Pyra Media Coverage


Butterkeks said:
Finding the right words seems like a tightrope walk to me. Statements, that are understandable and convey all the necessary information at the same time - hm...
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How about

"What it does:
[wall of text]

What it does not:
- gathering private data and sending them to corporations
- updating itself without permission
- locking you inside an own storefront, a certain desktop environment, operating system, proprietary data storage, online activations, etc...
- bricking itself after softwaremodding
- preventing you from exchanging the battery
etc..."
 
Hook lines and quick messages of why you would need/desire a Pyra to get catch peoples attention, can come in handy. For example the GPD WIN used "A laptop you can fit in your pocket" . At first glance it seems lame, but to a newbee skimming past a thousand things a day, it has a a certain quick info & hook to it. Remember, we need to start getting the attention of those who know nothing of the Pandora or Pyra. The pent up demand of those who did know it and were willing to pre-order, have pretty much done so.

Something short that attracts people to desire the product would be good.

TL;DR Marketing dude
 
vcoleiro1 said:
Hook lines and quick messages of why you would need/desire a Pyra to get catch peoples attention, can come in handy. For example the GPD WIN used "A laptop you can fit in your pocket" . At first glance it seems lame, but to a newbee skimming past a thousand things a day, it has a a certain quick info & hook to it. Remember, we need to start getting the attention of those who know nothing of the Pandora or Pyra. The pent up demand of those who did know it and were willing to pre-order, have pretty much done so.

Something short that attracts people to desire the product would be good.

TL;DR Marketing dude
Click to expand...

something like this may still work...
 
I am wondering - why the rush? 1st step of creating the Pyra is financed and the word is out. Now wait for the product/prototypes to be made and show what it can do for the people not yet convinced and folks waiting for an actual review. While waiting there are still daily pre-orders.

If I wasn't a member here, I would have been informed via 3 different sources of the Pyra pre-orders. IMO the main target niche audience and potential early adaptors are aware of the product and will be perfectly capable of deciding whether this is a product for them without the marketing crap. Pandora sold fine without marketing and you could even say despite of very bad PR (remember Craig?). If the product is good or unique, it will sell but something needs to be build first.
 
Do you know why the Pandora pre-orders went well . Because the Pandora got MASSIVE publicity on tech sites. Pretty much all the major sites covered the preorder. Endaget ran about seventeen stories on the Pandora all up - http://www.engadget.com/search/?search-terms=pandora+handheld , http://www.engadget.com/search/?search-terms=pandora+pre-order . A number of stories leading up to, during and after the preorder. The pre-order was covered on Engadget, Slashgear, Techcrunch etc etc,pretty much all the major and non major sites covered it extensively

Getting 2-4000 preorders in a matter of days (4 days was it?) didn't happen for no reason with the Pandora. Yes publicity and marketing, don't under estimate it. If Craig did something right, it was contacting tech sites to run stories on it, and pulling it off.
 
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vcoleiro1 said:
Getting 2-4000 preorders in a matter of days (4 days was it?) didn't happen for no reason with the Pandora. Yes publicity and marketing, don't under estimate it. If Craig did something right, it was contacting tech sites to run stories on it, and pulling it off.
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I think the lack of smartphones, tablets and GPD back then is the key factor here.
Even the old OpenPandora still beats all of those imho, but there are lots of distractions now people think are comparable devices which they obviously are not.
 
Pandora was the first gaming handheld with keyboard and had a more reasonable price tag, so I think you can't really compare the situation of the Pandora with the Pyra.
As mentioned I was informed by 3 sources - other than this site - that I could pre-order a Pyra. It doesn't really matter if I have 3 or 30 sources with the news.

I consider myself part of the target audience, and I think being targeted by the news three times (or by a forum post or article, podcast) the work of the community to share the news is working fine.
Once there is a fully working prototype that can show off the product, I think there will be another boost in sales. That might also be the best moment for sharing a press release to engadget and once ED has them on the shelves I am sure more sales will follow. So I am not very worried.
 
It's more about reach with those sites. You may have had 3 sites tell you about the Pyra. I noticed zero. I usually visit the major sites like Engadget etc, and it wasn;t on those. And I can tell you I'm not the only one.

There is no doubt the Pandora was in a more favourable time for the device. That said, you can't dismiss the massive impact the massive publicity it got had. Pretty much all the major sites ran numuruous stories on it and it's preorders. I mean lets not kid oursleves on the worth of marketing and publicity. It's there for a reason, companies spend absolutely massive amounts of money and time on it for a reason - it works

Do you think if Engadget, and most top sites each ran seventeen stories on the Pyra leading up to, during and after the preorder , that we wouldn't be at substantially more preorders right now.
 
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vcoleiro1 said:
It's more about reach with those sites. You may have had 3 sites tell you about the Pyra. I noticed zero.
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Are you sure? Aren't you a member @ dingoonity? I think more exposure is fine, but it doesn't have to happen now because I think the people that are willing to pay for a currently non-existing product are already onboard or already informed. Can't back it up, but I am pretty sure that is the case.
 
vcoleiro1 said:
Dingoonity - I was the one who started the thread on it there. http://boards.dingoonity.org/other-game-systems/pyra-linux-gaming-umpc/
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A lot of talk about the Pyra was already going on before this post, so the community was already informed of its existence and if you hadn't posted it someone else would have done it. So I still think you would have been informed as member of that community - that said kudos for posting and informing the sites you've mentioned :)

More important than the quantity of published posts/articles is the accuracy of the shared information. An example of a comment about the Pyra that is biased and uninformed on Indiegogo (GPD WIn)

Bart Smienk 10 days ago

The Pyra is running an ARM processor, not only being way slower but also unable to run any kind of x86 programs / OSes like Windows.
Why people select the Pyra over the GPD I’m not sure, the Pyra seems like a horrible choice on every aspect against the GPD.

I’m looking forward on seeing the GPD released!
 
vcoleiro1 said:
It's more about reach with those sites. You may have had 3 sites tell you about the Pyra. I noticed zero.
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Same here. The only place other than here that I frequent where it was mentioned I had to search to find a thread about it (2 people, 3 posts total including the original post) and it is possible that my request for someone to mention it there contributed to that. There has only been a single, very brief, mention by someone I don't think is an active member here, and that was at the same place (Linux Questions). I had to search to find it. The person also mentioned the Pandora (they were trying to rally people to stand against the Windows Tax, and the Pyra and Pandora were given as examples of computers where it isn't present).

I took a trip to a bookstore earlier, and while there I looked at a half dozen magazines. Most of those were general Linux centered magazines (we should try to get in these again), and one was targeted toward admins. Although it probably isn't exactly the sort of thing most readers of that magazine will be interested in, some probably would be.

The last was 2600, which I have recommended as a good place to advertise it. This is one of the few magazines where I actually read most of the ads, and it is because they have always been somewhat interesting. I really think that many of those readers would be very interested in the Pyra. Unfortunately I don't have a subscription, but if anyone does PLEASE send them a short ad. Who cares if it will take months to see results from that ad, it is good for those that find out about it there, and I think it is good to bring in people with that mindset.

vcoleiro1 said:
Do you think if Engadget, and most top sites each ran seventeen stories on the Pyra leading up to, during and after the preorder , that we wouldn't be at substantially more preorders right now.
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It probably would have helped. Honestly, I think another product you are backing has had some impact on Pyra preorder numbers. I have seen the Win mentioned in a couple places, and that is more exposure than the Pyra has had in my browsing.
 
Yeah, being able to ssh into a server on the move could be a big selling point to web admins. I remember devices like the old Psion 5s and up being recommended to me because they can do that.
 
levi said:
Yeah, being able to ssh into a server on the move could be a big selling point to web admins. I remember devices like the old Psion 5s and up being recommended to me because they can do that.
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The biggest selling point for the masses would be Win10 on Pyra. You know I'm right.
I don't want to hear that either. ;)
 
as commented by ED, people are going to be disappointed that their x86 software doesn't work as well as they thought it would on a mobile processor, and that people are less likely to optimize their programs (out of laziness, probably targeting bigger desktop CPUs anyway).

it's hard to communicate, though, without conducting a smear campaign ;)
 
I've never found firefox to be a bad performer on my Pandora (using NoScript pretty heavily, to be fair), once it's started up at least. I don't really use many other big PC apps on my Pandora often though. The Pyra should be much more capable, and with easier to use nubs I'm expecting to use GIMP and perhaps Shotwell on there, and we'll have to see how those run.
 
ible said:
as commented by ED, people are going to be disappointed that their x86 software doesn't work as well as they thought it would on a mobile processor, and that people are less likely to optimize their programs (out of laziness, probably targeting bigger desktop CPUs anyway).

it's hard to communicate, though, without conducting a smear campaign ;)
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That is why I agree with his decision to go with ARM. If we get another CPU board I would like to stick with it, and the FPGA board also sounded interesting. We shall see, I suppose.
 
Good ideas and insights - I'd very much like to create a thread to collect use cases and marketing approaches for mainstream people... - IF I only had a decent full size keyboard device with me while traveling, which I currently am. Dang. Will keep at it when I'm back..
 
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