

Brilliant marketing testimonial method you need to test . . . from MSFT? - aresant
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/social/
I just noticed on Microsoft's site that they are using a novel idea I haven't seen before in mass marketing - sticking twitter / feed comments from real users tagged with today's date onto the homepage, then linking into a full social queue.<p>EG - Check their landing page http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx<p>I have managed hundreds of A/B and multivariate tests and i have a feeling that this strategy would be a BIG winner - relevant, recent, 3rd party, and pulling in a buzz brand.<p>Any other good examples of this?
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jacquesm
Interesting how _everybody_ is positive about something they haven't really
had a week to use. No hey, my scanner won't work, or how much did you spend on
your memory upgrade ?

Let's wait three months, when the inevitable clamoring for service packs and
the first complaints about slowdowns happen.

second evdawg, it's as fake as a $3 bill. The tweets are real but they've
definitely been selected to give an impression, and you don't know whether the
authors of the tweets are 'real' people either, or just legends.

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wyday
_...they haven't really had a week to use._

Windows 7 was available via MSDN for the last 2 months. The October 22 release
date was for consumers. I've been using Windows 7 since Mid-August.

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evdawg
That page is faked; I just see the same entries come up again and again after
I refresh.

Brilliant marketing technique, indeed.

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mitchellh
They aren't fake entries. If you click on the actual entry you can click "View
on Twitter" and it goes to the actual tweet that said it.

They're probably just caching the tweets and updating them every so often.

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christopherolah
They might be real entries, that doens't mean they're randomly chosen. MS
probably selected a bunch that made them look good, and then threw in a few
that were somewhat neutral to make it look fair (I'm thinking the downloading,
what are the new features one)...

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petewarden
I love this technique, I use Shannon Whitley's free Chatterbox widget to
display an unfiltered list of tweets mentioning Mailana on my front page.
<http://www.realtimechatterbox.com/>

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nearestneighbor
What if your competitor floods it with "Mailana sucks, use XYZ" and variations
on this theme?

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petewarden
Shannon's widget filters out obvious obscenities, but otherwise I just make
sure I've got a reply to any negative comments. Seeing that dialog in there
demonstrates a bit of authenticity.

Also, nobody's heard of my startup, so I feel fairly safe. Security through
obscurity. :)

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aresant
LOL - great self effacing comment.

Thanks for sending that filter idea, I have never "understood" how to
integrate twitter for marketing but that's a heck of a start - I'm planning to
run some A/B tests on that . . .

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duncanj
It moves too quickly for my tired eyes to read anything.

