75% of Web Chatter About the Surface Is About Covergate
Either take my word for it or do a past-hour googling of these two things yourself:
“microsoft surface” -splits -splitting –defective
That search got me 101 hits about the Surface that probably don’t mention its touch cover splitting issue. Those are the pages that are not likely to agitate you if you’re a Microsoft enthusiast. Okay, now google this, another last hour search, but this time for the opposite sort of pages:
“microsoft surface” “cover splits” OR “cover splitting” OR defective
I’m getting 76 hits. And the result of dividing 76 by 101 and then multiplying that figure by a hundred, as you all know, is 75.25%. That’s just math.
Meaning, in the past hour (up to the time of my writing this), Google crawled a bunch of new web content in the form of articles, forum pages, blog threads, Youtube videos and so forth and of those crawled things about the Microsoft Surface and the majority of them either mention or completely cover (sorry) its alleged defect.
I feel bad, yet again, for the Microsoft mobile guys. They keep making innovative products that smoke the competition in all aspects but success. So they release the Surface, polished, cool commercials, a couple of them have a minor problem that I’m sure will be addressed to consumers’ satisfaction one way or the other, yet in spite of their extreme designing and marketing efforts, most of the chatter out there is centered around or at least includes this silly nonissue.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire” doesn’t really apply to the web which likes to seize on anything that might generate a pageview and blows it up way out of proportion. I doubt there’s much fire here at all. I bet none of you who bought this product are having the problem, right? Well, the good news is, as Apple illustrated with Antennagate, these nonissues blow over after a little while and may not doom a product at all. Maybe even this chatter that flares up over something negative can actually spark sales, bad news is good news.
So, no big whoop, people will shut up about the splitting covers and blog and flame about Android fragmentation again. That is, unless there really is fire here, if there is a steady rate of people who buy a Surface RT that encounter the defect and complain about it, then this could persist; and if it persists at a figure like 75%, that I doubt that will do Microsoft any favors which has already admitted to modest sales figures of the device. And hey, when the thing turns out to have flopped so hard that even you won’t deny it, well, I guess you can just blame it on the likes of me.
Doug Simmons
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Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
That means Surface is popular, otherwise there would be no chatter. I didn’t totally read your rant because there is no point in reading one because your headline itself says it all. Good luck with your f*cking cheap google stuff, sorry free stuff thrown on face of you to serve ads. 🙂
> sorry free stuff thrown on face of you to serve ads.
Among that free stuff delivered by Google is opting-out of ads either with a settings change or a free app.
> That means Surface is popular, otherwise there would be no chatter.
You know what else got 101 hits in the last hour? The Nexus One. I would call 101 past-hour hits on this search pretty underwhelming in terms of gauging its popularity. And instead of popularity, perhaps the word you should have used would be notoriety. I’ll give you this, the Surface/defect search did generate more chatter in the last hour than eye herpes, so there’s that.
> because your headline itself says it all.
Hey thanks, I’ve never been complimented before on how succinct my titles were. I hope you also enjoyed the Maria pictures, that’s about as risque as I can get away with being here..
> cheap google stuff
You know who Mary-Jo Foley is? She’s respected in the Microsoft world. Well Paul Thurrott asked her why the expensive pricing for the Surface, seems a bit high, and she admitted, I watched this thing whole, she admitted that it was chosen at least in part to avoid projecting a sense of cheapness in potential buyers. Veblan good pricing. That is to say it is Microsoft’s strategy to gouge you as a means to get you to buy their product, versus Google pricing things to sell. And it ain’t even working from what I’ve heard.
And those ads by the way, you’ve got to admit, they’re the most precisely-targeted ads you’ve ever seen. Had advertisements always been this precisely targeted, I suspect fewer people would go out of their way not to watch advertisements and the result would be more money changing hands and progress in general.
Parenthetically, you’ve also got to admit, Google knows how to write their own ads with finesse.
ha doug, the way you trying to project the Surface and Microsoft are bad is telling threat you are seeing to your lover’s ecosystem. Otherwise you wouldn’t reply 3 times to defend you stat. It is nothing but FUD. This is first gen device and will have issues. Microsoft is not denying the issue and are happily replacing them. You and David Meyer, the conspiracy blogger of ZDNet are made for each other. Only difference he is used to Steve Job’s and you are Eric Schmidt. I don’t care what Mary Jo said or Paul interpreted. I want your first hand experience. If you don’t have one, like I said in your other fiasco on Surface the other day about VPN and Remote Desktop. If you don’t have the real input, please stay out of it. Your reputation on Microsoft products is zero, and don’t become like id8 SJVN on ZDNet blogs. Yes, google knows what is the size of yours, so they can fine tune the alternatives happily.
Sorry, your math is wrong.
76 talk about it, 101 not. Then 43% talk about the defects not 75%. 76 / (76 + 101) = 0,429 or 43%
yeah.. not sure on the math. i think 76/(101+76) = .4 somthing then x 100 = ~40%
either way that is a large percentage, but im sure all will be fine. this is their first gen tab so im sure people will test the water and might be more willing for the second gen. i havent been watching sales but im sure the lumia 928 and htc are doing fine
and it is only the issue with Touch Cover, which can be separated from the actual RT and replaced with newer one. And Microsoft is not denying to anyone who have the issue. They are replacing the defective Touch Cover with newer one. I see no issue as long as Microsoft *replaces* the defective with newer one and how it becomes suddenly world issue to chatter. I see that Simmons is feeling threat to his favorite ecosystem by Surface RT, so trying to spread little FUD with his rant.
Simmons, BTW I read it completely even though I neglected to read originally. The issue your trying to exploit is nothing actually and does almost no impact $ wise to customers who are facing broken Touch Covers because Microsoft is replacing them. Please feel free to go ahead and spread the FUD, that shows your ignorance and exposes the threat level you are facing from newly released Windows RT tablet against already established Android System that you support blindly. 😀