You must have heard this…it’s one of the hot news in the blogosphere. “Microsoft is giving away some of the powerful laptops around, loaded with Vista, to some of the bloggers”. That’s the story.
Lately, the blogosphere was packed with the leaders of the blogosphere talking about whether it’s ethical to accept such an offer, is it okay to keep the gift or just give it away etc.
Robert Scoble thinks that it’s an awesome idea from Microsoft to giveaway the preloaded Vista laptops. Joel at Joel on Software says that Scoble was wrong and Microsoft in essence was bribing the bloggers to write about their product. It’s kind of a war of opinions flying around in the blogosphere.
I think it might not be an awesome idea but at the same time it might not be considered as bribing. Microsoft was not forcing you to write about their product and you are not obliged to write about just because you’ve accepted the gift. They say it would be nice if they review about it but they don’t force you to do so. It’s not a cheap marketing for them as well because the bloggers who’ve got the gift was already blogging about Microsoft products. So it’s not in anyway a cheap marketing campaign.
It might not be an awesome idea because it might trigger a biased blogosphere as bloggers might target that niche to be in line for the next years gift. The reviews might be one sided and might not be true enough. That way it wasn’t a great idea to send a gift preloaded with a specific product (particularly your own).
But I would take it as being a gift from Microsoft for writing all year about their product.
PS: Sorry for not posting to my blog for a while. I wasn’t in a position to post to my blog these days. I hope I should be able to resume my regular posting habit from now on.
