Recently there's been an interesting discussion on WinCustomize.com about Stardock and PR. Simply put, Stardock's software is outstanding, but my outpsoken nature creates a lot of detractors for the company.

If you think I'm in your face in politics or whatever here on JoeUser.com, you should see me in the "customization community".  I'm very opinionated and vigorously defend our software.

Long ago, when Stardock was just a few people, the "customization community" consisted of just a couple of tiny websites. That is where I hung out.  I was part of that community.  It was a tiny group.

But as changing the way Windows looks and feels has grown into a market of millions of people, my "omnipresence" has irked some people.  Someone on some site trashes one of our programs, I'll challenge them.  To me, it's natural, I've always done that.  But now that it's a big market, new people find this off putting that the "CEO" of a company is out there in the trenches slogging it out with some troll.

And that's putting me at a cross-roads.  On one such site, I'm the oldest active user on the site. New users don't realize that once upon a time, these websites were just a few guys hanging around debating various things.  Now these same sites seem huge and entrenched and so my presence seems heavy handed.  So do I continue to hang out on such sites, defending our products, slogging it out with the trolls, or do I hang out purely on our sites and let the "PR" people gently defend our stuff and participate?

Not that I'll give up my opinionated, off-putting, arrogant, obnoxious blogs on non-business related things here on JoeUser. I consider that part of my compensation package.