N90 Blogger Program Generates Buzz

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The Nokia N90 has been receiving a lot of attention in the world of blogs recently partly thanks to the N90 Blogger Program we mentioned last week. There has been a whole range of opinion and some interesting discussion of the ideas behind the program itself which are well worth reading.  Read on for a selection of the post from the Blogosphere on the N90 and some comment on the program itself.

The N90 Blogger program has distributed 50 N90 phones to a number of bloggers as part of the US launch of the phone. To go with this a central blog has been set up that links to what various bloggers saying - good or bad. In addition there are plans to open the central blog to all the contributing bloggers. Furthermore the program will later be extended to the N70 and the N91.

The N90 Blogger program has been criticised, the major points center around the reliability of citizen journalism and the fact that people might be biased into positive reviews because they receive the phone for free. This is, of course, a danger, but it is one that almost anyone writing in the public domain faces. Even mainstream press are inevitably influenced by their interactions with PR companies and their own experience. There really is no such thing as a completely ubiased piece. While jouranlists are generally held to a higher standard and do have standards they follow these are not without their flaws.  There is a very good reason that a lot of money is spent on PR - it is all about facillitating publicity for your product. In that sense the Blogger program is probably best seen as just another way of achieving this. Moreover mosts bloggers would be horrified at the suggestion they might not post what they really think - the reputation of bloggers is integral to the blogging process.

In the end bloggers are just another opinion generator, and when reading what they have to say, you should, just as when reading anything else, consider the opinion in its context. The advantages of bloggers is they tend to make a much more personal connection, and they can communicate their personal experience. One of the things often missing from reviews is what it is really like to use the phone from day to day, what works, and what doesn't. Bloggers generally do not spend days tweaking their output - much of the time there is a feeling of immediacy and instant opinion to blog posts.

However it is definetely worth bearing in mind that some (not all) bloggers talking about the N90 are part of the program and thus their opinion maybe influenced and I would recommend bloggers make it clear they are part of the program.

All About Symbian, as a community and evangelist site, is perhaps somewhere between bloggers and main stream media and from my perspective something like the N90 Bloggers program is an excellent way of generating interest in the N90 at a grass roots level and reaching an audience that is often hard to communicate with. 

We've commented in the past that despite the marketshare and sheer number of devices in the world S60 handsets receive less attention that they deserve. So it is great to see the program generating some buzz about Symbian devices and Nokia innovating in their marketing and starting to embrace the possibilities provided by the Internet.

Here are some links from around the blogosphere commenting on the N90 and the N90 Blogger program.


By contrast here is what some of the other online media has said about the N90:

Update:

Also check out My-Symbian's N90 Review and Ewan's review here on AAS.