So ui caught wind of this thing that GW Micro is making, called GW SocialEyes. On first look, it was a great product. But as I read on, I learned that you had to sign up for it at $25. That, my friends, is a failure in marketing. GW Connect was done right, they at least gave you a free version that bribed the user with ads. If an employee of GW is here, you've taken a step back. And it's kind of a useless gestion, anyhow, since there are IM clients and iOS apps that let you do the same thing. ufor those that don't have iOS and/or Androids, they can use the mobile page, which has fantastic accessibility. Just my rant.
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GW SocialEyes: A Failure in Marketing, and a Resounding Disappointment (Page 1 of 3)
AudioGames.net Forum → Off-topic room → GW SocialEyes: A Failure in Marketing, and a Resounding Disappointment
Posts: 1 to 25 of 63
#2 2013-08-08 06:11:07
Hi.
Yep, Social Eyes is a fail and once again confirms that I should have never shown any respect for GW.
Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.
#3 2013-08-08 08:44:47
Wow, that's really sad. I hope GW reconsider, but perhaps they're aware of their inevitable transition to an accessible products company. I don't know.
Just myself, as usual.
#4 2013-08-08 13:03:55 (edited by Yogabear5 2013-08-08 18:36:24)
As a Window-Eyes user, I'm appalled by GWMicro's handling of accessibility of Facebook and related FREE services to the general public. They once were a admirable company with virtues but like always the bigger they become the less they care. It doesn't help with their stooges like Jeremy and Steve who are the pawns to the corporate excusers of such behavior either though. Hate saying it but this appears to perhaps be setting a trend for us in the future.
#5 2013-08-08 13:42:46
My other concern as well as the obvious financial issue, is that to me this smacks far too much of blind cleaquism. No don't get me wrong, there's nothing up with talking to other blind people, but effectively to setup your own facebook group that nobody who isn't blind will join is a little too exclusive, and not really likely to help intigrate within the world.
This is exactly why though this forum is about accessible games, anyone and everyone is welcome to join whatever their level of sight, and we're easy to find by a straight up google search.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)
#6 2013-08-08 14:04:51
Personally, I like Social Eyes. I despise advertising, so I'm glad no free version is available. I'd rather pay for things, then put up with adware. Mostly, I like it because it's an app. I don't want yet another browser tab open for Facebook. Plus, I get global hot keys to post a status, jump to the app, etc. Also, with NVDA, social eyes reads new status updates as they come in, even if the social eyes app is in the system tray. No, it isn't revolutionary. But it really is worth the $25. Also, Social Eyes does not show facebook advertising. So that's another set of ads I get to escape. I do use adblock on my browsers, but there is no way to strip the Facebook ads out of the iPhone or other platforms.
#7 2013-08-08 15:48:53
FaceBook has ads in it? This I didn't know. But if SocialEyes is $25, how will persons in third world countries who can't afford it get to use it? Crack it? Hack it?
#8 2013-08-08 17:00:53
I'm sorry, but paying twenty-five bucks a year, or even twenty-five cents a year, does not make any sense whatsoever to me. Facebook is free to everyone else, why should we be any exception? Or, ok, I realize that GW Micro went out of its way to develop this client, so maybe I can accept a one-time 25-dollar fee. But not a yearly subscription to an accessible service that no one else pays a penny for.
I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance, is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service---us.
+1
#9 2013-08-08 17:11:08
I'll stick with the website. I'm bitter, and SocialEyes, for me, is too little, too late. It's a good gesture for the newcomers, though, save for the $25 price tag.
#10 2013-08-08 18:40:23
No, nom, no I wouldn't pay this regressive taxation by a zealous company who already charges $1000.00 for the original screen reader package and subsequent $200.00 and a company who hasn't innovated that much in two or more years. They are barely keeping up with the patched Windows updates just seems to be another rip off to me. I refuse to pay for something that is free for everyone else, so my advice say "NO"
#11 2013-08-08 19:00:13
There's no purpose for this whatsoever.
the facebook website in my experience is relatively easy to navigate. If there is some bizarre bug (there usually is) then it's easy enough to use m.facebook.com as a substitute. I haven't noticed any facebook adds either. Even if that fails you could use either the ios facebook apps for ios/android, or you could integrate facebook into skype. If window eyes is trying to integrate facebook and twitter etc then Miranda IM already exists. Or you could use samnet (although that costs) but has more features.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
#12 2013-08-08 19:21:04
I actually don't understand why anyone is using this. I use the facebook mobile site on my pc, and there's not a single thing I can't do with it that SocialEyes will let me do. So, I don't see why I would pay $25 for something I already do for free. And I just about never see adds on the facebook mobile site. I'd rather have an internet tab open than pay $25 for an app that has no features I don't already have access to.
#13 2013-08-08 19:33:20
Hi.
Nope, I guess GW just wants more and more money, just like everyone else.
I mean I get that Gw has dedicated time to making this accessible client for the blind but I really don't think they should have the right to charge for it.
I mean facebook is a free service to begin with, no one elseh as to pay for it.
So yeah, as I've said numerous times before, I have 0 respect for GW Micro now, especially after this and the pile of crap called window-eyes which they stole $1200 from me.
So I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but I've had enough of all this!
Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.
#14 2013-08-08 21:56:14
Not only that but there's not even a demo version so you can see if you really like it. There is an audio tutorial but no more. As it is I paid the 25 bucks just so I could see if it was all it was cracked up to be. I found it slow and lacking in features, and while the former problem is easily fixed by unchecking an optional setting the latter is more serious. You can't even really update your profile with the app if you move, enter or exit a relationship or whatever. So while I do still like GW better than any other company I've bought products from this is one product I won't continue to support and definitely not if they continue to charge fifty bucks a year. The $25 price tag is only temporary. I just fail to see why, if they could make GW Connect as free as Skype is to the rest of the world, why they had to change tactics with Social-Eyes. The programhas potential but as with the Audio Game Maker a few years back GW may have just shot themselves in the foot with this one. Again I appreciate what GW is trying to do by creating the app since there are some things that can't be done with the mobile site, either because the option just isn't there or for whatever reason it just isn't working. But I feel they should have either made it completely free or made the fee a one-time thing.
But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!
#15 2013-08-08 23:40:34
And you can't call your friends using FaceBook chat like you can on your iOS device, which has brought the blade down. GW, if you are here, you've stabbed us in the back. GW Connect I can live with, but a $25 price tag on a service that is free is an atrocity. Hell, even some iOS apps have the same tactic.
#16 2013-08-09 00:02:02
And as I said the $25 price is only temporary, at least that's what I heard from a GW staffer a while back.
But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!
#17 2013-08-09 00:06:26
Not only temporary, but also yearly. That's what truly got to me when I first heard about this. That we'd continually have to pay twenty-five or fifty or whatever it is every year for a free social network. I can't help but wonder just how many people are actually willing to put up with these conditions...
I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance, is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service---us.
#18 2013-08-09 00:29:04 (edited by Chris 2013-08-09 00:32:54)
Hi.
You know, this is both funny and really really pissing me off.
On the funny side, I have to think are they really that desperate for money? They don't have enough money from selling I don't know how many copies of Window-eyes for $1200 each plus upgrade fees? They didn't get enough money from there advertisements in GW Connect? hahahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahaha I cannot stop laughing!
On the other hand, this shocks me beyond belief that a company would do something like this.
Go mainstream accessibility!
Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.
#19 2013-08-09 00:32:14
A lot of these companys are well, jackasses. They are all stuck in the 90s, and adopt oh poor blind person is computer eliterate, let's charge out the ass for basic computer needs. This really annoys the hell out of me if you can't tell.
#20 2013-08-09 02:13:16
Honestly, I'm ok with the idea of a small fee, though $25 is way too high. Yes, facebook is free, and so is the facebook app. But when a third-party is taking time to develop an app, I can understand why they want to be compensated for the time they take to do so. However, $25 is ridiculous. I could maybe see paying $10, and that's about it. I'm curious, what can you do with SocialEyes that you can't do with the mobile site? I know there are things on the regular facebook site that can't be done with the mobile site, but when I look at the SocialEyes features, they're all things I have no problem accomplishing on the mobile site.
#21 2013-08-09 03:31:27 (edited by Sebby 2013-08-09 03:34:35)
What I don't get is when the trend started setting in in the first place. Something happened between Window-Eyes 7 or 7.5 and 8. What was it? I'm glad to see that they're keeping on top of technology, but it's depressing to see them increasingly marked out for losing every race. It's just sad. Once they were the scruffy underdog and now they're losing it. 
Edit: it doesn't appear limited to internal politics either; some resellers have now got pretty nasty too, spinning the blind ghetto line, while also paradoxically trying to materialise the benefits of Window-Eyes as a very information-rich screen reader (mouse cursor navigation of everything, etc). This is quite funny, if it weren't sad.
Just myself, as usual.
#22 2013-08-09 04:57:22
nothing more to add.
I suppose they think that all visually impaired people out there're idiots?
#23 2013-08-09 05:22:52
I think if people bitched enough, we could bring a change. But the resounding question is, why the hell are we paying $25 for this software? What's the rationalle?
#24 2013-08-09 05:47:50
There was quite an outcry on the GW-Info list as well.
But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!
#25 2013-08-09 07:32:05
hi all i have windows live and it is free to works well with n v d a so y should i pay 25 $s useless
meat me on facebook azz
Yor's Animeshh Ahilya
Yor's Animeshh Ahilya
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