Nvidia "Community Outreach"

But the person doing the one-to-many on the forum is not technically an employee - they are just another punter who's been given free stuff and an NDA and told to evangelise in certain ways. They are not being paid a salary, or on the books at AEG as an employee. AEG get to keep their hands clean and claim it is just one person passing on their info quite independently to his online firends. That's where the loophole is.

 

Why would NVIDIA care any more than AEG? Again, AEG's "employees" are anonymous and will be difficult to expose, and easy to replace. They are apparently bound to secrecy, so there will obviosly be no official statement posted for users to rally around and attack. What is going to sustain the outrage once this blows over? Speculation? That can only go so far. Is the average forum user going to stop reading bulletin boards or buying NVIDIA cards because of shill activity? No. The positives far outweigh the negatives here for NVIDIA, especially if another FX dud comes along and they need immediate or pre-emptive damage control.

Really, there is no incentive for this activity to stop. I think at best admins will be able to curb it with some creativity (like with the custom vB permissions here), but it's going to be a difficult fight if it's fought at all.

 

I agree memories are short (and grudges long). I agree that this is a mostly long-term project for NV (anticipating a future FX) with possible short-term benefits (perhaps enhancing their already very positive performance rep).

But I still think threads like this make it a current negative--and perhaps an ongoing one, for those with long memories. So the question becomes, who are the type to know about NV's previous PR "transgressions," and will further irritating them help or hurt?

 

Thank you for posting this and raising awareness.

I guess all we can do is encourage people to get information, and "opinions" from as many users and hardware sites as possible.

It's sad really now we all have to be paranoid about just who is working for AEG "managing" what community on behalf of nVidia.

 

I don't see it as paranoia. As far as I am concerned, it raised awareness and it confirmed some suspicions I had.

 

What exactly would that be? I'm just curious.. it's sounding like there were these mysterious guys hanging around the NVidia forums in Rage3D...

 

"Gifts" are taxable & barter was around a lot longer than salaries. I think it is possible a case could be made that these people are employees.

Not being "in the loop" this was news to me & I'm sad to say it has soured my enjoyment of forums. I even used to enjoy reading the Rabid posts as I could take them with a hefty dose of salt & give them the credence they deserved.

Now I'll never be even 90% sure that what appears to be a well measured post is truly an unbiased (or slightly biased) genuine user reporting the true experiences they have of a product they considered good enough to spend their money on.

Truly, truly sad.

 

It is paranoia. Fullstop. Whether someone is mouthing off about a product because 1) they own it and love it 2) they are a zealot or 3) they are paid to do it makes absolutely no difference. Hell, I'm sure there are ******s and zealots who do this for free with a lot more enthusiasm and effectiveness than most people could manage if they were paid to. So exactly how this affects our forum experience is beyond me.

I could come up with a bunch of names right now for either side from HardOCP, Anandtech, Rage3D, NVNews and Beyond3D that would be great candidates for company shills. Does it matter? Nope.

The knowledgeable regular guys are always going to vastly outnumber the shills in this industry where there is so much community and media involvement. How effective could they be?

 

Mr. Perez is entitled to say what he wants for whatever reasons he may have. But as a very active member of several of the biggest 3D forums I can say from personal experience that there is no obvious glut of insidious comments that favor Nvidia. The community has leaned green for some time now, yes, but that was most certainly deserved. I for one would be a lot more concerned if AEG targeted media outlets and not forums directly. That would be a lot more effective.

The thing is, it was very easy to recommend Nvidia's products over the past year or so. This would have been a lot more applicable and useful in the NV3x era. Or maybe they're just stocking the armory in preparation for R580

 

It seems AEG has diverse clients so why the Nvidia witch-hunt? I don't see Microsoft or AOL spilling their guts on the nitty gritty details of their relationships with AEG. Do people think that AEG's efforts for Nvidia are in some way more deceptive because of Nvidia's unshakeable "evil" stigma from days gone by? Coming to think of it, Microsoft and AOL are evil too!!!

 

C'mon, Geo. What company is willing to talk about their strategies? If you ask Nvidia or ATI PR things they will gladly tell you things that they think you should hear, but they are not going to tell you things like "Well, our overall strategy right now is to downplay these features that we don't have by focusing on this, this, and this." They are not going to tell you "Well, we are reducing spending on print advertisements and instead focusing on making enginners available for scripted interviews in magazines and online publications." Why would you expect AEG to be any different?

Do you seriously think what they do is outside the law and therefore they refuse to tell? I thought it was pretty suggestive when they stated that they focused on not posing as regular users while having an agenda. It seems to suggest a strategy of:

1. Find people who are enthusiastic and vocal about something (that matters to the client).
2. Determine if they are influential.
3. Enable them to become more so by feeding them information or products (or other).

I don't think the agents they "acquire" are paid directly and I don't think they are being told what to say or do. It would be understood. If someone gives you a piece of hardware and some information about it and you do the "normal" thing and share your information and experience you get the next wave of it. If you don't, the waves stop coming. Everybody is happy. Right?

If I hadn't taken my pills for this, I would think ripping into Nvidia and Microsofot for using a third party marketing expert was a plant, a tactic to smear or divert attention from others who may be doing it in plain view. In other words, one could easily argue that the only reason to "dig this up" and start pointing fingers and scream "bloody murder" is to divert attention from something else, to blow it out of all proportions to make anyone "not on the list" look better without people getting the information (information in this case being "bloody murder!") that this is how it always works.

It's like writing "Huge blast reported at NASA Space Shuttle launch. Details to be released soon." makes it sound very "interesting" and dramatic, but this is what happens at every successful launch.

I'm not accusing you, Geo, I am just saying this to demonstrate how this type of "mystery" can be twisted around and take on a life of its own when, really, there is nothing special happening.

 

Fixed that for ya.

 

An example of how innocuous I think this AEG system is:

If my assumptions on how this program works are correct (see previous posts), I think someone like S3 or XGI would do well to hire AEG. Because almost nobody (on here) seems to be buying their products, we hear precious little about them. If someone enthusiastic on here had their products and better information about their implementations and strategies, I am sure we would all be better informed on the subject. Heck, some of us might even think "Hey, that's pretty interesting. I didn't know that. I might have to start considering them in my decision set."