by curt » Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:23 pm
I've been trying to respond positively to this whole proflightsim thing, but one of the proflightsim pages on facebook right now has postings from several people (all with the same broken english style ... so obviously fake users all setup by the same vendor) calling us, FlightGear, spammers, saying we stole proflightsim from them and are pirates illegally giving it away for free, they say our site and our version of the software is full of viruses, and on and on. That's very frustrating to me since FlightGear has been my passion for the last ... well going on 15 years.
What's even more frustrating (I can live with people saying mean things about me and the FlighGear project) is that even though a lot of people see through the crap, and spot the scam in time, there are enough people that buy into the sales pitch hook line and sinker and are losing $128 (yes that's what they are charging) for no good reason ...
So on the positive side, we just cleared 250 fans on the official FlightGear facebook page. That's not exactly "going viral" but so far it looks like we are seeing roughly linear growth. We are about on a rate to get 10,000 fans in a year ... that will take patience, but will be a great milestone when we get there.
I was talking to a professor at Texas A&M University who is running his own facebook ad with his own money to advertise flightgear ... that's way above and beyond the call of duty!
So even though I'm really frustrated about all this today, please, let's keep things positive. I still think the best we can do is get out our positive message as far and as wide as we can. We can't correct every false statement on the internet or preempt every slimy individual out there from taking advantage of other people ... but we can continue to spread the word (positively) about FlightGear and what we offer and that it's 100% free ... and totally awesome!