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Word of mouthWord of mouthPosted Jan 11, 2008 22:35 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Microsoft goals by AJWM Parent article: Why Microsoft Must Control One Laptop Per Child (Technocrat.net) This kind of mentality is perfect for free software development, but it does not work so well in the commercial world. Marketing is needed to reach out to customers even for an excellent product, and word of mouth helps to spread it further. But beware: word of mouth has a life of its own and it is not always exact. Word of mouth for Microsoft products between non-geeks is, surprisingly for us geeks, quite good. Word of mouth for Linux is pretty bad: many people think it is not for a layman's desktop. (We have been saying that it is "oh so advanced" for so long and so smugly that now it is working against us.) To dispel this popular myth a good marketing campaign could actually do wonders.
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Word of mouth Posted Jan 14, 2008 20:58 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Marketing is needed to reach out to customers even for an excellent product, and word of mouth helps to spread it further. Absolutely; this is why Google has, since its inception, so aggressively marketed its own services. Look at all the print, radio, television, and other ads for Google search and Google products you see elsewhere; can you even count the number of commercials Google has advertising its site? Google's marketing budget has to be astronomical. There's no way that Google got where it is solely by making a superior product and then letting word of mouth do the work for it...
Word of mouth Posted Jan 15, 2008 0:45 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Good counter-example. There are some in other sectors, like Zara in clothes: they never do any marketing either. Unfortunately it is not so common.If I tell my company that we should just rely on word of mouth they would find it very funny. I can assure you that we have some of the best products in their categories and we do most of our business over the internet; should we just wait for customers to come to us?
Word of mouth Posted Jan 15, 2008 7:24 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Oh, and by the way: Linux has mostly got where it is just by word of mouth, so it is also a counterexample. Products like EEE confirm that people want it (or at least want what it provides) even on the desktop. Only problem is, people want Windows even more: they think Linux will be "too advanced" for them. Such rubbish keeps large portions of the general public away, which is a pity.
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