Samsung Accused of Paying Developers for Promotion
Oops!
Back in April, Samsung found itself facing an investigation over questionable marketing techniques. Samsung's marketing department allegedly hired students to post negative comments about the HTC One on a number of tech and gadget websites that linked to favorable benchmark results for the HTC One. At the time, Samsung said that "future marketing work would be more in line with its company philosophy of transparency and honesty." Unfortunately, it seems one company working for Samsung never got the memo about transparency.
Samsung has said its ad agency is to blame for recent reports that it had been offering money to developers to promote the South Korean company. The Verge yesterday reported that developers on the Stack Overflow community had been offered money to promote Samsung's Smart App Challenge. According to the report, viral marketing company Fllu was contacting Stack Overflow community members and offering cash in exchange for mentions of the Samsung Smart App Challenge.
Though Fllu originally denied that Samsung was a client, the Verge was able to verify through email headers that the emails sent to Stack Overflow users came from the same source as its own communications with Fllu. Samsung has said Fllu's actions are "clearly against Samsung Electronics corporate policy," while Fllu now admits that it was working for Samsung. Samsung has reiterated its commitment to "engaging in transparent and honest communications with consumers."
You know, while I'm not personally a big fan of Samsung, I have to ask... What major tech companies DO you like for being honest and honourable? Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Sony, Nintendo, HP, and any other major one you can name - a google search and five minutes time will uncover stuff worse stuff than this.
So, curious - what companies DO you think are honest and honourable?
PS - Samsung's phones and tablets are overpriced and overrated. Good enough products, but they've taken a page out of Apple's book and think their name is worth something when they are slapping prices on their products which, in my experience, trade battery life for a few ounces of weight and being a bit thinner while loading basic Android with garbage that slows the OS down. I am not a Samsung fan, but "dishonest and honourable"? Please..
You know, while I'm not personally a big fan of Samsung, I have to ask... What major tech companies DO you like for being honest and honourable? Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Sony, Nintendo, HP, and any other major one you can name - a google search and five minutes time will uncover stuff worse stuff than this.
So, curious - what companies DO you think are honest and honourable?
PS - Samsung's phones and tablets are overpriced and overrated. Good enough products, but they've taken a page out of Apple's book and think their name is worth something when they are slapping prices on their products which, in my experience, trade battery life for a few ounces of weight and being a bit thinner while loading basic Android with garbage that slows the OS down. I am not a Samsung fan, but "dishonest and honourable"? Please..
The S4 is a great product? Only half the stated RAM is usable and the benchmarks were inflated....great product. Samsung is proving it can't beat the competition without cheating.
I'm sorry i haven't encountered any apps on the phone that need 1gb of ram, maybe when that happens I will root it and free up 1/2 a gb by getting rid of touchwiz. And who buys a phone based solely on benchmarks?
There is a reason why microcenter, and other physical tech stores will never die, and that is to make sure that the holy new product is really holy, etc.
I never really liked Samsung for various reasons, but this doesn't affect my opinion of them at all. All companies are ugly like this IMO. Sad but true.
They are easy to spot; high on complaint low on specifics.
Plenty of absurd claims like no hard drive, support number disconnected, failed in 2 months and still under warranty, but I threw it in the trash. This is my third unit because they all fail in a few days. Something about this design that makes my carpal-tunnel syndrome flare up.
They never respond to questions about why they didn't contact Amazon directly instead of calling some overseas number.
Even legit complaints, where they don't have USB 3.0 port and complain about low speed and give low marks.
Or complain that this $200 unit isn't as good as the $600 unit it replaced. Or I knocked this external HD off the table and it stopped working, what a poor design.
Or I bought a laptop for the first time and I do a lot of typing for my job and I must say how disappointed I am with the keyboard, I tried several friends laptops before I ordered this one and they all were terrible too, oh well I bought this on sale so with the cost of sending it back I guess I'm stuck with it.
I don't see why this qualifies as a grave crime to make it news? Would it be any different if the people on that site were to see ads for it? They are devs they of all people are smart enough to know better than to be influenced by promotion unless they think its worth it. I'm sure the verge has better things to do than go out of their way to investigate such trivial issues.
I'm not saying Samsung is clean. They have dirt on them too...their recent controversy to manipulate benchmarks was wrong. But this just seems like a desperate attempt. In the end u can promote all you want any well informed and sensible consumer will buy the product he wants.
Unfortunately, this has become the standard practice. I also hear windows phones are worst and take up even more space. PCs don't state how much space is left on drive or RAM after the OS is installed, why should phones. I guess it up to the consumer to be savvy,just like when buying a PC. After all, phones now are like PCs.
The S4 is a great product? Only half the stated RAM is usable and the benchmarks were inflated....great product. Samsung is proving it can't beat the competition without cheating.
16 GB of RAM?! What are you even talking about?
The phone has 2 GB of RAM and all of it is available to apps.
Can you even try an intelligent trolling post once in a while?
I'm sorry i haven't encountered any apps on the phone that need 1gb of ram, maybe when that happens I will root it and free up 1/2 a gb by getting rid of touchwiz. And who buys a phone based solely on benchmarks?
Not the point at all. Fact is the S4 is advertised as having 16GB of RAM. Obviously not all of that is usable. I had BlackBerries for years and I had about 90% of the stated RAM free for us. I now have an iP5 and I had 14GB free on a 16GB phone fresh out of the box. 8 usable gigabytes out of 16 is criminal. ALL cell phone manufactures should CLEARLY state in their adverting and on the box how much is usable after first powering up the device. Also, the fact Samsung inflated it's benchmarks proves it doesn't have what it takes to compete.
What are you even talking about?! 16 GB of RAM?
The phone has 2 GB of RAM and all of that is available for apps.
Can't you troll intelligently once in a while?
Why does it matter if you pay a bunch of college kids to do it as opposed to paying a big promotional firm to lie and mudsling on your behalf? What a bunch of hypocrites.