You probably have seen it on, like, only 48 blogs, but still, I just.have.to link to this! [Did somebody say, 'bandwagon effect'?] Joel Spolsky gets a free mobile phone (and free downloads!) from a phone company that hoped he would write something about it. Write, he certainly did! Check it out.
On the other hand, Richard Dawkins has used a far more effective way of eliciting a positive go-out-and-buy-it call from a certain blogger: use extracts from the said blogger's posts in his recent book!
Yup, these PR guys get desperate and try to get people whose net "writings" become "popular". I used to be on the editorial board of Fedoranews.org in its early days. One of my article on KDE got slashdotted. After that, I have got a total of 7 books from three different publishers asking me to write a review. I told them that I won't write any review (after I got my first book) but they kept on sending it till I left the editorial group. I wish I was lucky like Joel. I won't be spending 200 bucks every month for my mobile needs then :-)
ReplyDelete