Is it time for Stardock to hire a PR firm?
Friday, March 18, 2005 by MSethWeisberg | Discussion: OS Customization
And yet I can't figure out why that is? The prices are not expensive, for the most part they work as advertised, most programs have small memory footprints, and small installation sizes so I don't see what the problem is. And yet on a lot of customization forums Stardock continues to get bad press with the exception of WC.com.
For the record I am not a graphic artist nor have I ever created a skin but I love customizing XP and I am active in many forums including DA, Neowin, WC, A-S, Aerosoft, etc..and I continually find myself having to defend my passion for the software and in the process acting like a troll.
This has to end, it can't be good for the company and it surely can't be good for its members to continually have to defend why they use it. I say that some money should be set aside to the development of a PR position within the company to promote the software and rid itself of the negative attitudes that a lot of 'skinners' seem to have developed toward Stardock.
Your opinions please.......
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Reply #22 Saturday, March 19, 2005 9:18 PM
But more back to my point of word of mouth of bad press....there is a good discussion of people's point of view of computer customization on a forum right now (extremely civialized conversation and I want it to stay that way) and someone had to make a comment like this:
| A while back i tried using some themes and software off of this site www.wincustomize.com and to tell you the truth i got sick of it all within the space of about 2 days. I changed my logon screen to a windows long horn aero style, and when i restarted i could not type anything, so i had to enter safe mode and restore. |
These are the kinds of comments are killing Stardock's rep on computer forums, which let's be honest has got be a big customer base.
Reply #23 Sunday, March 20, 2005 5:26 AM
| That's brilliant Jafo, I'll have to print it out and get it mounted in a nice frame. Not entirely sure what it means, but then English is clearly your second language so we'll cut you some slack. |
Thankyou for the vote of confidence....I'm honoured....
Reply #24 Sunday, March 20, 2005 9:49 PM
This really seems evident in the Widgets arena: DesktopX clearly has the best technical advantages as far as diversity of interpreted scripts and code available for "widgeting," it's got one of the smallest memory footprints, is easy to configure and incredibly simple to use. The thread at AquaXP was clearly the wrong way of approaching the comparison to other widget engines, and engendered a tremendous amount of hatred towards Stardock. If you're looking to boost support for your products, don't do it by trashing on the guys who use your own docklets.
Jafo, your response to Andy seems to perpetuate this. Stardock's got fantastically innovative products, but it's hard to think highly of a company where so many ill comments originate. If Andy was the author of some nasty reviews, is this kind of response really the way to rectify it?
Reply #25 Sunday, March 20, 2005 10:15 PM
| If Andy was the author of some nasty reviews, is this kind of response really the way to rectify it? |
No.
The way to 'rectify' it is to have formal public retractions printed in PC Answers for the perpetuation of prejudiced and judgemental opinion-mongering by a self-proclaimed 'expert'.
'Nasty reviews' are water off a duck's back....comes with the territory. What I, as an individual don't particularly like is the propagation of mal-content dressed up as 'informed article'....particularly when its target is the Skinning 'novice' whose first 'impressions' of the 'community' is that Wincustomize.com is an evil place to be avoided at all costs.
Stardock doesn't 'need' a PR firm....all it needs [deserves] is a fair shake from people who can be big enough to leave their personal animosity aside long enough to deliver a true reflection of the Skinning industry/community as a whole.
Reply #26 Sunday, March 20, 2005 10:44 PM
| Stardock doesn't 'need' a PR firm....all it needs [deserves] is a fair shake from people who can be big enough to leave their personal animosity aside long enough to deliver a true reflection of the Skinning industry/community as a whole. |
Well said, Jafo.
Stardock products are good products, and "if" they are installed using a little common sense, and tested with the defaults first and then used to customize - many of these people may see the same quality we do.
Not that they are included with everything, but some very wise network admins I know taught me over and over "Always, Always read the read-me files included with software". I would wager that many of the issues people are complaining about could have been avoided by checking on the system requirements as well as installation recommendations before installing.
Reply #27 Monday, March 21, 2005 10:49 AM
| I think you'll find a lot of the bad feeling towards Stardock is down almost completely to its founder - Brad Wardell. I've been a desktop customisation advocate for about five years now - writing countless columns, features and articles on the subject for a wide variety of magazines in the UK and abroad. About 18 months ago, Brad Wardell took it upon himself to directly email the editor of a magazine I was working for, accusing me of being biased towards him, his company and his products. The editor asked me if I was and so I went back through every single article I'd ever written about Stardock related products and I collated the results - the fact was I'd been overwhelmingly positive about Stardock and its products (reading them back you could probably even say I'd been biased TOWARDS Stardock) and when presented with such black and white evidence, the editor apologised to me - but there's been no apology from Wardell over what was little more than slander (actionable slander probably, but hey, life's too short). It's extremely difficult to be nice about a company and its products when the owner has the media savy of an amoeba, but I have based and will conintue to base all my reviews on each individual products merits. The problem is that Wardell has a hard time believing there can possibly be anything at all wrong with his products, hence the way he's always popping up on online forums in a totally unprofessional manner, bad-mouthing anyone who has the temerity to suggest otherwise - and these are his customers remember! He blunders from one PR disaster to another, doing nothing but harm to his company's reputation. When customisation goes mainstream with the next release of Windows XP - and other companies enter a market that Stardock currently monopolise, I think there's going to have to be some very substantial changes here. |
I think any rational person who had read PC Answer columns by you would conclude differently. You regularly pimped ThemeXP as a "real" community site while trashing WinCustomize or talking how "buggy" all our software was. When you combine this with the statements you've made on-line over the years as "Dokt" which basically amounted that we were the anti-christ, I think a conflict of interest comes up.
Your on-line behavior towards me and Stardock and the subsequent (as in AFTERWARD) discovery that the anti-Stardock columns in PC Answer were written by you were what made us contact PC Answers in the first place. We can take negative reviews. But those negative reviews should be based on objective journalism, not someone with an axe to grind. Someone who was banned from WinCustomize.com should not be the one writing reviews on WinCustomize.com and Stardock products.
Reply #28 Monday, March 21, 2005 11:07 AM
|
Remember the AveDesk thread on AquaXP where of pride in Stardock's products, which I would but in certain cases the expression of this |
This is, again, a case of double-standards. The person writing the docs and tutorials for a given product should not be the one writing the reviews for a product. Should we have Martin, for instance, writing a DesktopX review and posting it?
I stand by my objection in that "review" of Avedesk. The Avedesk "review" written by the Avedesk doc writer/on-line advocate wrote: "“no single app has had the dramatic impact this year as Avedesk" No where in the "review" did it mention the author's connection with Avedesk.
This was my frist response to the article:
| Frogboy wrote:
Great review but don’t you think it kind of a stretch to say “no single app has had the dramatic impact this year as Avedesk"? Avedesk has a small but loyal following for sure. But 2004 has seen great movement by Samurize, Kapsules, DesktopX, ObjectDock Plus, and other progrmas which are more widely used. In terms of creating new widgets from scratch, Kapsules, Samurize, and DesktopX are all much easier to make new things than AveDesk which is essentially still tied to being a plugin program whose content can be put on the desktop. DesktopX doesn’t just have vastly more widgets than AveDesk, its lead grows because of its ease and the fact that DesktopX widgets are EXEs that can be treated like regular programs. (see https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=34 for just a sampling). |
Frankly, anyone who finds that response to be inappropriate or worthy of stirring "hatred" needs to (IMO) re-evalutate their prejudices.
This was the response I got from the "Reviewer":
| Herd responded: Brad Wardell aka FrogBoy aka StarDock (CEO?). Never misses a chance to advertise DesktopX, right? I admit I got it all wrong you seem to be scared shitless about AveDesk. Await my DesktopX review! |
At the end of the day, someone should ask this question: If I'm so bad then why is it that I, who started Stardock with nothing as a college student am now accused of being the Microsoft of customization while those who I should emulate are not? Stardock never had venture capital. It wasn't started by some group of partners. It was founded by me, a 20 year old college student.
In my experience, what I see is this: Unreasonable people demanding that their unreasonable behavior be placated simply because we're a business and they're an individual. And because we don't placate them, they feel justified to run onto various forums trashing us.
I believe in what we do. We work very hard to create good software. And while my engineering background has a low threshold of pain in dealing with nonsense, inaccuracy, or poorly hidden agendas by others, I wouldn't change it.
Reply #29 Monday, March 21, 2005 5:09 PM
Frogboy- Although your initial response was innocuous enough, it was the persistence of the argument that did the damage. If your initial response had been the only response, non-AveDesk zealots would clearly seen what a crusade the AveDesk editors/developers were on. The continual responses you provided, however, simply added fuel to fire and engendered much of that sentiment to Stardock as well as AveDesk. I'm not claiming that you or Stardock are the bad-guys in this scenario (heck, I legitimately and proudly bespeak the fact I am a subscriber). Point is, joeKnowledge and even Andy had valid points, despite Andy's less than objective take on the situtation. Having the head of the company becoming so visible can be a detriment. Linspire demonstrates this.
No hard feelings, just trying to make an observation
Reply #30 Monday, March 21, 2005 5:39 PM
Skinner mrbiotech ... strangely I see having the CEO of the company [Frogboy] 'prominent' within a community a PLUS rather than a minus. Sure he is therefore a visible 'target' but so, too is he approachable and accessible to requests/suggestions for product 'direction', etc....something of greater value to the industry/community than would be afforded by stoic anonymity and distance.
As for 'persistence of argument', when resisting a barrage of invective diatribe a whimper of 'please don't' is a tad banal. Most-times subtlety is lost on the moronic and so it requires reiteration...
Oh, my bad.....Young Mister Andy has English to be my second language....I sincerely hope I haven't lost him somewhere with my Ocker dialect....
Reply #31 Monday, March 21, 2005 5:56 PM
your initial response had been the only response, non-AveDesk zealots would clearly seen what a crusade the AveDesk editors/developers were on. The continual responses you provided, however, simply added fuel to fire and engendered much of that sentiment to Stardock as well as AveDesk
I agree with that. However, in what way are my subsequent responses deserving of "hate"? I responded a brief polite comment that complemented the review but pointed out that asserting that Avedesk was the most significant product of 2004 was a bit of a push and in response I got a bunch of nasty, profanity-ridden flames.
I've written about this issue over the years and you can almost put it in mathematical terms:
Every person who writes something has (for lack of a better term) an annoyance factor. That is, what the odds are that what they write will annoy someone.
For example, if a person's annoyance factor is 100% then every person who reads what they write will be annoyed by them.
More realistically, let's say someone's annoyance factor is 0.1%. That means every time that person posts, 1 out of every 1000 peopel who is exposed to that post will be annoyed.
In short, the more someone posts, the more people they will eventually annoy. Even if you can manage to come across as the nicest guy in the world, you will eventually annoy people because no one has an annoyance factor of 0.
There is also the other side of the equation -- how many annoyance points it takes before someone become a detractor. Some people, like Andy Hutchinson, have a very very low annoyance threshold before they become detractors. My mere presence on forums talking about our software, even when on topic (it's not like I hang out in other people's areas spamming them to go buy our stuff for instance).
The question is, should people (like me) be driven from expressing themselves because of a small group of intolerant people? Can someone like Andy Hutchinson really point out something I did that really deserved the abuse that he and others have heaped on me? The AquaXP thread that was linked is a great example. I make a brief comment and I get profanity and flames tossed my direction. I'm still not sure what I did that ticked Andy H off so much that he went from website to website trashing me and Stardock as if we were the anti-christ and then carrying it on to his columns in a magazine.
But at the end of the day, how much business value do detractors have? If a product or service is good and people know that the company that provides it is honest, hard working, and reasonable then hopefully there will always be people to set the record straight.
Reply #32 Monday, March 21, 2005 9:25 PM
What did you do.... First you are always right for Gods sake! Literally, and it gets really old really fast and really pisses people off. How can anyone argue with you when it is impossible to find any logical inconsistencies in your statements. I occasionaly read your posts and for the life of me I have never seen anything I could call you on. Second you bounce all around "the community" and are always right. People will accept this on your home field, but running around the neighborhood showing everyone how smart you are really rubs some people the wrong way. Third, you are the CEO of Stardock, your personal bias towards your products will always be assumed. Even if Stardock didn't make the best OS customization software, I would expect you to say they did.
Does Stardock have the same problems in the Game community? Not that I know of. I understand that it is a different business model but both have strong on-line communities.
I understand you can't let people walk all over you. I read Dokt's article in PC Answers, and that was a perfect example of when you should make an appropriate measured response. However just because some moron says "DX suxs" on Neowin doesn't mean you have to jump in and blast them. You are feeding the machine! Being right isn't always the best answer. If you need to, send out your trusted minions to do this kind of work. Well maybe not Jafo, since English is his 2nd language!
Reply #33 Monday, March 21, 2005 9:39 PM
now that i have realized that whether it makes you proud to change your skin or not doesn't really matter, i can see that windowblinds is the best skinning program out there, and that the easiness of use is an advantage.
same thing goes for desktopX. i wanted to use kapsules, even though it is not as nice, just because it is free and seems more like you, not the program are doing the work.
please don't read this as stardock bashing. i am glad that the programs are easy to use, now that i have gotten over my vanity, and i will be buying OD soon. it's just my rambling attempt to explain why i used to be a stardock hater.
Reply #34 Monday, March 21, 2005 10:14 PM
I have no worries because I know that Froggy listens to the community, as demonstrated by the WC overhaul to include blogs, personal galleries and the like. I'm done, guys. Thanks for the chat
Reply #35 Monday, March 21, 2005 11:42 PM
| To see a person of honorable role skirmishing with peons was a little below the status you've obtained. It really caught me by surprise. |
Skinner mrbiotech ... I personally feel there is a difference between having a hard-nosed 'discussion' with contemporaries... that may be warts-and-all, and professing to be an authority on skinning and intentionally poisoning the minds of the new and unaware.
I'd expect that when any person in a position such as my own within a site community is confronted with premeditated, churlish prejudice to ANY part or sector of the skinning community, he or she would not take it quietly. I think I'd be [almost] as annoyed were the target of disdain ANY site within the online skinning community....oldest or newest, smallest or largest.
There IS no place for public slighting in this manner.
Example.... themeXP.org bundles downloads with spyware, etc to help cover running costs.....not a great personal favourite, but I was still unimpressed with people's posting of methods of its circumvention....as it is no different to posting ways to circumvent Wincustomize's download limits.
Ideally each and every site would be dealt with fairly and equitably......and that is a responsiblity for anyone considered to be an 'elder' or in a position of experience and influence over those new to the 'game'.
The real public ignominy is down to a handful of vocal mal-contents hell-bent on disruption rather than social improvement/concorde....
Reply #36 Tuesday, March 22, 2005 2:52 AM
Reply #37 Tuesday, March 22, 2005 4:57 AM
Reply #38 Tuesday, March 22, 2005 9:10 AM
I think Stardock makes good products. And I do think that Brad has the right to respond to criticisms when they are just factually wrong.
However, it has bothered me some that he seems not to be able or willing to deal with "trolls" in a manner that befits the head of the company. Frankly, Brad, some of those who criticize Stardock are doing so precisely because they know that they'll get a response out of you. And you seem all too willing to give them what they want (i.e., attention by way of a reaction from you). It's one thing to correct factual misstatements one time and leave it at that, it's another thing to allow yourself to be drawn into an advocacy flamewar or to take things personally when it's patently obvious that the other guy was trying to get you to do just that.
Further, there is a tendency to generalize that isn't always helpful, either. For example, the whole "capitalism vs. free software" thing. Yes, your product is better than the GPL'ed product that does the same thing. And so it was worthwhile to discuss, objectively, the pros and cons of each product. And yes, it's true that free-software advocates aren't exactly objective when comparing things, as they've got an ax to grind (as the head of the company, so do you, Brad, but that's another subject). It's when you start making generalities about whether open-source software in general is better or worse than its commercial equivalent, that I felt you were putting yourself on factually shaky ground and needlessly stirring the pot. There are good and bad projects on both sides of the fence, and the generalities about which is likely to be better in general did nothing for the argument about whether your specific product was better than its open-source competitor or not, and likely only fueled the flames.
I'd also agree with others who have said that it would be helpful if you gave Stardock announcements to another of the moderators on Neowin to post rather than posting them yourself, as it does give the appearance of a conflict of interest (i.e., using your position with an unrelated website for your own financial gain). Note that I'm not accusing you of this, merely noting that it would help your company's PR not to give the appearance of such conflict unnecessarily.
Again, I enjoy and use Stardock's products. The fact that I wince sometimes at its founders behavior, does not and will not change that.
Reply #39 Tuesday, March 22, 2005 12:32 PM
Reply #40 Wednesday, March 23, 2005 2:14 PM
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Reply #21 Saturday, March 19, 2005 9:09 PM