Earlier this week there was a bit of an stir on Elysiun.com when it turned out that ResPower had posted some positive comments about their renderfarm service under pseudonyms. Some people even suggested a scam. I contacted them to hear their side of the story and Early Ehlinger, President of ResPower, sent me the following reply:
Regarding the use of pseudonyms, this is a common guerilla marketing technique, and was not intended to be a scam or even a spam. Since Timothy made it clear that this practice is frowned upon, however, I have issued a new policy that ResPower will never do this again on any forum. Our intent in using pseudonyms was merely to draw attention to the thread so that others would start to participate.
I understand that companies need to do marketing to make a living and that the etiquette in on-line communities is different from that in other media. They seem to have picked up the message. Personally, I'm not too worried about this especially since they're one of the few companies who are actively contributing to Blender.
To show the usefulness of the Blender Rendering Farm, Early has offered a 1-month free trial of the Super/Blender Bronze service. I'm not the right man for this job, but if anyone wants to rise to the occasion, please let me know!
2 Comments
Another reason why I love marketing people...
At least they were honest about it though.
Martin
A mistake that could have been avoided, but at least the reaction was honest.