Wonderful!

Excite your ears. For all eternity.

I don't know, but does it seem like that there's some shilling going on with the HD700? Just seems odd with such an expensive headphone that guys with 24 posts, 1 post, 36 posts, etc. (and completely nothing in their profiles) are chiming it on it. I've never seen this before on HF, especially for something so expensive.

Wondering if Sennheiser has a dedicated social-media squad behind this.

Edit: I'm also not entirely sure if it's guys from Sennheiser, or if it's just a few zealous fans making sockpuppet accounts, or what...

From what I can see, zealous fans. I don't honestly think any significant proportion of their sales come as a result of what is on Head-Fi to be honest, though I could be wrong.

I'll entertain a worst-case scenario though: Which accounts are thinking of? I didn't see the single-post account.

From what I can see, zealous fans. I don't honestly think any significant proportion of their sales come as a result of what is on Head-Fi to be honest, though I could be wrong.

From an outbound marketer's perspective, I would rate Head-Fi as being around the same tier as Amazon review for SEO importance, swaying uncommitted buyers, and establishing a strong ranking for the various aggregation services (scrapers, search engine, etc.).  I agree that HF probably doesn't even fall within their top-10 conversion activities, but it's still very good for them from a brand presence perspective.  I would honestly not be surprised if firms like Sennheiser and Logitech used guerrilla marketing agencies to ensure that their products are top of discussion in these targeted communities, both for active and residual influence.

Yeah, that's a great example of catching a company doing it red-handed.  It's pretty notorious in the video game industry and is very common on Metacritic user reviews right after the launch of a AAA game.  The old term is astroturfing, though I don't see many people refer to it by that term in the social media world, which I'm also lumping forums into.

http://understandinge-branding.com/astroturfing-the-shady-doings-of-guerrilla-marketing/

Ever heard of the networking company Belkin? You know, they make wireless routers and such.  Just check out their beautiful website.  They look so trustworthy.  How could they ever betray our trust? Oh wait, except they totally did.  The “ethical” Belkin was actually paying people to give their products 5 star reviews on Amazon.  What did they have to say for themselves? Well, this.  They claim “it was a surprise that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries” MAY?  Try definitely.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/17/belkin-rep-hiring-folks-to-write-fake-reviews-on-amazon/

Here are more articles, published reasonably recently, demonstrating how pervasive the behavior now is.  If it wasn't so common, there wouldn't be nearly as many articles and surveys written about it.  If you scan Craigslist in any populated region, and my guess is Amazon Mechanical Turk and oDesk also have a lot of these (hiring writers in the Philippines has been a long-time tactic of blackhat SEO folks).  You'll find anonymous marketing firms hiring people for short-term contract online/writing work for low-pay (lower than standard marketing consultant wages), which immediately sets off my alarm.

http://socialmediatoday.com/matthewpugh/182608/social-media-increases-astroturfing-brands-risk-losing-customers-survey-shows
http://www.r2integrated.com/whats-making-news/recent-news/article/id/131/brands-caught-astroturfing-risk-losing-customers.aspx.aspx

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of planted accounts by firms who consult to do work with brands like Logitech, Plantronics, and Sennheiser on enthusiast forums like Head-Fi.  I'm not calling them out because I have a grudge, but it's becoming SOP at a lot of B2C tech companies.