Samsung Mobilers Winners : A Disappointment!

I had thought I'd never login to my account with Indiblogger again, but after reading the ongoing discussion here, had to summarize what I feel about the whole issue.  The issue is not just about poor/partisan judgment of the contest entries any more.  The issue here is that bloggers are being cheated in every contest here.  Each and every contest here is, in essence, asking you (the blog owners) to promote a certain product on your websites with a lure of giving you a small prize.  The sponsors of these contests (companies like Samsung) are paying the owner of Indiblogger.in only......they are not paying you!  Indiblogger and their adverstisers (yes, that's what Samsung is for them) are USING YOU in two ways:

1. They are using your writing skills to publicize their products FOR FREE! Good writers are not easily available and command a high price......here, they get them FOR FREE.

2. They are also USING YOUR PRECIOUS WEB-SPACE FOR FREE for prolonged periods. The duration of most contests on Indiblogger.in run into MONTHS!

So while you make all the effort in writing about their products, all the money that comes in from the advertisers is pocketed by the owner of Indiblogger.in!  Is this a fair & ethical business practice?  Shouldn't the owners of Indiblogger be sharing the AD REVENUE they recieve from the Advertisers like Samsung with you (the blog writer & owner)???

Ask yourself this question the next time you want to participate in contests like the Samsung Mobilers contest on this site, merely with a hope of winning some miniscule prize! 

Instead of HOPING to win some prize, you should CHARGE Indiblogger.com and its advertisers UPFRONT for hosting publicity about their products on your blog site.  This is a wake up call for all of you.

Cheers!

Oh come on, Earn 30k somehow, buy a Tab.. Problem solved!!

Ask fellow Indibloggers to delete their Samsung Post !

and BoyCott Indiblogger.in ! 

@Sorcerer : Going by all the posts you have posted in this thread, you seem to blow hot and cold in the same breath and are a master of double-speak! Maybe you are scared to take a firm stand against the CHEAP EXPLOITATION & CHEATING by Indiblogger.in and their sponsons like Samsung because you are afraid that your membership with indiblogger.in will be deleted. Well, I don't have any such fear!  Let them delete my id here if they are scared of me.  I will speak the truth, no matter what.

"So- basically, you will take money in exchange of writing an advertisement in the form of article".....Your assumption is erroneous.  Although, there is nothing wrong with the idea, provided you mark that article as "advertisement"! What's wrong if a blog owner takes money for advertising a commercial product on his/her site? Isn't it better than being fooled into promoting a commercial product for free? Isn't Indiblogger.in taking money from its sponsors like Samsung!

I totally dislike of your taking the moral highground here.  You are talking about morals?  You, who does not even have the courage to write under his/her own name on this site? You are writing here under a pseudonym, my friend!  It is very easy to spew venom against anyone on the internet without disclosing your own identity. 

You are time and again diverting the attention of the readers from the main issues that I have highlighted here.  I will repeat my two points :

1. They are using your writing skills to publicize their products FOR FREE! Good writers are not easily available and command a high price......here, they get them FOR FREE.

2. They are also USING YOUR PRECIOUS WEB-SPACE FOR FREE for prolonged periods. The duration of most contests on Indiblogger.in run into MONTHS!

Pls ignore the couple of typos in the above post : "sponsons", and the extra "of" after dislike.

Let me add the third point also, which relates particularly to the Samsung Mobilers contest :

3. Why did they change the rules of the contest mid-way?  Who were they trying to accomodate?  How many of the winners of the contest are the ones who did not even host the LIVE launch event of Samsung on their site? One such person is exposed by Anand : http://zomgitscj.com/2011/08/11/hands-on-with-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1/  I am curious to know how many more were there like that.

Till date, there has been no answer to this pointed & repeatedly asked question from Indiblogger.in owners. But I'll tell you why they changed their rules mid-way. They changed their rules half way through the contest BECAUSE there were only 80 entries which had complied with the original rules! And it would have been very difficult for them TO CHEAT and choose there own people from among these 80 entries! There act of nepotism would have been too glaring if they had chosen their own favored people out of just 80 entries. It is much easier to cheat from a larger pool of entries (221 in the end). With 221 entries, they can easily justify their poor/partisan judgment by saying that not everybody can win from the 221 entries!  This was their plan!

 Copy Pasting a post from a FORMER MODERATOR of Indiblogger.in on the thread : http://www.techjunoon.com/indiblogger-samsung-conspiracy-against-the-indian-tech-blog-community/  The malpractices and lack of ethics at Indiblogger.in stands fully exposed.

Rohan September 23, 2011 at 4:18 pm

@ To The Author Of This Post

I am surprised that you are taking indiblogger so seriously, I know how they work, I was myself a moderator there and I quit because of these cheap tactics of theirs. If you are used to being in a government where you can see and tolerate corruption and wont mind it, then you will make a good indiblogger, but if you are someone who really has a rational mind and strong values, you will get suffocated in the mindless indiblogger crowd.

Get over with the bad feeling, you are not going to get a reasonable reply I am confident about it:) All you will get is stupid indifans dropping comments on comments hanging on to every misinterpreted words calling you names, its a waste of your time buddy! You will get a lot of “please read carefully what I said” and “I never said that” and after all fails they will say that everyone makes mistakes and you need to forgive them….

You have a good blog there, concentrate on excellence and not the opposite, which is called indiblogger!

If you agreed with the views on Jose Tinto's article, vote for this entry.

http://www.indiblogger.in/indipost.php?post=80606

It's already in the first page of IndiVine. Let us bring it to the home page of indi.

@sorcerer : You seem to be hung up on "TECH" Bloggers alone! Why, coz you are a professional tech blogger yourself? I and others on Indibloggers are NOT talking only about "TECH" bloggers. We are talking about the ethics & cheating going on in EVERY CONTEST ON INDIBLOGGER.IN.  Time and again, you have cried yourself hoarse doing your own self-promotion (sic).....saying stuff like the owner of indiblogger ( what's his/her name?....Renee?) called you up to speak to you personally! Who cares here who called you and who didn't!  And then you go on to write, " I've got calls to attend press conferences which is not relevant to my niche..."  And no mention of what exactly is your real identity, Mr. Sorcerer?

Most of what you have typed has no relevance to the topic under discussion, you keep on harping about how "tech" bloggers should conduct themselves without disclosing your own identity.

I repeat, so what's your real name?  Have some guts!

To me blogging is just a passion & hubby and I believe blogging should be out of passion. There has been instance when promoter of a specific product or Book had asked me to write about it after reviewing it, which I had done gladly.

But, my mind refuses to accept promotion of product of a manufacturer in name of contest.

If you are writng about a product looking for monetary gain, then what difference does it make between us & paid news article??

Dude, in any competitive game there is a judge and the judge's decision is final. Period.   Sure, the judge's decision making faculty maybe be great, maybe flawed, even maybe absolutely crappy.. but hell, he is afterall the judge and his decision is final.  Respect that.

I will say that yup, I'm an IB fan.  And its mainly cos I've tried a few other Indian blogging sites and I find IB to be far more superior in their responsiveness, interface, buzz and activity.

I personally feel that the theme out here is blogging.  Competition comes later. Sure, you lost out in one competition.  But dude, blog away....there's always the next contest. 

Once upon a time, the judging parameter was votes and that resulted in fake vote banks, friends' votes, plaigarism and the like.. today, I'd say that  quality of content is given more importance to votes.  And that's a great improvement.  Sure wrt judgement, to each his own...one man's cow is another man's dung but at least there a number of winning entries in this contest that do score high on content, creativity and coolness. 

Like u, I was kinda pissed with the judging in the earlier Dove contest but I later did realise that I got the maximum traffic to my blog in that time period and in addition, that contest helped me come up with some posts that I really am proud of today.

Blog away dude... the prizes will come the laterzzzz....

@Roshan aka Sorcerer : Yeah, I was able to find your name (and date of birth etc. too! ) within a minute of the thought coming to my mind. I appreciate your clarification. There is no reason for you and me to cross swords coz we are on the same side. I am not a professional tech blogger like you, so I couldn't relate to all your "tech reviewers" conduct manual talk. That should be a topic of another thread. In this thread, I'm only highlighting the malpractice of so called "contests" on Indiblogger.in, not specifically related to tech products alone.

Cheers!

People I can't resist myself anymore, have been following this thread from yesterday and tried to avoid myself from commenting here but not anymore.

Before saying anything further let me inform you I am one of the winners of the contest.

Navin I have a suggestion and a few questions for you.

Suggestion : Get a life!

Questions :

Do you think you deserve to win? [Don't take it otherwise. I am not criticizing your entry for the contest]

What do you want from indiblogger team? Should they announce you as one of the winners? Or you are looking for something else.

Are you lying about the traffic stats of your blog? What you have claimed is quite cool, you are getting tonnes of traffic but that does not match with the visitor's counter code on your blog]

In one of the comments above you referred that indiblogger used your "Precious" Webspace and writing skills for free. Did anybody from indiblogger team forced you to write a blogpost?

Did anybody from indiblogger team forced you to give indiblogger free publicity?

You said indiblogger should share ad revenue with bloggers. Well I agree with you on this but a bit differently. They should share only if they are hiring you to do the work for them. Were you hired by them to write the post about Samsung?

In one of you comments you referred "lack of ethics". Do you think lack of ethics was just on part of indiblogger? You did not wrong, huh? Blogging Ethics require that Bloggers should not cheat there readers, so were did you cheat your so called "lakhs of visitors" by going gaga over the Tab. Ask yourself before answering.

PS : I am not speaking for Indiblogger or Samsung. I posted this comment on one of the blogs. Sharing it here also

"If you think that I am speaking for them then buddy you are mistaken. I call a spade a spade.

I am not speaking for Samsung India or Indiblogger. Those people have enough guys to do that. I am speaking against the people who are doubting the integrity of the winners. Have you seen my post http://mobigyaan.com/why-i-think-its-time-to-tab-samsung-galaxy-750 I said what I wanted to. I wrote nothing to cheat my readers like many of the participants did. And at the bottom of my post I clearly mentioned that I have submitted this entry for the indiblogger contest and also mentioned that my expressed views are genuine.

Mind you, like many others I did not wrote at the bottom of the post that please vote for me. I know many bloggers who were literally begging for votes. And I am happy for the fact that I did not ask even a single person to vote for me.

What you guys are doing is that telling that the post of winners are not worth winning. Were you judge of the contest? so which posts are worth winning, the ones which you think or the others who are ranting against the winners and the companies.

Say whatever you want about Indiblogger or Samsung India. I don’t care. But don’t disregard the efforts of the winners.

Win like a Man, Lose like a Man"

I am one of the winners so the comments here can bring negative image however..

I am happy because I Won - Simple .

Sujith, congrats for winning.

I knew it that's why I kept on avoiding but then.......

Just hating the way some of the people are taking up this entire issue.

Would like to share one more thing here. Here is a tweet for the same incident

"Tech bloggers mantra of the day: Instead of owning up to lack of ethics & standards, slam the company that exploited your greed." (via twitter.com/javed_del)

@Puneet : "Your entry was better, now happy".

If you truly believe this, then pls forfeit your prize immediately and inform this to Indiblogger & Samsung. Let the judges find the next best post in line and give your prize to him/her. Then we can go further.   Let the owners of Indiblogger & Samsung come forward to answer my questions first for which we all have been waiting for since the last two days, when they do that, I will answer yours too.

Cheers!

@Puneet to me : "Your entry was better, now happy".

You just admitted in front of everyone here that my entry is better than yours. So now the next logical thing to be deduced from your own admission is that your entry should not have been in the Winners' List (since your entry is in the winner's list and mine is not, and you yourself said that my entry is better than yours)  So please be a man and be true to your words. FORFEIT YOUR PRIZE IMMEDIATELY!  "They will answer for sure"...We're waiting!

Don't you understand "Sarcasm"

No this is not the answer which I wanted. Think of the answers of the questions which I asked you and you will know yourself what you are and what you are trying to achieve.

Navin let us say it is all about participating and not winning.  Somehow i too feel that this contest should have been decided after the participants turn up for the meet and get to use the product and than review.  Without touching, feeling, just by going through the website or getting to know the features from dealers and friends, if somebody can win contest than it is slightly disappointing.  At the same time it becomes our duty as participants not to cast aspersions on the winners directly, it is unsportive to the core.  I am sure Indiblogger has checks and balances for future contests.  Soc is a good moderator over here, and i have personally seen others too from Indiblogger team Renie, Vineet, Anoop, Karthik are all level headed. 

Samsung knows best which was a good review of their product. And they have made their choice.

And people who do not do product reviews and do not want to demean their blog by posting irrelavent coomercial stuff should avoid these contests instead of crying sour grapes later.

damn...what did i miss?

Totally agree with Mr. Sairam.This is OBVIOUSLY a marketing strategy and the bloggers who entered should have known full well that they're taking part in a regional promotional event...why else would it be sponsored by Samsung? Come on, guys.And Mr. Bajaj, I really think you should check with Samsung how they judged the entries and how the chose the winners, before you comment on how they did what they did. I'm certain that professionals working with such a reputed, ethical company are not buffoons with kindergarten-level intellect that they get stimulated by big bright pictures of a colourful gadget and pick their favourites.