Microsoft Exposed: "Perception Management" (another new term for "Shill")
Homer
[quote]
For eight years (1992-2000), I was the driving force behind Microsoft's
effort to make its Technology Evangelism (TE) efforts more efficient,
effective, and ruthless, by studying both the practice and the theory of
TE. After leaving Microsoft in 2000, I spurned the inquiries of numerous
Microsoft competitors to testify on their behalf. As recently as year, I
fell on my sword on Microsoft's behalf.
...
My belief that I was one of the Good Guys was similarly flawed. This is
now inescapable. I was wrong. Many of the TE practices that I developed,
taught, and espoused were wrong. Anyone who continues to practice them
is wrong. As a first step towards making amends for my past wrongdoing,
I must make this clear, and widely known.
[/quote]
http://platformevangelism.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!37F174267DC274C!155.entry?sa=684972425
*Now* there's "Perception Management":
[quote]
June 5, 2009 1:11 AM
Ex-Microsoft marketing manager said:
Of course Microsoft has a perception management team and specifically
targets Web 2.0 sites like Digg and Reddit. Some of this is outsourced
as well. It is felt inside MS that the reason why Vista failed was that
on Web 2.0 sites it became fashionable to bad mouth the OS, this turned
in to group think and thus the OS failed. Seriously, that is the belief
and there is at least some merit to it. Lets be real, Vista is just not
as bad as it is painted.
Now contrast that to Windows 7; Microsoft have spent a lot of money
manipulating user generated content sites to hype the OS. Let me tell
you, it is not so much different from Vista but the perception is that
is it much better. Again, lets be real, Windows 7 is just Vista with
some UI tweaks and *much* better marketing.
Watch for the talking points used, this is starting now but will be
pushed harder after Win7 is released, I would expect "Windows 7 is the
death blow to Linux on the desktop" will be a favourite.
I think it is poor form for MS to manipulate sites like Digg, there will
be a backlash when the users figure it out.
[/quote]
http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/06/linux-sucks-as.html
This anonymous comment may be purely anecdotal, but it is nonetheless
highly convincing. He certainly seems to know what he's talking about.
See also:
[quote]
Perception management is a term originated by the U. S. military. The U.
S. Department of Defense (DOD) gives this definition:
Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to
foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective
reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels
to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign
behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives.
In various ways, perception management combines truth projection,
operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.[1]
The phrase "perception management" has often functioned as a "euphemism"
for "an aspect of information warfare."
[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management
Well now we know how to formally address the shills in COLA ... they're
"Perception Management contractors".
Is this comparable to Dubya's "Regime Change" hit-squads, I wonder?
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.26.8-57.fc8
20:18:10 up 10 days, 16 min, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
Roy Schestowitz
Hash: SHA1
Yes, it's a fact.
05.02.09
Video from Waggener Edstrom Explains Perception Management at Microsoft
Microsoft employs self-appointed experts to study your perceptions and modify
them
Summary: Waggener Edstrom’s lack of ethics - take II; a look at a current
real-world example
IN OUR previous post about Waggener Edstrom* we showed that it had become an
integral part of Microsoft Corporation, for which is also lobbies in a variety
of well-documented ways [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. This includes
anti-Linux actions.
One issue that we explored before is this set of Microsoft guidelines for
controlling coverage about the company and its products. Whereas Microsoft’s
documents are confidential, Waggener Edstrom turns out to be talking about
what it does a little more openly. It’s promoting itself using its unethical
methods that it also patents (see the “Our IP” section). That first patent
which was mentioned earlier today is a universal translator, but there is a
lot more. “Some of their other ones are [...] strange scanning tools to [...]
guide the direction of your development,” claims oiaohm. “It’s really strange
to depend on a machine to tell you if your marketing is working. It’s even
more strange to attempt to use a machine to tell you if you are the market
leader or not,” he adds.
“A short while later it received an unexpected phone call from Microsoft and
some abuse which ultimately led to the review being removed.”Going back to
that video, “it covers all the methods you have been seeing,” oiaohm told me.
According to his interpretation, the “idea [of] throwing more resources and
shills/astro turfers at the problem is documented graphically in that video
(instead of fixing problems that caused the bad PR in the first place). The
information is around publicly to see Microsoft’s tactics.”
As a new example of this, see the following post from last week. A small
business received 1,000 times the usual traffic on its Web site when it had
published a negative review of Microsoft’s Surface. A short while later it
received an unexpected phone call from Microsoft and some abuse which
ultimately led to the review being removed. Could Waggener Edstrom have sent
an alert regarding this blogger? After all, that’s just what they do at
Waggener Edstrom.
The post was ‘updated’ (emptied), comments were closed, and the latest separate
update — to quote what Twitter wrote — may indicate the following:
There is nothing gentle about that contact. If you are so “Microsofty” that
you would even consider a $13,000 novelty, Microsoft is your oxygen. They go
on to explain the hate mail they got.
5pm today that discussion had become so chock full of “web-muck” (the
online equivalent of the telephone game, where the original message gets lost
in the transmission) that it was becoming a huge distraction. … the tireless
Apple vs. PC debate … impassioned souls who accused me of being everything
from a “Microsoft Apologist” to “M$ fanboy” to a “complete idiot”
This is typical troll juice and crap flood that comes from Microsoft
astroturfers. Microsoft and friends will smear this person to protect what’s
left of their own reputations. Had this person worked for Microsoft or a
Microsoft partner, they would have been fired. Comments to the apology posts
are now moderated and I doubt any will see the light of day.
Indeed, not a single one has appeared since then. It has been a week. █
“Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make
the complete failure of the competition’s technology part of the mythology of
the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies
and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors’ technologies, to
make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over
time.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
_____
* The core is Melissa Waggener and Pam Edstrom, who are based in Bellevue,
Washington just like a lot of Microsoft.
http://boycottnovell.com/2009/05/02/perception-management-at-microsoft/
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Erik Funkenbusch
> This anonymous comment may be purely anecdotal, but it is nonetheless
> highly convincing. He certainly seems to know what he's talking about.
The ironic thing is, You do the very thing you are criticizing Microsoft
for. "Advocacy" is "perception management". You're doing it right now.
Roy does it. Most of the people in this group do it, either knowingly or
unknowingly.
Yet you want to sit on your high horse and pretend it's "immoral". The
fact of the matter is, there are Millions of anti-MS people out there every
day trying to "manage the perception" of the way Microsoft is viewed, and
Microsoft would be not only stupid if they didn't counter that, but also
out of business.
If you let someone walk all over you, you deserve to go out of business.
Chris Ahlstrom
this bit o' wisdom:
> If you let someone walk all over you, you deserve to go out of business.
Also a nice summary of amicus's views, I believe.
--
Q: What do little WASPs want to be when they grow up?
A: The very best person they can possibly be.