MKBHD - Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies?

who gives a fuck about companies?

The reviewer should be truthful and fair. If that means trashing a shitty product then that's how it should be. Not calling out shitty products hurts the consumer and means the reviewer is doing a bad job.

For anyone wondering, this is a response to a review Marques posted about Humane’s AI pin, which he called the worst product he’s ever reviewed. A member of the company complained he was going to kill their business:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/marques-brownlees-humane-ai-pin-review

What are we supposed to do? Give bad products good reviews so the poor little million dollar startup doesn't get its feelings hurt?

If we were talking about dishonest, malicious reviews, I'd understand.
That's not the case here though, not only is Marques' review honest, multiple reviewers reached the same conclusion as him.

Maybe try making a good product next time.

Absolutely. LinusTechTips had to issue a formal apology for dumb stuff someone had said about another reviewer, but in the unveiling of all their shit, it was revealed that they had mis-reviewed a gaming mouse.

The mouse was in prototype stages, and the LTT member that reviewed it did not take the plastic off the gliders and said that the mouse was horrible and dragged a lot. The company then floundered and had to sell the prototype and rights at auction at the next CES.

The worst part is that they assumed that a competent reviewer had the fucking common-ass sense to remove the plastic that... you know... comes on almost every gaming mouse, so they didn't even dispute the issue.

I'm legitimately shocked there are people defending the garbage Humane AI Pin, which leads me to think a lot of the criticism levied at MKBHD is made up by a PR firm working for the company. I already hated the god damn thing because it gave you hallucinations on demand. But watching his review and The Verge's review, its an overpriced gimmick that has a camera on all the time, and does nothing a smartphone can't already do. They didn't ask for bad reviews, they made a godawful MV--sorry, shitty product. Now they're gonna reap the whirlwind.

A smartphone is just better in every way imaginable. I also don't have my phone hallucinating all the time either, so I have that going for me.

I'm also gonna say the obvious quiet part out loud: He's black and they're targeting him first. Not The Verge, not Engadget, him.

No single bad review ever killed a product. Because we all know that some things are just a matter of opinion, user error, etc. Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. If I’m interested, I’ll read several positive and negative opinions.

But if your product is bad enough to warrant several bad reviews, that’s on you. Should’ve done better research, should’ve made a better product.

A plurality of negative reviews kill those companies that make bad products. And that's a good thing. Wheat from the proverbial chaff as it were.

It's not bad reviews that kill companies, it's bad products.

Ackchyually

This is the core of markets and markets have existed long before capitalism.

Good. Make better products and support them after you made them.

If your company sounds scammy and you say it can do things it can't, I hope your company burns before you burn customers who believed your lies

The baseline of this entire discussion is that not all companies deserve to survive. You make a good product - you grow. You don't make a good product - you adjust for the losses. There are no participation trophies there. Worst case scenario, someone will pick up on the same idea, and turn it into something actually good later on

I looked up what it would cost for me to buy one of these and run it daily.

After conversions and shipping, it would be $1100 to get one in my hands. It would be $50-60/month (Pin sub + data phone plan) to make it functional. And when the company inevitably folds in 1 to 2 years (or any of the companies they use for processing), the entire thing will turn into e-waste. It has literally zero on-device processing or functionality nor can it piggyback off your phone. It will turn into a paperweight.

This thing is a scam.

Reviewers aren't (or really shouldn't be) beholden to companies, the whole point of a review is to give an opinion on a product, and the less input into that the company has the happier I will be. At the same time, some reviewers do hold a lot of sway, and can strongly influence people's opinions with their reviews, so there might be an argument that a negative review can impact sales. However, so what? If the reviewer is bringing up their concerns or issues with a product, that is the whole point of what they do, and their viewers will want to hear about those things (working on the assumption that people will tend to watch reviewers they think align with their own views), and would be pretty upset if they weren't warned about the downsides prior to purchasing.

Reviewer opinions on both Humane and Fisker are pretty consistently negative so this isn't some mean YouTuber with an axe to grind situation.

The products are bad and people shouldn't waste their hard earned money and time on them. Venture Capital firms may lose money, but that comes with the territory. Not every venture is a win.

“Git gud companies” -MKBHD

I feel like in most cases if a product has such bad reviews that it kills the company that made it, there's a good reason for that.

Of course there are exceptions, and it is expected that a reviewer do their due diligence to make sure they're giving an honest, accurate, and reasonable review, but no company should be shielded for being told their product isn't good if it isn't.

He makes a pretty good point near the end of the video where he claims that reviews are only a catalyst, and only speed up whatever trajectory the company is already on. Assuming that the reviews are honest and objective I agree with this point 100%.

Ultimately the quality of the product or service on offer steer the ship, the reviews are just the wind.

As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn't work.

Well, yeah sure. The problem is whether or not that's actually what's happening in any given circumstance. Most reviewers I've seen are more than happy to include personal opinion, and some will exagerrate points for the sake of getting views.

Things get even more fraught when the reviewer is a bigger company than the company whose product is being reviewed. For example the debacle with Linus Tech Tips and Billet labs that they were dragged for. That's the kind of coverage that absolutely can sink a company that seemingly only ever did exactly what they said they would.

Reviews are good if they present the important facts and generally act with integrity, but sometimes that's a really big 'if'.

Bad products lead to bad reviews, bad word of mouth, and bad reputation… which can - and does - kill companies.

But the first thing has to be true for the others to follow.

Entities like LTT have a very large audience and the opinion they put forward tends to influence a large crowd. Dishonest reviews about an emerging startup could ruin their customer basis.

In today's market, the perception or even the profitability of a product means nothing. All that actually matters is growth.

For a publicly traded company, or even one that just uses venture capital to start up; the product isn't the thing that they might sell to consumers, it's their brand. This is what gives them more capital to continue running the company and ultimately to profit.

This means that a company no longer needs to make good products, they don't need to keep customers happy, they don't even need to be profitable. All they need is to show growth opportunities to potential investors.

I was saying this over on YouTube... it's his responsibility to report tech developments accurately and responsibly, because today's tech developments are tomorrow's history. Future nerds need to know the score! Scooty-Puff Junior suuuuuuuucks!

Shitty products get shittier reviews. One bad review, even if it is by a big influencer is not going to kill a company. If a company has all of their eggs in one shit filled basket, reviewers are going to point out the shit and the company is not going to sell its eggs.

Honest reviews prevent bad reviews from others and returns. They should be embraced for what they are and a blueprint for what you've done well and where there is room for improvement.

Product is an input, reviews are an output.

If your product can be killed by bad reviews you're either bad at making the product or bad at marketing the product. Managing a launch, including the relationships with reviewers, is part of shipping a product.

Now, that's for consumer goods. For artistic works it's a bit of a different beast and you can get a lot of other factors and definitely, by design, a lot more subjectivity. But if you're shipping cars and computing devices... yeah, no, this is a weird fixation to have. I'm guessing it's because it's the first time when whatever mismanagement happened becomes noticeable, so you can have the false impression that something was fine until the bad reviews told you it wasn't.

Although I'll say I've often owned and very much enjoyed products that don't review well. Computing device reviews in particular tend to focus on specific aspects, just because they're the easy A/B comparisons between the dozens of similar things they cover. The effect is sometimes only very general use devices get good reviews, so more specialized or targeted devices get worse marks just because they're not competing on the same areas. You see this a lot with gaming phones, and it stands out to me on a lot of the new PC handheld reviews, too. So if you ask me whether reviews can homogeneize a product and end up making every phone look the same? Maaaybe. Over time. Eventually. For most of the market, perhaps, but not all of the market.

Otherwise no, that premise is nonsense.

I think bad reviews can kill companies. If they are objective and honest, the review is not the core issue, the bad product is the issue.

But it is possible to have biased reviews, or dishonestly framed reviews. MKBHD is honest and objective, but you can't take for granted that every reviewer is.

MKBHD is pretty popular. His subscribers are probably the demographic that might be interested in this thing. So I'm sure his bad review has impact. But unless he's a big outlier or has a personal axe to grind with the company it does not seem like there's any ethical consideration to making such a harshly negative review. People should probably be more suspicious of the reviewers who don't give the product a harsh review.

Very simple.

Shitty products and bad/greedy/sociopathic management kill companies. And guess what? They're shitty companies. They should die.

There are a lot of reasons in here about how bad reviews kill products, but I didn't see mentioned how exceptional a product has to be to garner GOOD reviews. A business will get to the point of almost harassing you to leave a good review. In my experience people leave reviews when they are unhappy, and say nothing when they are satisfied.

An example of this was Teenage Engineering K.O. II EP-133 sampler. A bunch got released with broken fader knobs and the wave of bad reviews and complaints flooded in, drowning out the actual pros and cons of the device. T.E. isn't exactly floundering from it, but in another circumstance that could have killed the product (which I find to be phenomenal).

I hope they do I bought a nothing phone 1 after reading promises of how they wouldn't move to another phone until they had everything right etc.

Not only did they not keep it but after launching the 2 almost right after this claim they actively sabotaged the 1 the camera got worse the battery got way worse and thing is now super unstable and I really believe it's on purpose as custom roms make the phone great.

The company is dead to me but I am kinda enjoying seeing the phone 2 users now complain because they are starting to get the same treatment now.

Do bullets kill soldiers?

Infantry soldiers in the open, possibly. Soldiers in an APC? No.

Same applies to companies. A single sufficient bad review on a small, one-person company can take it out entirely. A single review of a big corporation? Not even one from a big shot like MKBHD.

This headline is dumb.

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prevent many people of

This actually stuck out more than the comma splices.

I wonder if he would have made the same review if it was made by apple/samsung/google.

So I am not a fan of the reviewer pictured for the same reason I don’t like Doug Demuro’s car reviews.

From what I see, they have very limited time with a product, and can tend to not understand it fully, and then add into their reviews tiny nitpicks that many people wouldn’t even notice on their own.

It seems like they look for something to complain about and that then goes viral as if it’s a huge issue with the product.

While I don’t think it necessarily “kills” a company or product, I think their reach is oversized for the low quality review they do.

I hate this nigga