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Comment by runjake | Hacker News Reader

Look, this is a class example of media-generated hype.

Yesterday, some other tech news site declared something like Microsoft's "DroidRage" campaign EXPLODES in their face. In their article, they quote over a half dozen tweets.

So I go onto Twitter and do a search for DroidRage and this "explosion" is actually more like a dozen or two people having fun with Microsoft.

Anyway, after the publishing of yesterday's article and it's subsequent posting on TechMeme and the Twittersphere, #DroigRage replies explode with everyone trying to get their Seinfeld moment.

Look, I think Microsoft's campaign and that kind of marketing are awful. Ballmer and their marketing dept should be wiped clean. You're alienating loyalists of whatever product you're making fun of. But this is a total non-story. It's more of a meme and a chance to stick One More Thing on Microsoft. This is not newsworthy.

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> this is a total non-story

Worse, it shows a very bad mentality from the so-called 'passionate fan-base', which reeks of Microsoft's own situation on the desktop:

> True, Android malware is a real problem. True, Google needs to do more about blocking malware applications from ever reaching users in the first place via the Google Play Store. But, there's also a lot of Android malware FUD and Android now has over 75% of the smartphone market

This kind of proof-by-horde is a catastrophe. Being the leader in marketshare doesn't make you right, technology is not a democracy: if there's a security flaw in the code or in the process, the flaw is there regardless of the number of users. It reeks of a "good-enough" mentality (of the bad kind, not the "less-is-more" or "worse-is-better" kinds): the one that strings things together, declares "It works!" and goes up in arms when someone dares pointing out the cracks and flaws, especially compared to other (potential or existing) more robust platforms.

This does not make the MS campaign any less awkward, but compare Windows Phone blip on the Android radar to (on desk- and laptops) Linux blip on the Windows radar, and how the rampant malware situation of the Windows ecosystem used to be an argument in favor of Linux. Many of those 'passionate fans' are using the same argument in favor of their mobile platform that they loved to use agains their competitor platform (that, or the Android guys are not Linux guys but the same Windows guys that are so much used to hate Apple that they ran away from the iThings towards Android, and so use the same baseless arguments to justify their decision).

PS: This is solely an argument on the 'fan-base' and the article, not the various past and present capabilities of the platform themselves. If you were reading this comment and thought I was taking sides, reread it while keeping in mind I'm talking about people, not hard+software.

Proof by horde is indeed absurd, but the fact that the Android fanbase jumps to this should not be a surprise to Microsoft.

There has been several years of relatively vicious back and forth flaming between iOS fans and Android fans now. A lot of legitimate criticisms have been fired off by both sides, and both sides are very quick to respond with less legitimate but equally vitriolic response-fire. Even people who don't go in for that sort of thing probably cannot help but feel a little defensive about their choice at times.

If Microsoft wants to walk into the room and throw some mud (legitimate mud or otherwise, it doesn't particularly matter), they should expect everyone else in the room to already be pretty practiced throwing mud back. Nothing about this situation should have caught Microsoft by surprise.

Edit: Also, relative market-shares are probably an important thing to consider when your marketing campaign is calling upon people to bash the competition for you. Of course more people are going to respond negatively to this if you are a market-share minority. I am having a hard time imagining a reality where this could have worked out as planned.

I think the worst part is that internet culture frames far too many things in terms of epic manichean struggles, when in fact it's looking at tawdry commercial rivalry.

Part of the problem is that unless we're close to a fully equipped test lab, most of us have to make a choice of device and stick with it; because phones especially are still effectively luxury items. That means most people who are most strident in their belief about the superiority of one brand or another, do not have experience with other products ( or at best, superficial experience ).

So, someone who is raging on about their favored brand is trying to justify their own choices and likely has no meaningful experience of the alternatives.

So for expert level trolling, ask them what they think of Palm, or Meego.

It's definitely not a weighty story, but certainly worthy of a chuckle due to the cluelessness needed to think the #droidrage campaign was a good idea. On the bright side for Microsoft, more people will actually learn they're selling a phone of some kind.

> This is not newsworthy.

This is one of the largest tech companies in the US running a media campaign to attack one of the other largest public tech company's products. That alone makes it newsworthy. The fact it was such a lame attempt at a time it's crucial for Microsoft to have some marketing success in mobile also makes it newsworthy.

That it was picked up by niche press and turned into a viral wave doesn't negate that. I'm sure (a large) part of Microsoft's intent in this campaign was for it to turn viral and get picked up by media outlets. If it had gone according to their plan and turned into a tidal wave of complaining about Android, I expect they would have hoped for media coverage as part of that.

This is a good point - making fun of users of a product is a strange way to tempt them over. Samsung's advert making fun of a queue of iPhone buyers is similar in this respect. Notably, Apple adverts don't usually (ever? I have a distant memory of a failed apple campaign that did?) make fun of users of a competing product.

What were the "Mac vs PC" commercials but making fun of PCs?

It's crucial that they made fun of the PC, not PC users. (Remember, it was always "I'm a PC" in the intro.) In doing so, they clearly leveraged some stereotypes about the user base, but they avoided directly mocking the customers of either platform.

That said, I'm not sure this Microsoft campaign mocked anyone either. It didn't have any humor to it, and that's part of why it was such a lame effort. At least Apple's ads had a bit of self deprecation to them in how they depicted the Mac.

They were similar in execution, but the joke was the anthropomorphizing of the idea of a windows pc and a mac.

The Samsung ads however directly target the users as the thing to be lampooned. Rather ad hominem, and not all that appealing of a way to sway me over marketingwise.

Many times, a story is important not for the reasons that people perceive it to be important. Ironically, I view it as important for exactly the reason you view it as unimportant. Why on earth does Microsoft feel the need to resort to such a pathetic advertising campaign?

> Why on earth does Microsoft feel the need to resort to such a pathetic advertising campaign?

Because building mobile operating systems people want to buy isn't exactly working for them.

I'm not sure why, but in all my exchanges with Microsoft supporters (employees or just fans) I felt a huge sense of entitlement and a rather bizarre perplexity about why they fail so completely on mobile and completely dominating the desktop.

I'm less interested in this as a news story because of the magnitude of the backlash on Twitter and more so because it demonstrates particularly poor judgement on Microsoft's behalf.

> This is not newsworthy.

Of course it is. Don't be ridiculous.

I thought its media Generated hype too till I actually did twitter search on DroidRage and found its real.

It helps everyone of us to actually check it before posting an ignorant comment.

I think the point he/she is trying to make is that it only became as "real" as it is now after the coverage on news sites yesterday. Then everybody decided to jump on the anti-Microsoft sentiment and share their own supposedly funny #DroidRage's.

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