazy - eg. forcing me to use itunes in order to use an ipod - why not just have the ipod accessible as a portable storage device? - and not having built-in recording in their ipods - they get “podcasts” named after them? why?
and it *does* look like zune has some ncie features that apple doesn’t have - wifi connectivity & recording (? does it?).
so good luck to you, and good luck to zune. I *doubt* that zune’s DRM approach will make me happy, tho, and actually I use an iRiver. but more competition will, hopefully, force everyone to standardize, and dump all this proprietary format & blockage. (yeah right!).
Hey how about that idea: Microsoft/zune championing open formats and standards?
Comment by hugh — October 15, 2006 @ 4:07 pm
It looks like a load of junk to me. I’m not impressed.
Comment by Kri — October 15, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
I’m Omer from ZuneUser and I can tell you I started ZuneUser back in July for several reasons.
1. I was quick on the draw and got a nice Zune domain name (zuneuser)
2. Decided to develop the site for potential sale in the future
3. The blog has helped me learn SEO techniques, it’s ranked 2nd on Yahoo search for “microsoft zune” “zune” etc.
4. I enjoy running websites and seeing people benefit and complement my work.
Some of those reasons may be why you are running this blog yourself. I am not connected with Microsoft in any way. I know that several sites/blogs have commented on the validity of all the Zune blogs online, however, most of the popular ones (ones I visit/those that are linked to my site) are legitimate and run by end-users who are not being paid in anyway by Microsoft.
By the way, thanks for listing ZuneUser in this post, I got a click from it, and that’s how I found this post :p
Comment by Omer — October 15, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
actually i run this blog mainly as a way to allow me to pretend to myself that my procrastination is useful to the universe.
by the way, how do you know whether those other blogs are on MS payroll or not?
Comment by hugh — October 16, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
Well Hugh…the point I’m making is that I AM NOT. I could care less about the other blogs, for all I know they could be. But you didn’t include links to “those other blogs”, you included a link to mine, accusing me of being a slog.
-Charlie
Comment by Charlie — October 18, 2006 @ 12:27 am
well, there you go then.
Comment by hugh — October 18, 2006 @ 8:38 am