Jump to content

Eating your own dog food

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 193.110.109.30 (talk) at 08:20, 4 March 2010. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Eating one's own dog food, also called dogfooding, is when a company uses the products that it makes.[1] Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products, and hence a kind of testimonial advertising.[2] When properly executed, this can add a new level of sincerity to advertising and customer relations, as well as helping to shape the product. For example, Microsoft and Google emphasize the internal use of their own software products.

Forcing those who design products to actually use and rely on them is thought[attribution needed] to improve quality and usability.

Using one's own products has four primary benefits:

  1. The product's developers are familiar with using the products they develop.
  2. The company's members have direct knowledge and experience with its products.
  3. Users see that the company has confidence in its own products.
  4. Technically savvy users in the company, with perhaps a very wide set of business requirements and deployments, are able to discover and report bugs in the products before they are released to the general public.

History

The idea may have originated from testimonial-type television advertisements for Alpo dog food[citation needed] in which the actor Lorne Greene claimed that he fed it to his own dogs.

In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled "Eating our own Dogfood", challenging him to increase internal usage of the company's product. From there, the usage of the term spread through the company.[3]

In 2007, the CIO of Pegasystems was quoted in CIO.com that he preferred to use the phrase "Drinking our own Champagne" as a classier way of describing the same approach to using their own products.[4]

References

  1. ^ Miguel Helft (December 12, 2009). "Google Appears Closer to Releasing Its Own Phone". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-12-12. On Saturday morning, Google confirmed that it was testing a new concept in mobile phones, writing in a blog post that it was 'dogfooding' the devices, an expression that comes from the idea that companies should eat their own dog food, or use their own products. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ "Microsoft tests its own 'dog food'". Retrieved 2009-11-14. {{cite web}}: Text "Tech News on ZDNet" ignored (help)
  3. ^ Inside Out: Microsoft—In Our Own Words (ISBN 0446527394)
  4. ^ "Pegasystems CIO Tells Colleagues: Drink Your Own Champagne". Retrieved 2007-07-05. {{cite web}}: Text "Trendline on CIO.com" ignored (help)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Eating_your_own_dog_food&oldid=347673375"