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Buy blog comments, anyone?

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Buy Blog CommentsWhat can you say about buying and selling blog comments? Here’s a new online service to ponder upon.

BuyBlogComments.com is a startup that offers unautomated, human-made blog comments aimed for, as said on their site, “blackhatters who are looking for good quality backlinks”. (IMO, something’s seriously wrong about having the word “blackhat” and “good quality backlinks” in one sentence.)

This one-of-a-kind startup offers three packages, starting at $20 which gives you 100 blog comments, $100 for 500 comments, and $200 for 1000 comments. The company claims to have a group of trained professionals who do the commenting themselves, making sure that the comments are related to the blog post they comment on so that they “look completely like legit comments.”

While BuyBlogComments claims they’re NOT spam, Darren Rowse, the Problogger himself, thinks that the service is “sick” and “disturbing”. I think so, too. I’m very much aware that there are underground companies doing spam, but to go out in the open, offer your spamming service, and make it “look legit” is something else. I think it’s just odd to be selling a service aimed at blackhatters so that their sites would “rank better in the SERPs” when we all know well that black hat is the bane of every search engine’s existence.

Originally posted on July 10, 2007 @ 10:32 pm

Scott Karp: Journos should start blogging

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Journo at workScott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 have a post up, basically saying that every journalist should start a blog. And of course, there’s rebuttals to this stance, which also shows in the post and comments.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with Scott. While journalists have lots to gain from blogging, there’s also the fact that a lot of them suck without an editor bringing out the best.

There, I said it. Self-publising isn’t necessary a good thing, editors save us from crappy grammar and hollow stories in the print world. Editors also tend to miss out on lots of that, proving that it’s not a universal law that print is better than web. But at least it’s another set of eyes on the writer’s piece of work, and that ups the chance of getting rid of errors. I know a lot of journalists, and have edited some, that definitely can’t be left with a Publish button.

Not all journalists should blog, it might end up biting them in the neck. In other words, just the good ones should get into blogging – the rest would do us all a favor by shutting up.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 3:32 am

New7Wonders becomes a global phenomenon

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Started in 2001 as inspired by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber to “protect humankind’s heritage across the globe”, New7Wonders Web site is now part of the prestigious top 1 percent of the world’s most popular websites.

It is the first global election site poised to alter world history by choosing the New 7 Wonders of the world based on more than 45 million votes using modern communications technology like Internet and mobile phones. With only 46 days and 10 hours left as of this writing, official results of this exceptional campaign will be announced in Lisbon, Portugal and broadcasted globally on 07.07.07 (July 7, 2007).

“New7Wonders has one of the fastest-growing online communities. People from every country in the world have voted and continue to post photos and videos, submit slogans and spread the word. New7Wonders is a passionate movement that is making waves worldwide,” commented New7Wonders Founder and President, Bernard Weber.

New7Wonders has joined the ranks of other powerful Internet brands and organizations like Coke, Levis, UN, FIFA, Olympics, and BMW.

Originally posted on May 21, 2007 @ 10:03 am

Is Digg facing their greatest challenge right now?

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Digg screenshotDigg is in trouble, although they might not even know it, which I think they do but that’s beside the point. They’re in trouble because the people who are making their service interesting, the content providers, are starting to get pissed off. There’s a lot of talk of censorship around Digg these days; here’s the most recent Techmeme thread, which originates from a post by Neil Patel over at Pronet Advertising.

What happens to a social content service when it appears too frequently around this kind of accusations? A smaller one would falter, perhaps even crash totally, but Digg is not a newcomer nor a baby in the business. They’re the giant in their area, Netscape, Reddit, StumpleUpon and whatnot are just up and coming projects but not real competitors. Or are they? Could Digg actually alienate their core crowd with this proposed behavior? True or not, just the fact that there’s a discussion about wether Digg is censoring or not, and how they’re doing it (Digg users burying “anti-Digg stuff” is old news) is hurting the site.

Core Digg users will probably stay, but others will leave, in search of other places to share their stories with the world wide web. Like Netscape, Reddit, StumbleUpon and whatnot…

Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 5:51 am

Your Space, MySpace, Barack’s Space

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Senator Barack ObamaSome people consider 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama to be the most “wired” candidate in either major political party. That is, he has utilized online social networks and even streaming video channels to his advantage – showing that he’s hip and understands a younger generation. He even has a MySpace page profile that had 160,000 “friends”. An Obama supporter has been running it for nearly three years, with the blessing of the Senator’s campaign team. They suddenly decided, though, that they were uncomfortable with an “outsider” running the page, which of course represents Obama’s viewpoints, etc.

The campaign team wanted control of the profile page, and the supporter, Joe Anthony, a paralegal, was fine with that, though he wanted nearly $50K in total fees to do so, which the Senator’s team said no to. Big mistake. At $50,000 of effort put in by Anthony to build 160,000 friends, each “friend”, and no doubt supporter of Obama, cost only about thirty cents. The stink that ensued caused Myspace to step in and decide that the Senator’s team could have control and Joe Anthony could take the contact info. All 160,000 friends. So what if it was supposed to be volunteer work?

Does this translate into 160,000 lost future votes? Maybe. Maybe less, maybe more. Who can know? The fact is, there are now only just over 21K friends. Obviously, it was a monstrously stupid move for the campaign team of a seemingly well-loved, charismatic candidate who has been a historic figure and may continue to be. Someone on the campaign team should be fired. It’s not like the campaign money isn’t there. But even more to the point, Anthony obviously was a good buffer and did a tremendous job building goodwill for the Senator.

Will the MySpace page be the same with the official campaign team running it? I doubt it. However, the Senator phoned Anthony to offer his apologies and try to win back his vote. Had the campaign team invited Anthony to be part of their team, everyone would be way ahead.

Originally posted on May 3, 2007 @ 2:29 pm