John Cass on Nokia N90 Blogger Campaign. Get Real: Stowe Boyd's Soapbox

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Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive, and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative and social technologies. His new blog is Message.

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December 28, 2005

John Cass on Nokia N90 Blogger Campaign

Posted by Stowe Boyd

Thanks to a post by John Cass showing up in the Technorati Cosmos in the right margin, I rediscovered a great comment by Paul Jardine buried in a post here at Get Real. John wrote the following in support of the Nokia N90 Blogger campaign (see my most recent pice on this here: Nokia N90 Blogger Promotion: On Fire and Catching Heat), trying to counter the negative buzz from bloggers like Nobilizer at Clogger:

[from Nokia Blogger Relations Campaign II: Backbone Blogging Survey]

I think the criticism of Nokia on the part of Clogger is helpful but also wrong. Nokia is being completely open about what they are trying to do, get the word out about their product. Just because Nokia sent you a telephone does not mean that a blogger has to write about the telephone. And I suspect that if manufacturers attempt to seed non-gadget bloggers regularly in the future, the luster of receiving a new camera will soon rub off, it will be old news. Bloggers will probably not have time to write about the product and focus on what they really care about, the topic of their blog or current conversation.

Rather criticism should really be directed at bloggers who give a positive review of the product without revealing the origin of the review, its one thing for a blogger to give a positive review of product when a blogger purchased the product themselves and its another to read a review when I as the reader know the blogger just received a phone for free. I don't doubt the sincerity of the blogger, but I do gage the credibility of the writer in assessing cell phones. Sorry Stowe that counts you out on this, and me as well! I am not a very credible authority on cell phone technology.

In addition, we should criticize the reader who fails to consider what they read, and instead advise them to search for expert product comparisons from several sources. The growth of consumer generated media, and corporate blogs is increasing the volume of discussion, that those voices are not all journalists is okay to me, in some ways the world is a little more dangerous because of it, I have to be more careful when reading any source of information today, just as I should have been careful before 1995 and the web. But surely having to think about the credibility of a source of information is a good thing for the reader? I think Paul Jardine of the Produktivity blog said it best in his comment on Stowe Boyd's post,
"His [Cloggers] is the cry of an industry about to be disintermediated (look at the quality of reporting in newspapers and TV today and I don't think the majority would claim it to be any better than the popular blogs) by advertisers. There will always be a place for people who can write, but the model has changed and you don't need a newspaper, or similar, in order to inform and comment on the issues (or products) of the day."

Word.

tags: john+cass, nokia+n90, paul+jardine

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COMMENTS

1. john cass on December 29, 2005 11:30 AM writes...

Stowe,

Thanks for reference.

I agree, Paul's comment really captured two points, is blogging making public discourse better or worse (I think better). And the world has changed, today traditional media is not the only game in town, that's the new reality, and we all have to live with this new reality.

John