We’re not agreeable about this reviewer program that Maxis ran in conjunction with the launch of the Desire.
From what we’ve gathered, the social media people at Maxis “picked” a selection of bloggers to review the Desire. They we’re given a few guidelines and at the end of the day if their review is good, they will win the review phone. The program reeks of bribery if you ask us. The notion of doing a review with “guidelines” and a prize is just wrong. Reviews should be impartial, full of facts and help the consumer make an informed decision on a purchase.
The Maxis 10 reviews are far from that in our opinion.
We’ll be fair, concept wise, the program is good. To identify bloggers and offer them review units to get the social media space talking about the device. It’s a good concept, but the execution is horrendous. The reviews are full of errors, lack quality and doesn’t really tell you anything worthwhile noting.
Actually, for the Desire program, we were looking forward to two reviews from the selected ten blogs. @benjern and @SmashPop were selected and we’ll say it, these guys know their stuff, so why no review from them? Both mentioned in their tweets that they we’re pretty stoked about being chosen but after that, there was nary a post from them.
Did Ben and SmashPop pulled out of the program? If they did, why? Was it because the term of the program was too restrictive for them to do a proper review? We can’t say for certain but it most probably was the the reason.
But it seems that the people at Maxis thinks that the program was a success because they are running a similar campaign to promote the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S which is slated for June 25.
So if you’re interested to be amongst the 10 reviewers chosen, head on over the to the survey site to be in the running. Unlike the previous Maxis 10 Reviewer program, to be in the running for the Galaxy S, you’ll need to submit a video and tell Maxis why you deserve to review the Galaxy S. Also what would be useful — the ability to turn back time. Take a look at the picture above, the closing date was last year 25th of June 2009. You might need some help from @Doc__Brown with that.
Moving forward, can we expect a similar program when the iPhone 4 comes to Malaysia? If there is one, we hope Maxis polishes up the execution of the program so that it really does produce quality content that many will enjoy reading and most importantly, get good information out of.
