I'm getting a lot of pre-VON media spam at the moment. If you want to catch my eye, here's the rulez, folks.
I remember picking up a magazine -- BYTE, I think -- many years ago. On the cover was a headline screaming "20Mhz Monster 386 machines", or something similar. (Many, many years ago. I'm older than I look.)
I made a resolution. I would never, ever read another article that merely announced something was merely faster, bigger or cheaper. Such progress is taken for read -- the background expectation of our technology-soaked society. So today's PR spam announcing
Blahcorp is entering the VoIP space, by introducing a VoIP gateway on a single blade.
is an instant delete. Sorry. Now, if you're explaining that this is an accelleration in the rate of change, or a new form of change, I'm interested. Otherwise, it's duller than Bracknell on a wet November Sunday afternoon.
If you want to engage with bloggers, it's useful to at least show some appreciation or understanding of why we write, what we write about, and what's interesting to us. There are no deadlines or editors to please in the blogosphere. Traditional media needs to create copy, come what may. It needs to be polite, to not scare the advertisers. Punches need to be pulled.
I don't need to write about anything, particularly your product. I want to write, however. Help me find relevant things to write about, and I will reward you by writing about them.
Here's what I write about:
So, hopefully that's saved some PR folks a hour of reading the archives.
Here's another spectacularly inept PR effort. It's so lame, it's funny.
Martin,
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) first emerged in the early 1990s as a way to conduct voice conversations over the Internet without incurring telephone charges. Today, the capacity, speed and reach of data networks are expanding much faster than traditional circuit-switched voice networks. Voice over packet solutions (such as VoIP) leverage those data network resources and contemporary packet-switching technologies to generate new revenue opportunities and cost savings for both competitive voice service providers and existing telecom carriers. The result is that telecom companies are frantically investing in VoIP infrastructure equipment...
It goes on and on from here. One massive paragraph, another hundred words or more to go. I've no idea what they're selling. By now, I don't care. Delete.
Here's the recipe for success:
Martin, [Note: I'm "Dear Martin" to friends and family, not strangers. "Dear Mr Geddes", maybe. False familiarity sucks.]
I see your wrote about X in article Y. Did you know that our new product, the Acme Whizzulator, enables users to make backwards phone calls, just as you suggested? You could never have done this with a traditional switch, and transforms telephony for all backwards-speaking users. Just plug it into your headset, and you're off!
Do come and have a chat with our chief engineer, Keeg Onhcet, when you're at VON, who can tell you more about our secret sauce. And keep up the blogging.
Really, it's that simple. Is it so hard?
Posted by Martin Geddes at 8:28 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/548
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference New and improved!:
»
VoN Bloggers Roundtable from James Seng's Blog
Just arrived Boston to participate at the
[Read more] Tracked on September 19, 2005 4:20 AM