Development Porting the android market to the enTourage

Who cares if forum members are employees? If I worked for a company I supported I would be active on the forums as well. The complicated ecosystem excuse is quite strange and not a valid excuse under the license they are bound by, and the GPL code release is not in full compliance yet.

There's no problem with employees posting, but there is a problem with them not being explicitly labeled as such. For instance, walt526 above has no indication on his profile, nor in his rather lengthy and ostensibly detailed post on the introductions thread, that he is an Entourage employee. That is not cool. If the number of cats you own is relevant to this forum, then the fact that you work for the company that makes the product the forum is about is certainly relevant....

For one, I am glad they have active employees on the forums. At least they know what is going on.

Originally Posted by walt526

I'm fairly certain that all of the regular posters are unique, consistent personalities. It would be incredibly difficult for a single person to pretend to be multiple personalities.

No one said that it was a single employee posting...

And I'm quite sure that Boris is not an eDGe employee posing as a user since he's too conspicuous (he's just a guy who likes his eDGe device and has a lot of free time on his hands).

I don't really feel comfortable going into speculation regarding individual posters, but there is the strategy of "hiding in plain sight" to take into account. So being "too obvious" is not necessarily evidence.

Moreover, often times the advice in the "should I buy an eDGe"-type posts is not completely positive.

From some posters it is always completely positive. Again, no one is saying that everyone in the forum is compromised.

On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing how it would be cost-effective for some sort of viral marketing to have more than one person working on it...Anyone reading these forums is obviously already aware of the eDGe, so trolling the forums posing as users would have limited potential return.

How much time does it take to post a comment? It's not like this is YouTube or Rotten Tomatoes, there's about one post per hour on these forums. It wouldn't cost them much to have multiple posters working damage control in response to dangerously critical customers in the forum. Hey, they could even have an employee post a sarcastic "this again?" post in response to someone who (correctly) accuses them of violating GPL.

You ignored that it's difficult to see what the objective would be (i.e., spreading brand recognition) or how that is consistent with poster behavior (i.e., regular posters who have dissuaded prospective customers from purchasing the product). As for posters who provide useful assistance to fellow eDGe users, if those were enTourage employees or contractors, why wouldn't they advertise that they're providing prompt and helpful assistance to its customers after purchase? Moreover, what's the advantage in posing as a rank-in-file poster?

As far as conspiracy theories goes, this one is pretty lame as it's plainly inconsistent with any sort of sensible business strategy for a startup. So either enTourage is fiendishly clever by instructing their forum minions to remain under deep cover by acting contrary to the company's interests or they are very poor in designing and executing a marketing strategy. Neither seems very likely to me.


EDIT: BTW, I posted "This again?" because the last time this issue was raised the thread veered way, way off course... as has this one.

I blame an alien conspiracy.

On a more important note, does the eDGe have a recovery system like a normal android device?

Brand recognition is not the only purpose of advertising. Is BP trying to enhance brand recognition by bombarding us with TV commercials talking about what a bang-up job they're doing cleaning up the Gulf? Is Apple trying to enhance brand recognition by putting out videos of other smartphones dropping calls when held in a certain way? No -- damage control is another important purpose of advertising.

And considering these fora are one of the first links that comes up when you google "entourage edge", you're going to get a high proportion of people looking for more information after reading a blurb on one of those "iPad competitor" lists. If those people enter the forum and find a bunch of early adopters who are ambivalent or downright unhappy about the product -- especially when most popular review sites have been (imo unfairly) negative about the Edge -- they're less likely to buy the device. So it makes quite a bit of sense to plant employees in these fora posing as ordinary users but pushing the company line, rather than simply deleting negative comments by current owners which would alienate them and possibly cause trouble down the road.

(edit) I want to again emphasize that I'm not saying this is actually happening -- there is no evidence of a concerted campaign to do anything like this -- but I'm saying it's not implausible.

Originally Posted by jcase

I blame an alien conspiracy.

That would explain the goofy capitalization. There's a strong resemblance to Klingon.

Damage control for what?

Any negative comment. For instance, claiming that they're violating GPL.

On one of the threads started by a person thinking of buying an Edge, a certain poster responded to my frank criticisms of the Edge by claiming that the LCD half could be used as a netbook, and then when I replied that netbooks are far, far more powerful and have an attached keyboard etc, they backtracked and said they were only referring to web browsing.

Now, it's possible this is just a happy end user anxious to defend his or her purchase. Heaven knows that all the people claiming that USB ports are unimportant for a tablet to have can't possibly be Apple employees. But, it's also consistent with a company plant.

Originally Posted by walt526

EDIT: BTW, I posted "This again?" because the last time this issue was raised the thread veered way, way off course... as has this one.

The original post was inviting users to express dissatisfaction with Entourage's withholding of GPL-based source code...so this thread is perfectly on course.

First, I specified that the primary use of "viral marketing by a startup" is for brand awareness. Obviously, the marketing strategies of one of the world's largest oil companies can be dramatically different. And in any event, BP is using conventional marketing outlets--not viral marketing--to rehabilitate its image. As such, the anecdote doesn't appear relevant to the present conversation.

Second, I'm still not seeing the nexus between the OP and the need for surreptitious damage control. My initial off-the-cuff remark was just because I didn't want to see this forum get bogged down in this sort of issue again given how ugly and out-of-hand things got the last time. I'm glad that enTourage has released the source code and hope it proves helpful to robot and others looking to write useful apps--if they're any good, then I'll consider buying them.

Ok, this is SOMEWHAT off course, as the original thread's title is "Porting the Android Market to the enTourage". But yes, he did invite people to discuss the GPL violation. HAVING SAID THAT, the people here need to calm down. This is getting a little heated. No need to discuss politics now. Maybe later when the rest of the GPL code is needed, then we can, but for now, jcase and robot seem to have all they needed to develop any which way they want to.

These politics based discussions are getting us nowhere quick. What WILL get us somewhere is allowing the devs some time to take a crack at the source and see what happens.

Put down the pitchforks.

Originally Posted by Chubulor

The original post was inviting users to express dissatisfaction with Entourage's withholding of GPL-based source code...so this thread is perfectly on course.

Speculating about forum users being secret enTourage employees is related to GPL issue?

Again, not seeing the nexus...

Originally Posted by jcase

On a more important note, does the eDGe have a recovery system like a normal android device?

I wish I was more knowledgeable when it came to development and android so I could help you but I'm just a student. The edge doesn't have the usual buttons to hold down to get to recovery, so I'm not sure. I hope you get your hands on an edge soon, heck I would loan you mine. Anything to help the community out.