Samsung Mobilers Winners : A Disappointment!
Totally disappointed to see the Results of the Samsung Mobilers contest. It is obvious that you have chosen only those posts as winning entries who have posted a lot of PICTURES of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Content other than visuals, amount of traffic coming to the blogger's site have not been given any weightage. In nutshell, bad judgment.
Deleting all my posts about Samsung and Indiblogger from my blog. Will not participate in any contest on this site in future. Good bye, Indibloggers. I've seen enough.
PS : Congratulations to the winners!
We must appreciate that Navin Bajaj has the grace and poise to congratulate all winners on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 blog contest even while seething with rage and disappointment at what he perceives as bad judgement!
I really must tell you Navin that I have been writing (and have participated in quite a few contests too) since I was in school in the seventies... and this is just one of the few prizes I have won. You don't win everytime... but that surely does not mean that you STOP writing or associating with people or a website or a forum. Winners are chosen because of what the judges/sponsors want... and not every form of writing appeals. Yes, there can always be wrong judgements, but then that is a part of life. Move on... keep surging... winning will embrace you when it must!
Well said Sir and congratulations to you.
I have gone through the winning posts of Samsung mobilers, Writers of the winning posts have created them with more efforts and passion than the other 200 people. I heartfuly congratulate the winners.
I had even participated in the contest, but after seeing the winners, I felt the judgement was completley fair. winning and losing is a part of life. efforts are more important. As we keep trying one day we may be on the otherside.
Gowardhan
www.readitt.in
Forgot to mention that RULES OF THIS CONTEST WERE CHANGED MID WAY to accomodate those people who did not even host the LIVE launch event of this Tab. WHY WERE THE RULES CHANGED MID WAY? How many out of this winners' list are those who DID NOT EVEN HOST THE LIVE EVENT ON THEIR BLOG SITES? Any answers?
No weightage has been given for ORIGINALITY also. Many of the winners are LATE COMERS in this contest who have JUST COPY PASTED (with minor edits) the ideas posted by those who posted earlier.
@Pramod : If Samsung has decided the winners then they have obviously shown undue favoritism to some people, who were perhaps their friends?
@Arvind Passey : I congratulate you again for being among the winners, but I also have to say that your entry was CERTAINLY NOT DESERVING TO BE AMONG THE WINNERS. I have seen your entry. It is overly lengthy, off topic and irrelevant. The reader loses interest in your post from the first paragraph itself. I don't know how many people would have the patience to read your full RAMAYANA right till the end, which has ZERO RELEVANCE to the Samsung Galaxy tab. If some non-partisan people with better judgment had judged this contest, then your entry would possibly be among the BOTTOM 20 of all the contestants. Sorry for being so candid.
@The owners of Indiblogger : I will certainly not participate in any contest on this site ever!
i have a question for you .
Are you blogging for winning contests ? Or blogging because you like blogging ? Becausing blogging is your passion ?
Forget this incident and keep blogging, Being on indi or not, is completely your choice but being disappointed is not cool.
Keep blogging, keep smiling.
its correct that we like blogging so only we are blogging.. but you cant deny the fact we have been fooled...
@Subhashchy : Firstly, you need to go to my blog site : http://superstargems.blogspot.com to get to know what it's all about, then you will get your answer to why exactly I blog. I give Stock Tips (for free) to my readers/followers who are investors from across the globe...... Number of visitors to my site being in lakhs. I do this for charity.
Secondly, would anybody (in his/her right mind) blog about a commercial product like the Samsung Galaxy Tab on their sites just because "blogging is their passion"? If blogging is your passion then you would blog about the subjects you are passionate about. I bet nobody would blog about a "Samsung Product" which will influence their sales, just out of passion. It would be like advertising for a commercial product on your site for free! ....... So, of course, I blogged about a Samsung product with an intent to win the contest, not coz I am in love with Samsung, for Pete's sake! 
I actually feel cheated by Samsung and Indiblogger.in because I telecast their product launch LIVE and promoted their product through my post FOR FREE! Both Samsung and Indiblogger.in derived mileage from my website for more than a month FOR FREE! If they had paid for advertising their product on my website for so long, they would have had to pay me much more than the price of their Galaxy Tab 750! So, I'm absolutely in the right for being disappointed with their poor/partisan judgment of this contest. I feel cheated. Period.
To prove my point that the judgment was indeed poor/partisan and I'm not whining just coz my name is not in the winners' list, I challenge everyone on indiblogger and the judges who judged this contest to compare my entry with that of Mr. Arvind Passey's entry. You can see for yourself whose entry is more relevant and has more impact.
And thirdly, there are still no answers to my question, "why were the rules of the contest changed mid-way?" from the Organisors/Judges of this contest. How many of the winners on the list are the ones who did not even host the LIVE Launch event of Samsung?
@Umesh : I cannot be supportive or acknowledge the judgement of the judges simply because their judgment is so obviously poor/partisan.
Don't you think you are over-reacting ?
Point # 1. Number of visitors to my site being in lakhs. I do this for charity.
DO you really think you get Lakhs visitors ? In a day , in a month or even a Year ? As per the static counter you yourself put on your blog, total number of visits on ur blog since Jan 2010 is 56,000 approx.means 200 visits a day max. Huh.
point #2. if they had paid for advertising their product on my website for so long, they would have had to pay me much more than the price of their Galaxy Tab 750!
Not sure how u expect someone to pay you $$$ for ads on your blog for 200 page views a day . One can get 200 page views easily by just 5 minutes of work on any thing he writes.
OK You are disappointed, Sholud be, you didn't win. but shouting like this is not gonna do anything :(.
Just so u wrote this much here, i bookmarked your blog.
In a way, you're agreeing you're into pay-for-play blogging ;). If most of you guys are into such unethical way of blogging, from where did you guys develop a conscious?
With less than 100 posts in well over 5 years & 54k visitors, you can't consider yourself as king. I also don't support the result as i know many of the people begged me for a vote, i submitted one post about the tech specs & after seeing the real senario, i stopped writing about the topic as i hate begging.
The decision taken by Samsung or whoever was right or wrong, is up to individual opinion. Amit Bhawani is among of those winners, who got 41 votes, chosen by Samsung as they knew he will give them even more publicity.
(@Amit: no hard feelings)
Hate to break it to you, but you know that the cake is a lie when 1 asks you all to pucker up. When I pointed it out, no1 said anything: http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=9679
Congrats, bloggers are now officially deemed as cheap and free way to do PR stunts. Indiblogger is partially to blame for giving a channel for companies to take advantage of naive "tech" bloggers. But bloggers are responsible because they are selling away themselves so easily. Here I am criticizing mainstream media, but the media is merely a mirror of the society at large.
^ +1
Agree one hundred percent with you, Sorcerer. It's time members of Indiblogger wake up! These contests are nothing but a sham! My advice to all the bloggers is : DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN SUCH CONTESTS. DO NOT PROMOTE ANY PRODUCT ON YOUR BLOG SITE FOR FREE. Indiblogger.in and their advertisers like Samsung are only EXPLOITING YOU to promote their products for free! Realize the value of your words and your webspace!
I feel cheated by Indiblogger.in and Samsung because I naively promoted their product on my popular website for more than a month, and in return what did I get?...... Nothing! Zero! Zilch! If you convert the mileage both Samsung and Indiblogger.in got out of my site for more than a month, then the amount they owe me would be around Rs. 1.5 lakh!
Shame on you, Indiblogger.in and Samsung!
Now, just you wait Samsung & Indiblogger! I'm gonna expose both of you to the same audience that I naively promoted you to. You think you can cheat people like this? .......
Naah! You got it wrong. This cheating game of yours is not gonna last long. It is actually going to prove counter productive for you. Now wait for the NEGATIVE PUBLICITY that you are going to get! This will teach you a lesson to be MORE HONEST in future! Bye Bye!
Funny, people realize its a sham when they come to know about it the hard way but people who benefitted from it will defend the entity's honour. Remember when SpeakAsia was caught? People who made loss badmouthed them and those who benefitted from it defended it- via phone, email, social networking, forums, etc.
They owe you nothing. Its a contest. You participated and you didn't win. Complying with the rules does not warranty your chance to be considered, let alone to win. They are company guys. They will obviously choose what makes them happy.
No company does anything without their benefit. Its a fact: You will think the same way if you were in their place. There's a way to do this honourably but they don't teach ethics in PR and marketing, atleast in India. Indiblogger cannot be blamed, although they shouldn't call themselves a community when they are, in reality, promoters. I am pissed off at Indiblogger for making such contests, no different from how I criticize bloggers, journalists, media companies, forum members and forums (who call themselves "media pvt. ltd) directly/ indirectly/personally. As a reviewer, I can be candid about things no strings attached and unlike journalists I don't worry about not getting "support" and freebies and ad revenues. You as a blogger should have seen it through, especially if you are blogging as a passion.
My dear friend, stay away from such promotions. Or else your readers will fall for it. People will read anything and say "good article" because the crowd we get are usually not well-informed, unless they get the information from us. They get the misconception because you did what you shouldn't have. That's why people need to stop saying stuff like "blogging is the next form of journalism"- because they are not. People read yours because you write what you love and you write what you think is true. Do you see how it works?
Now forget it- lesson learnt- major difference between sweepstakes, contests, giveaways and tournament. Have a cake. Congratulations to the winners and I hope it was worth it.
Before some genius misunderstand to go off topic, I've referred to speak asia as a reference, no way deeming that Indiblogger in anyway belonging to the same league.
S, now seeing this imbroglio, I am getting what you had pointed out earlier. Now Naveen ji crying foul over his misconeption and demanding things.
I really feel the very sincerety at stake in the tips given for stocks etc. one can easily get carried away and dupe the investors at their whims.
Well, with 220 entries and 20 winners, this had to happen. 200 people had to lose, some of whom knew they will not win, some confident enough that they will own a Galaxy Tab by the end of all this. Some hoped they would and were not disappointed when they didn't win, and some wanted to win badly and were therefore disappointed badly enough to express that on this forum.
Arvind Passey's post was a very interesting and creative one, and though I must admit I skipped over a few paragraphs towards the end, it was a very good read. Must have taken quite some time and effort in concenptualizing the story and writing that down.
Navin's, on the other hand, is a 300-word affair that could have well been a Facebook status update.
Reading his anguish and disappointment had made me he had written something very good. What I did not know (before digging up his deleted post from Google's cache) was, he expected Samsung to give him a tab just because he wrote "Samsung Galaxy Tab is good". Did any the remaining 219 bloggers who submitted their entries differ?
@ashes, I know it's a tough task to judge a post, but it's really ridiculing of you to point out the word quantity as insufficient. this is just preposterous. to quote your own words.
"Navin's, on the other hand, is a 300-word affair that could have well been a Facebook status update. "
If a judge is just looking at quantity of words then it should bloody well have been specified .
one could write an epic on that.
If one cannot see the depth in a single word, and judge the writeup with the intrinsic value, he should'nt be judging at all.
it takes a lot ,lot time to shorten writeup.
this leads me to think I got rejected by writing insufficient just 150 words or so.
very disheartening.
Well Pramod, how difficult is to google "samsung galaxy tab", open the first three search results, and copy stuff from there into your own blog, add "I love this feature and I love this one more"?
I never judged by the word count alone; but the number of features that the tablet has cannot be even listed down in 300 words, certainly not by the 300 words Navin wrote. Do you think you can do justice by reviewing such a detailed product in so terse a blog post?
The word length was not specificied, but what was specified that the winners will be decided based on content, creativity, and interaction. Navin's blog had none of the three. t was not a contest to "shorten writeup", and you need not care about word-length while reviewing a product.
Ashes , thanks for clarifying. the statement outright implied the suggestion. if judgement was serene in your heart, it's great. I have no issues on it.
cheers and best wishes.
Anyway, here is some free publicity for Navin, his cached blog that was deleted: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CKdqJ7xvk8EJ:superstargems.blogspot.com/2011/08/samsung-galaxy-tab-750-topples-apple.html+samsung-galaxy-tab-750-topples-apple.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in.
In case Google permanently deletes that, here is his complete post:
Thursday, August 11, 2011 The Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 topples the Apple-cart! Being a delighted owner of a Samsung Galaxy S II phone, it was but natural that I was drawn towards the latest offering from the Samsung stable, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750. The technical specifications of the new Galaxy Tab 750 are the best in its class. Take a look yourself here http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxytab/10.1/spec.html The 10.1 inch widescreen display is a sight for sore eyes. Its 1280x800 WXGA TFT LCD Screen is a treat to watch, whether you use it for work or play. This slim & light weight beauty can be an inspiration for fashion models! What I like about the Home Screen is its thoughtful design. Everything you need is within easy reach from the Home Screen. For example, the shortcut to apps icon has been kept at the top right corner of the screen for easy accessibility. Check out the Pulse News Reading app which offers easy navigation and dual view for reading news pages here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rroc-DfXF4 It's sure to become one of your favorites. Another feature that I find pretty neat is the dedicated Screenshot button which lets you take screenshots with a single click. The connectivity is superb with both HSDPA & WIFI access. Like its hugely successful Galaxy S II phone, the Galaxy Tab 750 also has an integrated Social Hub, Readers Hub & Music Hub. With both a front facing & rear facing camera, you'd be able to take great pictures, record videos in HD, and video chat with friends or work associates any time. And yes, the latest Android 3.1 Honeycomb platform makes multi-tasking a breeze! The Galaxy 750 is slimmer, lighter & faster! So one can safely conclude that with the launch of the new Galaxy 750, Samsung has successfully toppled the Apple-cart of its competitors. Cheers! Posted by Superstar at 10:14 PM
To be very honest, my opinion as a neutral reader to both these posts: -
Mr. Arvind has been very creative and I actually liked the concept and post. On the other hand, Navin's post is very ordinary (if the link provided above is what he wrote) and did not seem to extra-ordinary. It was plain simple review like any other product review (read paid review).
@Navin, if your blog is on different topic and you chose yourself to write outside your nieche, is it the only reason you thought you should win? Moreover, noone forced you to write the post. You did yourself, right? There were 219 entries which is too less compared to the membership of Indiblogger. Why do you think others did not write about it? Simple, because they did not find it relevant to their blog theme (myself being one of them).
I read Arvind's post on this. Although this was not much like a review but much of a unique idea. Agree i didn't had patience enough to read the whole story,but the paras i read was indeed good. A tech writer can easily write a review of any product by googling , combining 10 pages into one in his own words however putting things like Arvidn did, takes times and effoft. I guess he desearve it.
Sirjee, how can 1 review something if he didn't have it to review? Hands on experience is very much different from reviews.
I know, now I am being an annoying. I shall now fly on a ROFLCOPTER. Renie once wanted to speak about this via phone after I posted that thread but I insisted on him to post on the thread so that everyone can know what we talked about. Now leave it. I am still assuming Indiblogger most likely did an oversight and they didn't see this coming. I might not like how this contest is put up, but even I cannot bash those who atleast make an effort to bring this effort. My hope is that Indiblogger will evolve from this.
Companies should spend such money to develop quality training and resource in service centres. Irrespective of the company, we have a serious catching up to do for service. Apple's RMA experience doesn't seem to be as good as 1 can hope to get from a premium product.
http://www.wizardjournal.com/new-gadgets/samsung-galaxy-tab-750.html
I didn't talk about all the specs. I precise talked about the features that excited me the most. Unlike all reviews, I made it personal, very personal and these are the things are that I REALLY do in my real life with a different gadget or Galaxy Tab or anyother Tab or Laptop or even a Smartphone.
I didn't do anything promotion because I wanted to just write about the features I liked about Galaxy Tab along with a self composed, rhyming poem, original and creative. I bet not all of the winning guys can create a poem like that.
What do you think. Is this fair?
@ Rakesh Narang: You know that dialogue: Think beyond IIMs!! Here's mine: Think beyond self promotion!
Here's another. Dr. McCoy of Star Trek once said: Beware of Romulans bearing gifts!!I know you're posting to simply promote your post. You forget we are bloggers, and we know all those ways to promote. But for a minute, think beyond yourself- unless you wish that the Indian blogging community to become a heap of garbage where are aching to put up links on the forums.
If you haven't read the indiblogger link I posted in this thread, you wouldn't get what I am trying to say. As far as fair is concerned, you don't seem to understand how such contests work. The judges were Samsung folks- IINM. They're a corporate- marketing, PR- or as I refer them as- The suits. They will choose what they believe its the right article. That's how the suits think and IMO, they're not wrong. Indiblogger could have insisted to choose the winners but then again unless the suits and contest planner have some understanding, the decision making is usually made by the company who gives away stuff. That's exactly the reason why I made that thread before, but most of you bloggers turned a blind eye, and now started to whine about it because you guys did not get anything, not even pen. They might reconsider, but only probably because people started whinning.
If you think of it this way, it pretty much shows what of writer most of the people are. Most claim they write for passion, but passion and writing in exciting because "It is a trend" is a massive difference but gets pretty much mashed together. People need to be careful now that handful of PRs started inviting bloggers to fill chairs in press releases, tempting small freebies and free food. Have some self-respect and apply some sense. Think before leaping. Not everyone is good at leaping before thinking.
I also posted with lot of images and content including promotion of their launch video. I am also disappointed with the final verdict. We have to accept it.
It seems that they have selected winners based on some random number system.
Samsung should ship few goodies like T-Shirts and Pens as minor gift for promoting their tab for all 200 bloggers. I spent nearly 1 full day to write content. So I expect something.
+1. and liked ur attitude.
yes it correct.. we expect some genuine winners from this contest...
@Arvind: I checked your entry and it looks nice. Congrats and best of luck
@Navin - Continue blogging. 200 bloggers are disappointed. So you should not feel alone. I hope you can win next time.
Does it mean that everyone who participates should be awarded? After all, everyone invests time in wirting; right? Where would be the contest element then?
I read all the posts in this thread and the other thread posted by The sorcerer. I just wanted to leave it at that. But then I decided, let me put my point out anyway.
Couple of very different opinions is getting muddled in this thread. One is by Navin and the other by Sorcerer.
Navin Bajaj's rant is uncalled for. And especially picking an individual and questioning his entry is pretty cheap.
But Sorcerer has some very valid points. The most valid one being that Samsung is selecting 20 official mobilers. So the guys should be the hardcore techie guys like the ones sorcerer talks about. But even the tech posts in this contest were just a regurgitation of the specs. It didn't look like they were the tech writers that sorcerer talks about.
Personally for me, the contest looked like a PR exercise (or as a paid advertisement). And if we think of it that way, the contest was very fair. 20 winners in 220 participants is almost 10%. winners. That's damn good if you ask me.
And I went through the winner's posts. They were good. I also felt disappointed that I didn't win. But I wouldn't say the winning posts were bad. And all the participants knew that only one out of evrey ten participants is going to win. So where's the problem?
I agree @sai and cudos for you:)
http://www.wizardjournal.com/new-gadgets/samsung-galaxy-tab-750.html
Please read my post once and tell me that I just talked about specs.
Well said, sairam ji,
take a tablet
