UPDATE 1155h: CNet has a great article on how Digg specifically is being gamed; its a topic that has received quite a bit of coverage over the past few months. Elinor Mills covers a few specific examples outside of User/Submitter and SpiketheVote, including this tidbit: “[Unnamed] Companies charge as much as $15,000 to get content up on Digg, said Neil Patel, chief technology officer at the Internet marketing firm ACS.” — illustrating that the most notorious companies for gaming Digg are probably the ones you have probably never heard about, promoting stories you probably don’t even suspect.
The commercialization of social networks and blogging has begun in earnest -- and I don’t mean bloggers trying to earn adsense dollars and social networks charging a fee for their members. No, what I mean is that since the socialization of the interwebs has gotten hot in terms of mainstream press, and is quite frankly, fueling the next bubble (yes, we’re in it right now), enterprising companies have gotten into the business of actively corrupting that socialization for a fee.I’ve blogged about it before, but as far as I’m concerned the blogosphere has already turned this page with ReviewMe and PayPerPost. Yes, its awfully sanctimonious, because of course bloggers are entitled to earn a living. But, I think we can all agree that any time you take money in exchange for potentially changing the tone, quality, or content of your posts is the definition of corruption; its a strong word, but if it makes you feel better, you can, in your own mind, use the word “taint”. Or maybe “advertorializing”. I suppose it was an inevitability. People need money and like money. Offer them money for something they’re already doing, and a high percentage of people will take your money, because, after all, you’re not telling them to rob a bank or anything. And to be fair, to those individuals who need to pay the bills, they’re probably flipping the bird at me right now, which, of course, is their right.But this post isn’t about how great PayPerPost (and their ilk is), but rather, how new business systems are corrupting current social “networks”, in all its forms.
If you want any proof for how popular and well accepted PayPerPost is, just sign up for Google Alerts under “payperpost”. After a while you will see that every day all of the alerts for “Payperpost” are about how great it is and how people are using it to make a little cash. The blogosphere, by and large, isn’t outraged by it, but are embracing it as another means to monetize their blog. (I wonder if I’ve just taken an elitest “liberal” stance on the issue?)
Forget about blogging for a minute. How about social networks, proper?
Or even social bookmarking?
Well, it seems like in every circumstsance where a venture has gotten popular there are commercial interests who are waiting to exploit it (and “corrupt it” — see? I am an equal opportunist when it comes to being pompous). For social bookmarking sites that use the “wisdom of crowds” to democratically push the most popular news to the top? … you have SpikeTheVote, which is currently on the block, and of questionable use. Its a system which allows individuals to submit stories that will allow them to voted on by a group of individuals, provided you also join that group. There’s at least one other system that allows you to game this system, called User/Submitter which allows you to pay for Diggs.
Of course, both of their uses are questionable simply because of the amount of attention they’ve gotten, and the fact that anyone can join in — including the faithful for social bookmarking sites, who can report on which stories are currently being “spiked”.
For social networks, we have businesses like FakeMyProfile, which was recently “profiled” on Wired’s on MonkeyBites, where for only 0.99c per month, they’ll add a profile of a hot young male or female to your profile as a “friend” and send you two messages a month. What’s quaint of course, is that all the descriptions of your new “friends” makes it sound like there are actual models behind those pictures. And of course, the young ladies appearing in late night commercials are the very same ones staffing the sparkling conversation behind those 1-900 televsion ads late at night. And of course they’re ladies. ;)
And let’s not forget the great astroturfing flogs that Edelman was behind earlier this year on behalf of Wal-Mart.
Clearly money is the motivating factor behind all of these systems and businesses, that exist, to greater or lesser degrees of success, in manipulating and corrupting existing social “networks” in the widest sense of the word.
What I hope, is that as the socialization of the Internet gets mainstream press, there will be enough journalistic know-how to pick up on these nuances (that really aren’t that subtle), to warn people to take it all with a grain of salt. Sure, there are stalkers, pedophiles, and murderers on MySpace. That all gets air time.
But for the innocent surfer, they might not know that the people you’re interacting with on MySpace might be fake. Or their friends might be fake. Or that the post you just read on your favourite blog was only up because it was paid for by a company. Or that story that you were just forwarded, only got a certain amount of notice because someone knew how to work a voting system. Or trying to purchase a mortgage or insurance online will only send you in endless splog-orrific circles without learning anything.
Yes, I think most individuals who are savvy enough to push the “on” button on their computer is particularly cautious about phishing scams and meeting perverts online, but with the corruption of the socialization of the Internet, I suspect a more nuanced, and careful tone needs to be adopted in terms of New Media literacy. Users of social media, and as it grows more prevalent, really, anyone who uses the Internet, needs to ask some fairly important questions on a fairly routine basis.
- Who am I really interacting with?
- Who is really behind this story?
- Who benefits from the promotion of this story?
- And above all — who has really earned my trust?
The fact that you’re reading this blog probably means you’re well versed in the “new” New Media literacy. But as the Internet continues to evolve, and seems to do so at a quicker and quicker pace, we can only hope that everyone else is trying to keep up. There are still gold in there thar hills, but the amount of savvy you’ll need to find it, unfortunately, continues to grow.
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:36 am | Permalink
Hi Tony. Not sure that there was ever a ‘golden age’ when you could trust everything you could read on blogs, digg, the web and be sure they weren’t just in it for the money. The good news is that in systems where there are huge volumes of users like Google, it’s actually very difficult, time-consuming and expensive to cheat.
On social bookmarks, try a Google Search for ‘tag and ping’, the “great” new SEO technique.
December 3rd, 2006 at 11:02 am | Permalink
To the extent companies have been manipulating the social internet, its been around for a long time, including Microsoft:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-08-23-microsoft-letters.htm
What’s different, I suppose, is how brazen and institutionalized its gotten. Services have popped up where you can *pay* for it; sure, while its difficult to do well or easily, what I wonder is how many of these services you *don’t* see advertised publicly, and how many are working well, but that you never hear of.
December 3rd, 2006 at 11:54 am | Permalink
That link doesn’t work for me - they are watching you, Tony. ;-)
Definitely take your “brazen” point, and that agencies that are any good at this sort of thing probably haven’t been found out… yet.
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:17 pm | Permalink
I changed it to USA today rather … ;)
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:02 pm | Permalink
[…] I’ve blogged about it before, and I think its worthwhile repeating again. Without a comments section, all a blog is a one-way form of communication, much like the main stream media. You get to stand up on your soapbox and tell people what you think. Its not a dialogue — which is really what blogging is really all about. And even if people blog about it on their own blog, without comments there are no potential for trackbacks, so that people can’t follow blogging “conversations” either. I would go so far as to say a “real” definition of a blog must include a comments section. Corporate types will always be concerned about negative comments, which is a valid concern; however, if you’ve got a product or service that’s worth blogging about, your fans should be coming out to support you — which they have, in Yahoo!’s case. Also, by allowing full comments, and better yet, responding to some of them, you gain a valuable sense of integrity and, as loathe as I am to type these words, “street cred” — that you just can’t buy. […]
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:25 pm | Permalink
I really hope the people in it with integrity can hold on, but it’s hard to be optimistic. Wherever there’s money to be made, people less than scrupulous wheedle in. I hope more bloggers make an about page as you have done to at least clear the air somewhat.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:46 pm | Permalink
On a positive note: The new MEGA trend: The costcutting taking place at NBC and others signals a HUGE shift in power!More and more, consumers are enabled: enabled, for instance, to get programming on-demand without commercials, to produce and be exposed to independently published content of all kinds without getting it through the ‘main stream’ media.
Read more here: http://rothmanmarketing.com/blog/2006/10/19/mega-trend-the-costcutting-taking-place-at-nbc/
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:59 pm | Permalink
Hi, I like this theme. Can you let me knwo where to get it for my own blog?
Thanks.
http://www.clashbang.com
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:50 pm | Permalink
“They’re kind of the roach motel, if you will. People are gonna come over to that and they’re gonna give them this little piece of brand bait. They go, ‘Oh, pretty cool.’ And then they go out and they spread it to their friends.
“If you wanna be critical, if you wanna go through your life like that, sure, be critical of every single person that walks up to you! But if they’re showing you something that fits, and something that works, and something that makes your life better in some way, well, then, who cares? We…again: Just say thanks.”
– Jonathan Ressler, CEO Big Fat Inc. undercover marketing specialist, “The Corporation”, http://www.thecorporation.com/ official downloadable BitTorrent: http://torrentfreak.com/torrents/The+Corporation+Filmmakers+Official+Download+Edition+-+DIVX.torrent part 1, 01:23:07-01:25:41
December 4th, 2006 at 12:11 am | Permalink
Hi CKS — actually, I wrote this theme myself.
Its not really ready for public consumption, but if you want — when, and if it is, I can let you know.
Cheers
t @ dji
December 4th, 2006 at 4:54 pm | Permalink
This hits home harder than it might for me, as I was approached by one of these companies only a week or two ago. They offered me, as an “influencer”, a free copy of the product they were shilling in exchange for post(s) about it. I gave them a snarky reply about the existing level of corruption in the gaming press, but the slimy bastards replied in turn as if I’d accepted, reminding me that they needed my address to send the reward to. Really, really distasteful.
December 4th, 2006 at 10:15 pm | Permalink
[…] If 2006 is known for the year that blogging, social networks, and social bookmarking got big — and readily game-able exploitable entities — it will also be known as the year that traditional news media took its first baby steps towards utilizing user generated content in earnest. And, as such, be the beginning loops in the death spiral for many professional journalists and photographers. […]
December 4th, 2006 at 10:50 pm | Permalink
Hey Tom,
Thanks for popping by.
Sad to hear of your ‘exploits’ … sounds like they didn’t even read your email! :)
Cheers
t@ dji
December 19th, 2006 at 7:40 am | Permalink
[…] Tony Hung on Deep Jive Interests raised this flag in my mind when he talked about people faking friends on MySpace or companies paying to get articles voted to the top of Digg and then concluded: Users of social media, and as it grows more prevalent, really, anyone who uses the Internet, needs to ask some fairly important questions on a fairly routine basis. […]
January 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am | Permalink
[…] * SearchEngineWatch thinks I’m one of the 10 most influential “scribblers” in search: Hilarious, I know. But getting mentioned in the same sentence as the USA Today, the New York Times, and Nick Carr of Rough Type is somewhat heady … until you mention how they created that list. Seems liked they used NewsTrust to find a bunch of articles on “Search”, and lo and behold, a post I wrote some time ago on the “Corruption of the New Media and the “New” New Media Literacy” that was highly “trusted” by … like, 5-6 people. You know what? I like NewsTrust, because its a system that’s like Digg — you submit news for people to see — except that it rates the news bits based on how much you trust the piece. Problem with the SearchEngineWatch piece, as flattering as it was, is that at such low numbers of people participating it can skew the results. Also? You can’t delete a “trust” ranking … for fun, I decided to give myself five stars, and lo and behold, I couldn’t delete it. […]
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm | Permalink
“Hi CKS — actually, I wrote this theme myself.
Its not really ready for public consumption, but if you want — when, and if it is, I can let you know.”
Cool, just drop me an email or leave a comment on my site!
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm | Permalink
“Hi CKS — actually, I wrote this theme myself.
Its not really ready for public consumption, but if you want — when, and if it is, I can let you know.”
Cool, just drop me an email or leave a comment on my site!!
January 31st, 2007 at 2:59 am | Permalink
Hey, thanks for that.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:35 pm | Permalink
Thanks for a nice post such as this.
February 15th, 2007 at 12:00 pm | Permalink
This is really an great article and will help me with my final paper. Thx guys!
February 19th, 2007 at 3:01 am | Permalink
I was just wondering if you are using this for this blog.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:07 am | Permalink
Just a piece of info.
SPIKETHEVOTE is now owned by DIGG. It was sold on EBay. I infact bid on it, but was eventually outbid.
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
[…] There’s nothing intrinsically good or bad about it (but, really, mostly bad), but clearly in an age of “social media” and “user generated” content, there’s a strong case to be made for new media literacy. […]