Is the internet still our friend?

The Internet is an amazing tool, you can find out something about anything. I do not think there is a subject that you cannot find some small blurb on if you look long enough. But, there is a problem with the Internet now. It has become so large and saturated by sites that you can no longer tell who is a real news and information site and who is an opinion blog run out of someone’s basement.
 

This is where the Internet stops being a useful tool and actually becomes a hindrance. If you look for information on a subject you are most likely going to use a search engine. Let’s use Google for our example (this applies to just about all search engines though). You type in your search, and within seconds you have thousands of results. Now having your list you start clicking… But did you know that the top 5-10 links on Google in any given search are usually there because the company paid to have them there? This is not to say they paid Google (although yes that happens) but they often have paid a search optimization company to point keywords to their article/ product. Now that list of search results starts to look suspect, at least to me it did when I found out about this.

How do I know that the information in those first few links is accurate, relevant or not just some ad or scam? You simply do not.
Now that we know this let’s take a look at what has happened on the other side of the search result.

As I mentioned before the Internet has become so widely used that just about everyone has a Blog or site now. What do these people do with their Blogs and Sites? Well they post information and it is what they believe to be true, the rub is most of it is regurgitated information found on other Blogs. You have an interesting phenomenon here, suddenly by sheer reproduction rumor and innuendo become fact.

It has always amazed me that people that have no contact with a piece of hardware, software, whatever can post their opinions of this item all by reading what someone else thinks about it. Even review sites are only writing their personal experiences with a single copy of a given product. (I will talk more about review sites later) This new phenomenon saturates the Internet waiting for the unwary, because once you get past the first few Paid Links, you now are in the territory of the number of reads or views a article has…

That is right; the next batch of links in any given search is based on the number of times it was viewed.

This means your next links are the popular sites followed by the most controversial and shocking items.
This is if the popular sites are not already using a search optimization service.

Now we can move onto review sites. Here is where most people get their information on new hardware and software (right after they have read the Blogs prior to its release). The rub here lies in the way this market works. Many review sites are now big businesses. They make money on ads and sponsorships.

To do this they have to crank out reviews on products, this generates readership which in turn generates more money. Many of these big capitol sites have review staff that spends from 8-16 hours with a product, review it in one dimension, and publish the review as quickly as possible. But they are so popular that their readers never stop to ask the simple question… How can you possibly tell me how well a product works in 16 hours (that is two days) and where are the other facets of owning this product?

How easy is it to use? Will I have problems installing it? Will it work with my other applications? What is the real user experience going to be with this item?

Instead they digest this and then spread it as gospel all over the internet. How many of you remember the Launch of the 680i SLI by nVidia? The major review sites published their reviews declaring this chipset the second coming and everyone bought it. Fast forward a few months when the real owners of these boards started complaining, having major issues with memory, HDDs, overheating, and too many other problems to list. Not one of the major sites caught this, they ran their stock 8 hour reviews and that was that. The same can be said for other products; how can a single person give an opinion on the looks of an item? Or how something sounds? These are subjective items that are different for each person. But again, for the most part all you hear is how well it worked with gaming or how well does it work with cooling (in the case of cases). These are very one sided reviews if that is all they cover.

There are very few sites out (and they are usually the ones not in it for profit) that spend a long time with a product to actually tell you what it is like. This lack of in-depth reviewing creates even more misinformation out there.

The average user is now faced with, Paid links, 8-hour, one dimension write-ups, and opinions Blogs to satisfy their thirst for information. At this point, in my humble opinion, our friend the Internet has decided to bite us.

Many of you at this point might be wondering why I (the Managing Editor of a review site) would be writing any of this. Well it is simply that in recent months, especially with the launch of Vista and all of the FUD surrounding it and now with the FUD war between Gigabyte and Asus. I have become more and more aware that even the technologically savvy are very misinformed. So many of the people I meet in my field (I am in IT and have been for over 20 years) have no clue as to what is really going on in the world. It became frightening to me. I started trying to combat the FUD in my corner of the world and have been fairly successful in getting people to try, Vista and other products and to realize that what they read on the Internet might not be fact but someone’s views. Even my own reviews and the reviews here on Planetx64.com  (which we try to make as complete, realistic, and unbiased as possible) are simply our experience with the hardware/software in a very small environment.
In the end our friend and buddy the Internet has now become dangerous to us in the form of FUD and misinformation.

I am not saying abandon the Internet or the sites you have come to love but remember that “just because it is written, doesn’t make it so” (Frankie Four Fingers – Snatch) read the reviews and news with a cynical eye and remember to make your own opinions and stop letting others make them for you.

Most recently (yesterday) Creative have made possibly their biggest blunder to date….
On the Creative Labs Forums, there has been a shining light in the darkness and gloom that is the Creative business model. That light came in the form of a talented driver modder with the username daniel_k.

Yesterday, Creative posted a cease and decist notice on their forum:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

This one announcement has outraged thousands of Creative customers and has prompted multiple threads and news postings on the front pages of many internet sites.

Please feel free to post your feelings and/or comments on the forums.