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Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

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Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#41

Post by fekberg »

gone35 wrote: post #34
[deleted] wrote: post #21

[deleted]

It is for money: under an actual contract, invoice and going-rate, etc. From the page referred to[1]: Compensation - This will be a sponsored post opportunity and payment will be made out via check. - Please send an email (...) with the amount you typically charge for sponsored post opportunities. Payment Process When your blog post and corresponding social shares are live, please create an invoice (...). Upon receip…

Yeah, I'm sorry I completely missed the link to that.

Regarding linking, did they require linking or just content that talks about the product?

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#42

Post by yaeger »

markkanof wrote: post #12
aosmith wrote: post #10

This seems vaguely familiar to me... Remember when they paid to port apps to windows phone?

Paying developers to port their apps is completely legitamete. It's a chicken and egg problem. Users don't want to use the platform because there are few apps, but developers don't want to write apps because there are few users. If Microsoft can spend some money to get additional apps in the store it's just a business decision. In my opinion they should have dedicated more money to that program. This on the other han…

The $100-per-app bounty was clearly an embarrassment.

What kind of apps did they think to get with this? Some more fart apps? Cause that is about as complex an app as you can get by spending 100 bucks on a developer.

100 bucks gets you between 1 or 2 hours of a freelancers time. There is not really that much that could be done in that time frame.

Either MS was completely naive when setting that bounty or they of course realized that this would just help inflating the total app numbers in the store. Better not mention how many of those are pure crap when boasting about how much the app store has grown in the next press release etc.

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#44

Post by sixQuarks »

davyjones wrote: post #37

Just a few hours ago I have run into a weird bug in IE 11. I am guessing some cookie values are cached and this is leading to unpredictable behaviour in my app. Seems to disappear when I have the dev tools open or when I clear the browser. IE8 -> IE9 -> IE10 was fraught with stability issues that didn't go away till I upgraded to 11. I get it that all browsers have bugs but somehow IE seems to lead the pack.

No kidding. I also have weird IE bugs on sites that work flawlessly in other older browsers.

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#46

Post by higherpurpose »

peterkelly wrote: post #24

While I can understand some of the concerns here, I'd encourage you to look at where Internet Explorer is now; it's come a long way in the past few years. IE today offers a brand new experience with many different features. The reworked Internet Explorer lets you search smarter and do more with its cool new features, such as multitasking, pinnable sites, and full-screen browsing. Wherever you are, Internet Explorer i…

If it's so good, then they don't need to pay for astro-turfing now? That strategy comes from a position of weakness, not strength.

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#47

Post by higherpurpose »

Remember when Google penalized its own Chrome in the search engine? They should do the same with these IE posts now. After all, they apply that rule to everyone else, so why not Microsoft/IE, too?

Downrank the posts and the sites, and ban their Adsense accounts - if Google wants to treat everyone the same way, and not just the little guy.

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#48

Post by anonymfus »

That "Advocate Marketing" company has a list of customers in the slider banner on their website: Target, AT&T, Fossil, Dole Food Company, McDonalds, Bing, Verizon, UnitedWay (non-profit?!), 3M, Anheuser-Busch, The Clorox Company, Walmart, EMC Corporation, Aveda Corporation, Expedia, Windows Phone, Citibank, Purina, Wells Fargo, Snapfish, Clinique, Oral-B, Sara Lee, Haier. (IT companies/brands are italicized.)

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#49

Post by Mikeb85 »

Renaud wrote: post #40
nikster wrote: post #13

Wait... I thought the browser wars were over?

IE still represents abut 20% of Browser usage, it's still more than Firefox and a lot more than Safari. You never know, the new direction MS is taking with regards to openness may bear its fruits. It's going to take a lot for MS to regain its past market shares, but personally, I'd prefer if it stayed around and compete with the other browsers. I don't want Chrome to end-up being the new IE.

At least Chrome is constantly updated, is fast, and most parts of it (certainly the important parts) are open source... If there's going to be a browser monoculture, Chrome seems like the best option at the moment...

Re: Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

#50

Post by higherpurpose »

IvyMike wrote: post #25

What's really amazing is how lackluster the whole campaign is. IE is a touted as a "new browser", but here are the features they are especially proud of: 1) Full Screen Browsing. 2) Multitasking, which apparently means "Skype while full screen browsing". 3) Reading view, a la the Readability or Clearly plug ins. 4) Pinned sites, which I guess I don't understand, but it looks like Windows 8 tiles. http://www.rethinkie…

That's because IE development is typically around 2 years behind the others. So they can only "brag" about stuff others have already had for a while, but try to spin the features as new.
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