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What ILTA-2014 Attendees REALLY Think about the eDiscovery Market – Part 3
Blog Post by Peter Mercer, Vound CTO
Lastly, we talked about bloggers and the influence they have on technology decisions made within the industry.
“How much importance do you place on the opinions of industry bloggers?”
I must start here by making it clear I am not referring to industry analysts when I mention bloggers. It’s common understanding that analysts are paid to research and present findings, whereas we don’t expect bloggers to be paid for talking about specific brand names. In our discussions the same handful of bloggers were mentioned to me with high regard placed on their work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, blogs sharing information about the industry and written from a thought-leadership perspective were seen as independent, whereas blogs that focused on technology and vendors were seen to be less objective.
What is surprising though, is that not one person I spoke to knew that some industry bloggers are paid to write what they write. Not only that, but I know of a couple of well-known bloggers (who shall remain nameless) who are actually professionally connected to a vendor.
So there was insight #3:
Some industry bloggers receive payment for opinions, and some are aligned with vendors.
Conclusion
Customers are savvier about the difference between a marketing pitch and a productivity tool and I can understand why some customers are preferring to wait before jumping in to new technology adoption. The key is to do your research (don’t just rely on blogs), speak to other customers, read case studies from the vendor, and trial the product in a test environment before you make a decision.
Remember, when it comes to eDiscovery, there is no such thing as a silver bullet.