Microsoft Paying Bloggers to Write about Internet Explorer

While I can understand some of the concerns here, I&#x27;d encourage you to look at where Internet Explorer is now; it&#x27;s come a long way in the past few years.<p>IE today offers a brand new experience with many different features. The reworked Internet Explorer lets you search smarter and do more with its cool new features, such as multitasking, pinnable sites, and full-screen browsing.<p>Wherever you are, Internet Explorer is the ideal way to play games, catch up on your reading, watch videos, and browse the web, of course. Use fast and fluid Internet Explorer across all your Windows devices—tablet, Windows Phone, and TV with an Xbox with an Xbox Live Gold subscription.<p>This program is really a great way for bloggers and HN commenters to spread the word about the new Internet Explorer web experience in a cool, visual way. There&#x27;s also opportunities for fun prizes and rewards through duration of the program.

What&#x27;s really amazing is how lackluster the whole campaign is. IE is a touted as a &quot;new browser&quot;, but here are the features they are especially proud of:<p><pre><code> 1) Full Screen Browsing. 2) Multitasking, which apparently means &quot;Skype while full screen browsing&quot;. 3) Reading view, a la the Readability or Clearly plug ins. 4) Pinned sites, which I guess I don&#x27;t understand, but it looks like Windows 8 tiles. </code></pre> <a href="http://www.rethinkie.com/hello-again/#/newbrowser" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rethinkie.com&#x2F;hello-again&#x2F;#&#x2F;newbrowser</a><p>Do I qualify for a payment?

That &quot;Advocate Marketing&quot; company has a list of customers in the slider banner on their website: Target, <i>AT&amp;T</i>, Fossil, Dole Food Company, McDonalds, <i>Bing</i>, <i>Verizon</i>, UnitedWay (non-profit?!), 3M, Anheuser-Busch, The Clorox Company, Walmart, <i>EMC Corporation</i>, Aveda Corporation, Expedia, <i>Windows Phone</i>, Citibank, Purina, Wells Fargo, <i>Snapfish</i>, Clinique, Oral-B, Sara Lee, <i>Haier</i>. (IT companies&#x2F;brands are italicized.)

For reference, here are details about the program:<p><a href="http://unbouncepages.com/7975010c-edb3-11e3-b3e0-12314000cce6/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;unbouncepages.com&#x2F;7975010c-edb3-11e3-b3e0-12314000cce...</a>

They pitched me as well yesterday: <a href="https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/478757246323548162" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Stammy&#x2F;status&#x2F;478757246323548162</a>

As long as Microsoft continues improving IE the way they have been I&#x27;m not going to get my undies in a bunch over a little astroturfing.

There&#x27;s nothing new under the sun. On several websites i visit it&#x27;s become increasingly difficult to tell whether or not someone is a paid marketer (giving rise to parodies thereof, and consequently Poe&#x27;s law).

I guess it says a lot about how much Microsoft has improved over the years that this seems &quot;low, even for Microsoft.&quot; right?

I love the &quot;Go TechCrunch!&quot; line at the end.

I hope now everyone sees the Penny-Arcade reviews in a totally different light, too (and by the way, Gabe has already admitted to getting lots of free stuff from Microsoft).

The problem is that now this is public, any positive review of a Microsoft product will be viewed with suspicion, having the very opposite of the intended effect.

This stuff is true for many things in many businesses. and media is just a piece of the Iceberg. Video Games Magazines&#x2F;websites have been paid for decades to write positive review and generate awareness for certain games, and I guess most people are aware of it. That&#x27;s why I usually take with a big grain of salt anything that&#x27;s written without any clear declaration of conflict of interest (or its absence).

Just a few hours ago I have run into a weird bug in IE 11. I am guessing some cookie values are cached and this is leading to unpredictable behaviour in my app. Seems to disappear when I have the dev tools open or when I clear the browser.<p>IE8 -&gt; IE9 -&gt; IE10 was fraught with stability issues that didn&#x27;t go away till I upgraded to 11.<p>I get it that all browsers have bugs but somehow IE seems to lead the pack.

Unfortunately, IE hasn&#x27;t fixed its main problem yet, and that problem is the slow upgrade cycle. Until they fix that IE will unavoidably remain the lowest common denominator of all browsers (on average).<p>I&#x27;m sure that by the time IE11 becomes obsolete I&#x27;m going to end up dreading the fact that a huge set of missing features will have to be taken into account.

Remember when Google penalized its own Chrome in the search engine? They should do the same with these IE posts now. After all, they apply that rule to everyone else, so why not Microsoft&#x2F;IE, too?<p>Downrank the posts and the sites, and ban their Adsense accounts - if Google wants to treat <i>everyone</i> the same way, and not just the little guy.

Next step in MS evolution would be paying bloggers to write about Windows ;) Though it might still take a while.

Microsoft doesn&#x27;t deserve a second chance. They went out of their way to destroy Netscape and then allowed IE to languish for years. Microsoft has always been an underachieving bully. Mediocrity is part of their DNA and they simply have no desire (or ability) to make good products consistently.

There is no need to pay for marketing, IE creates jobs, period. Endless hours of web dev goes to fixing stuffs just for IE, that&#x27;s what distinguish a professional Web developer from template generator. <i>trolling</i>

Meh, so many companies do this, it&#x27;s not new or evil.

I thought that was the norm these days... Or maybe I should ask, what major blog doesn&#x27;t accept payments to write articles about whatever? Thats how the blogging business works.

The thing is, it&#x27;s boring. We don&#x27;t care! We have had good browsers for years! Too late to the party as always MS.

Why am I getting a Déjà vu? I&#x27;ve seen the &quot;Go TechCrunch&quot; comment before. This looks like a repost to me.

yeh Microsoft definitly is inspired by Google in this regard... <a href="http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-post-campaign-for-chrome-106348" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;searchengineland.com&#x2F;googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-p...</a>

This seems vaguely familiar to me... Remember when they paid to port apps to windows phone?

&gt; I believe it will be easier for them to pay users to use Internet Explorer.

Of course it does,like it is paying astroturfers right here on HN.

Wait... I thought the browser wars were over?

So unsurprising.

I think this is perfectly legit.<p>Of course as long as they do not instruct you WHAT to write and do not interfere your publishing process in any way at any point.

This is why I like about working in Microsoft&#x27;s Marketing. They have a lot of money to spend (or waste). It&#x27;s just fun to experiment different things with huge resources. So why not? I would do the same if I work in IE Marketing anyways. There is nothing bad about it but the ROI is probably low. However, there is always a way to tweak the metrics to say: hey, I ran a successful IE rebrand program or some shet like that. Go Microsoft (Marketing)!! ;-)