> I always feel really grotty about evangelising for products
You shouldn't. Word-of-mouth should be the primary way people discover products.
In ye olden days, a region's best bakery or blacksmith didn't become well-known because they put up signposts everywhere, but because the quality of their craft made their name known far and wide.
I feel very comfortable recommending products that are actually good, ran by a UX-first company and reasonably priced.
Exactly. If you don't advertise what is good or bad through word-of-mouth and true reviews then the primary method of learning and evaluating productions is paid marketing. As you may suspect the opinion given by paid marketing is not reflective of product quality. This means that product quality has very little influence on market selection and we end up with tons of crap like we do now.
Information from trusted independent sources is the most useful tool we have to actually incentivize the market to actually create quality products that actually provide value to their users.
Word of mouth is great. In my opinion its the most trustworthy form of product review. However I've noticed more and more companies advertising via 'word of mouth' they call it guerilla marketing and in my opinion its disgusting and a violation of internet users trust. Reddit is absolutely filled to the brime with this kind of marketing.
> In ye olden days, a region's best bakery or blacksmith didn't become well-known because they put up signposts everywhere, but because the quality of their craft made their name known far and wide.
To be fair, advertising has always been a major thing, for example, The romans had a tonne of visual advertising[1]
> You shouldn't. Word-of-mouth should be the primary way people discover products.
I've been a satisfied customer of theirs since 2023.
That said, I've been burned by far too many companies - especially tech companies - who grew big, then proceeded to squeeze every drop of prior good-will out of their success to make a line go up and satisfy investors.
So my support goes as far as opportunistically recommending them for as long as they continue to be good. Which I still do, I use Kagi on every device and love their personal ranking system and translation services, and they've been a cornerstone of untangling my life from a Google login - speaking of being burned.
But going out of my way to evangelize them feels a bit icky, and I can't help but feel like there's another shoe waiting to drop. It kind of stinks to feel like that, because my hesitancy isn't even necessarily their fault.
You shouldn't. Word-of-mouth should be the primary way people discover products.
In ye olden days, a region's best bakery or blacksmith didn't become well-known because they put up signposts everywhere, but because the quality of their craft made their name known far and wide.
I feel very comfortable recommending products that are actually good, ran by a UX-first company and reasonably priced.