The “Silicon Valley 100” marketing plan has been mentioned a lot over the past week or so, and it’s nothing I see as unusual on the surface. This is one of the biggest perks that ever existed in journalism; being the reviewer whose job it was to review the latest and greatest toys. The unwritten part of the job description was that most times you would get to keep whatever you reviewed.

This was one of my reasons for working on my college paper — I reviewed CDs, sent the distributer my clippings, and I kept the CDs. They had little stickers on the back stating that the CD remained the property of the label, and that they could request that the product be returned at any time. They never wanted them back; they allowed for X units to be spent in promotion, and they wouldn’t know what to do with them if you did send them back.

Now someone has taken it to another level and is marketing a “network” of influential people to write products up in the same way traditional media do. They are provided with a review copy of the product and are expected to write about it in exchange. I don’t imagine that 60″ plasma screens are going to be handed out, and even if they are, I can’t really see the problem.

The problem that most people can’t see in this scenario is the simple overload of product. It’s great that I get a new album to review that I enjoy, and otherwise would have purchased; score one for me, getting something for nothing. However, that ignores the fact that, along with that one album, I get a hundred more every month that are garbage. It’s sheer overload, and I couldn’t give them away fast enough. By extension, the appeal of getting a brand new digital camera is there, but the appeal of getting a dozen of them from different vendors makes me wonder how I can get rid of the things.

Hoffman says he avoided adding career bloggers or journalists to the list. “Those people have a different standard and shouldn’t be keeping free products,” he says (journalists are typically required to return products they sample for review).

There’s an awful lot of companies that balk at taking the free review products back, as they can’t really sell them as new at that point. The first item up for review, according to Joi, is a toilet seat with heat and bidet attachments, and I don’t really fancy purchasing a bidet that’s had Tim O’Reilly’s ass on it. Okay, I’m not the target market for crotch waterguns, but I can imagine that their market wouldn’t be hugely in favour of it either.

Free products can affect a writer’s opinion when they’re an anomoly. If you get one camera to review, maybe you can be affected by that, and write a glowing review, but if you get 12 different cameras, you’re going to pick one of that group that you’d want to use, and you’d write up the others to indicate that fact. The more products you have ready access to, the more likely you are to be fair in your review.

I’m not sure how the Silicon Valley 100 project will work out on this, and if they’ll all get enough 60″ Plasma screens to pass the proverbial ethical tipping point. We’ll see how it shakes out.

Newsweek story
GeekNewsCentral
Om Malik