Advertisement by entourage?

Does anyone else think that entourage is advertising edge by posting on various other website discussions?
I recently read some stuff on gizmodo and endgadget and mobiread here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=848654
which seems a lot like salespitches.
I am not against that - but I would prefer that they come out and say officially that it's them.

Or am I being paranoid?

Can't say for sure - but maybe a little paranoid. There are a handful of regulars here that you'll see on Mobile Read, too. (Entourage didn't have their own forum until just this last week or so, so many of us were posting there for months as we waited for the device to be released. No big surprise to see us there.)

Boris (whom you'll recognize from here) has also posted on at least Engadget, but you'll notice his comments are in the minority. Engadget and other mainstream tech sites haven't been quite so kind. I've posted on a TechCrunch article, but I don't think I can be mistaken for a company shill as I usually make a point of saying that I'm all about the stylus/tablet functionality, and I'm willing to put up with something more buggy, clunky and un-sleek in order to get it. Maybe not the most ringing endorsement, but fair, I think.

Bear in mind, too, that as we've discussed on a few forums, people who have the eDGe are reacting much more positively to it than typical tech reviewers because we are a self-selecting crowd that saw a need for and bought the device. So, we have instantly a reason to like it because basically we all want to annotate pdfs (among other things, but that seems to be a common thread) and there's no other device (other than a tablet PC) that has that ability right now. The reviewers might be less inclined to actually care about the features that we bought the eDGe for. So, they write a lukewarm review and a few of us get a little steamed that the review kind of misses the mark or doesn't tell the whole story, and we comment. (I read 2 mainstream tech reviews in one day where neither one mentioned that the eDGe had a stylus. Um, kind of a big deal to mention that, no?)

Is it any wonder some of us feel a need to speak up?

Do companies do this? Sure, does enTourage I doubt it. In the end it doesn't matter. You read all of the positive and negative comments and decide for yourself. There are plenty of reviews from sites like Laptop Magazine (Which enTourage links to) as well as many other sources which you can read if you don't trust the blogs.

So I will say you are being paranoid. Every single consumer product ever made will have people who speak highly of it. Maybe we think the eDGe is a piece of junk but we just have to justify our purchases by singing its praises across multiple forums.

Originally Posted by drozzy

Does anyone else think that entourage is advertising edge by posting on various other website discussions?
I recently read some stuff on gizmodo and endgadget and mobiread here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=848654
which seems a lot like salespitches.
I am not against that - but I would prefer that they come out and say officially that it's them.

Or am I being paranoid?

Hi Drozzy,

I work for enTourage marketing and I can say that we don't in any organized way contribute to other forums yet. We do plan to, but so far we have been showing as much restraint as possible. When we do, we will identify ourselves. We do have some very enthusiastic customers and there are others who simply like our concept so much that they promote or defend us even without ever holding our product in their hands. I don't doubt that some of our engineering staff or members of our suppliers' staffs have taken it upon themselves to contribute anonymously to some of these forums, but it is not something we encourage them to do.

Tom C.

I know that BorisB and I, among others, have been accused of being employed by Entourage because we made positive posts about a product we are fans of. It's funny and sad how people cannot believe that anything without an "i" in front of it can have genuine fans.

Guerilla marketing campaigns certainly exist, but I haven't seen any whiff of it here, and it would be a very unusual (and expensive!) thing for a startup to do.

Well if I am employed by enTourage I hope I can get 50% off accessories and the next version of this device.

Here's the problem with message forums in general. People are generally anonymous and feel they can spout out whatever they want. Whether it is attack a company, person, or idea. While I get a lot of useful information from forums like this you have to take the negative stuff with a grain of salt. Just look how Engadget has to shut down comments on various articles. We have an unofficial forum for my company and it is amazing what stuff some people say there because they feel safe do to anonymity. They would never say the same thing to someone's face due to risk of getting punched in the mouth.

That's why I created a fan page for the eDGe. I wanted to assemble what I deem to be the best information about the product. It's free info take it for what it's worth.