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I have not really been looking forward to the coming 08 Presidential election, as a true conservative from an economic stand point, quite liberal from a social stand point (in other words do what you want, just don’t ask me to pay for it) and a believer in the US Constitution there has not been a lot to get excited about.  It has honestly already been narrowed down to a 4 Horse race, with Clinton and Obama on one side and Rudy and Romney on the other.  In essence most Americans will once again have to choose the “lesser of two evils” when November 2008 comes around.

Then something happened, I was on YouTube and found this video of Congressman Ron Paul speaking about liberty, constitutional government and a noninterventionist foreign policy.  I had heard of Ron before but always with a sort of angle that made him seem a bit wacky.  Well, I should have known when both the left and right don’t like you it usually means you speak the truth.  Yet I don’t want to turn this post into an “elect Ron Paul” commercial I want to really demonstrate what to date is the best organized Web 2.0 Marketing campaign I have ever seen. 

The only reason I really have to give you the initial background on Ron Paul is so you can understand the “perfect storm” that is really making his online efforts blow away everyone including the top candidates.So what is this “perfect storm” and why may we never see a single individual dominate something to this level again.  I am going to demonstrate a bit of “political opinion” here but it is necessary to understand the entire phenomenon and by the way I do not agree with all of the points below, I just understand their impact on the 2008 campaign.  

Condition One – Total dissatisfaction with the government as a whole.  While many democratic pundits and candidates are making a big deal that Bushes latest approval rating is 30% from the latest  CBS/New York Times Poll run on July 20-22nd they leave out the fact that Congress as a whole now has a worse rating of 26%.  In short people are totally unhappy with the whole mess right now and Paul is definitely a change from both “sides of the isle”

Condition Two – The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It seems no matter which side of this issue you are on most agree it is not being handled correctly.  People either want us out or want the war prosecuted fully.  No one wants our troops on a radio asking for permission to shoot back.  Even most people that want to see this war won would rather end it then fight it under the current conditions.  While Ron is for ending the war he also is on record from the beginning stating that if we were going to go to war, then we should have declared war.  That is a statement that is very hard to argue with as it is backed by both constitutional and international law.

Condition Three – The immigration issue.  By and large over 80% of Americans want to see illegal immigration put to a stop, what Congress tried to give us was “comprehensive immigration reform”.  Now I have never heard one person on the street say they wanted, “comprehensive immigration reform” people say they want illegal immigration stopped.  What has the government done (under both Democrats and Republicans) to actually stop or even slow the issue down?  Nothing and people are not happy, remember when the Immigration Bill was before the Senate, so many people called in against it they actually crashed the senate switch board, that has never happened before.

Condition Four – All the top tier Republican candidates are far more liberal then conservative.  Republicans, (the average Joe and Jane ones) are disgusted, if you watch Mitt Romney debate Ted Kennedy on YouTube you won’t be able to tell who the Liberal is, and Rudy Gulaini enacted almost Nazi like gun control in New York City.   Neither really seems like a great Republican Hope.

Condition Five – Ron Paul has a record that is 100% consistent with what he says.  Now this is different for politics.  See the reality is that agree or disagree with Paul and his views no one can attack his integrity.  Everyone says they won’t raise taxes but Paul has never voted once to raise taxes in close to two decades of service as a Congressman.  He also has never taken a single trip at tax payer expense.  While many can find fault with Ron Paul’s positions, no one can claim he does not have actions that are consistent with his statements.  Can you say that about any other presidential candidate right now?  It is important to understand that this track record goes back to the late 1970s and took that long to have the creditability it has today.

Condition Six – Web 2.0 and Social Media have gained wide spread main stream acceptance.  There is no way a person like Ron Paul could have launched the massive social media success he is having today in 2004, the technology and acceptance of it were not far enough along.  Social Media is still very new and hence the high priced marketing firms (that’s what they are) for the top tier candidates don’t really know how to leverage it yet.  This will change and there will be social media specialists involved in future elections but at this point it is almost impossible for anyone to out do Ron Paul online, he has taken what is known as first mover advantage.

Condition Seven - Ron Paul has a massive technologically savvy fan base which was grown out of attempts to keep him out of main stream debates and main stream media.  Quite simply the efforts of the big Republican candidates to marginalize Paul in the big media have backfired.  Paul supporters were angry about being pushed out of debates and said the hell with it and went online, they made videos, wrote blogs and pushed everything into the social media world.  Now it only takes a hundred votes or so to tip a story on Digg, so with a million or so supporters tying together with the net getting traction is pretty easy.

Condition Eight – Long term marathon like domination of social media is only possible with genuine support.  Sure you can buy some Diggs for a story from an Indian company and push it up to the top of Digg, you can hire a snazzy firm to make cool viral videos and you can do all sorts of cool jazzy Web 2.0 stuff with a big budget.  Yet you can’t buy genuine enthusiasm at all levels of society.  Simply put Ron Paul,s supporters take the time to rate videos, email stories, vote on Digg, etc.  While many far left Democrats or far right Republicans will do this for their parties, those groups don’t get much action from the every day supporter that makes up the majority of Americans.  The Paul message has touched off something in the “every day American” that none of the big players have been able to reach regardless of party or how much money they spend.

Condition Nine – Americans are primed to vote “for something”.  Think about this, how many times have you heard, “I voted for the lesser of two evils” or similar statements about an election?  When you voted in 2004 did you vote “for Bush” or “for Kerry” or is it more accurate to say you voted “against Bush” or “against Kerry”?  People seem to want to vote “for Ron Paul”, while most political discussion about the top candidates is going like this, “Who is more likely to beat Hillary, Gulaini or Romney” or “would we have a better change to win in November with Barock or Clinton”?  This is not opinion listen to talk shows and left or right leaning you will hear this type of discussion going on.  No one is really talking about who would be better for America, only how much money they have raised, how good their marketing is and which is the stronger candidate for the general election.  I think many Americans are tired of voting against someone.

Condition Ten – Ron Paul’s campaign has 100% embraced the Internet.  While Hillary wants to “chat” by video in her campaign announcement and some hot girl has a “Crush on Obama” it is clear they are 100% commercial in nature, one to sell Hillary an the other to sell T-Shirts.  Contrast that with Paul, who also has a lot of very well put together videos by his staff yet still enjoys massive numbers of user created videos by people that simply want to be part of the campaign.  Further the Paul campaign is doing everything with an online angle, using the net to boost support at straw poles, solicit people to make phone calls or send letters along with every other activity common to a political campaign.  It is this integration that Paul’s people have used to create the massive success in the Social Media space.

So what does this mean?  Can the dark horse Ron Paul campaign actually pull out a victory?  Only time will tell and any honest person will tell you the odds are long.  Many would point out that Paul has only polled so far at 1-2% at best among the other GOP hopefuls.  While Paul supporters would point out two very interesting things, first that with the massive buzz on the internet around Paul that this number is clearly far to low and none of them have gotten a call to answer on of these polls yet.  Second that about this time in the election cycle Bill Clinton also had only 2% of the polls and Jimmy Carter had less then 1%.

To me the phenomenon we see in the Social Media space for Ron Paul is genuine and as real as any.  The why behind it is pretty easy to understand though, with just a few thousand “fans” in various parts of social media it is very easy for one competitor to dominate others.  Many would point out that Gulaini, Romney, Thompson, Clinton and Obama all have far more “fans” out there so why don’t they enjoy the same prominence in the Web 2.0 world?

The answer to this is also quite simple to understand.  The top candidates are having their voices heard on television and radio.  The Republicans have almost every talk radio station and Fox News in their pockets and the Democrats have Air America on the radio and on television they have every channel other then Fox news equally sewn up.  In all of these arenas Paul has gotten very little room to voice his opinion and when he does either side rolls out the pundits to detract from the Paul message and explain around the positive response to his message.

So what choice is there for Paul’s supporters to make?  The only avenue open to them is to turn to the one medium today that is not censored or controlled, the Internet.  Fortunately for Paul, his supporter and America there has never been a better time, the ten factors I mentioned above have converged to create a Perfect Web 2.0 Storm the only question is how far can the storm carry him?

To me the biggest impact thus far is the creation of belief in his supporters that Ron Paul can win.  To be honest I think even a few months ago the most ardent supporters only were supporting Paul to make a point and help a new voice be heard, none including Paul himself believed he could win.  Yet now with millions of view on YouTube, thousands upon thousands of Diggs and tens of thousands of “friends” and “connections” across a myriad of web services something quite inspiring is happening among both new and old supporters of the Paul campaign and that is belief.  Supporters are starting to believe that Ron Paul can actually win as can be seen in Ron's Recent Visit to Google.

To me it doesn’t matter if that belief is well founded or not, the reality is for any chance to exist, belief must come first.  It is belief that creates excitement, belief that raises contributions and belief that encourages active participation.  The real success thus far of the Social Media explosion for Ron Paul is the creation of this belief and what that will do is make Ron Paul a bigger factor in the primary elections then anyone believed was possible at the beginning of 2007 and indeed with out the Internet, Social Media and Web 2.0 it never could have happened.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: ron paul, web 2.0, social media, presidential election,   politics, political advertising, google, youtube, social media and politics

Popularity: 14% [?]

There were plenty of people who trashed the Microsoft Zune back when it was released, which I mistakenly called a Homerun for Microsoft back in September of 2006.  I was planning on buying one but have since realized that the first generation player from Microsoft is lacking in many areas and choose to stick to Creative and just upgraded to a Creative Zen W. 

You see I really thought Microsoft had figured it out when I saw comments from Zune’s Senior Director of Project Management (Scott Erickson) on MTV news when he said and I quote,  "If it was ripped from a CD in your personal collection, you can import all of that including your playlists, album art, ratings and play counts."  Unfortunately it turned out that Senior Director Scott Erickson did not know his own product (which seems like not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground to me) and DRM is applied to any and all music on the Zune not just what was purchased from the Zune Marketplace so that really crushed a lot of the wow factor of the sharing feature on the Zune.

When I finally got to handle a Zune finally and I had to admit it is a well made unit, great graphics, great feel, easy to use and as a device alone I like it better then the iPod but much about it and the Marketplace to me is still a flop!

Yet this is not another slam on Zune as there is enough of that was done a long time ago.  Zune and its strict DRMs are just another symptom of the real problems with the entire music industry and all the services from iTunes to Zune Marketplace and others.  This article is meant to be about the industry as a whole and I want to be proactive so rather then just telling you what I think is wrong with the model I will try to also outline what I think is the right way to build a music downloading service and family of players. 

As I do this I am coming at it from three perspectives. 

• One, a user of portable players and downloadable music.
• Two, an Internet marketer that knows what works online and understands industry trends and what Web2.0 really means.  
• Third, from the view of the service provider and how the provider and music industry could make money. 

My belief is users complain about services with no thought that the providers need to make money, the providers think far more about money then the users and most executives certainly don’t know what Web2.0 is other then an excuse to blow some venture capital money and throw some 1999 style parties.

Before I go on let me be totally honest with you about where I get my music at the present time.  About half is from CDs I own that I have been buying since 1988 the other half is mostly from Limewire where I do what industry people would call “stealing music”.  I am not alone I have it from very good sources that the number one service accessed from just about every major University in the U.S. today is Limewire and it has been almost since the day Napster was slapped down and forced to charge for music.

I do still buy CDs of some artists, some I want to support like the new Chris Daughtry CD and others where I really want the entire album and not just one or two songs.  I want the reader to also understand that I would actually prefer to buy music if a service that respected my rights as the owner of the content I just paid for existed. 

I have about 8 PCs in my house and we own over a half dozen portable players (including yes, gasp a 30GB iPod) and even an old fashioned CD player that holds 60 plus CDs.  Our truck has a CD player and our cool new VW Jetta has a 6-disk changer that plays both audio disks and mp3 disks.

When I buy a song (and no I don’t F’ing “rent” music) I want to be able to move it to any device I want it on so I can play it the way I want to, as I want to, how I want to and for as long as I want to.  I don’t want DRM on my music, I don’t want to not be able to rip it to a CD as the player in our truck only plays regular music CD’s and I also like to still make CD’s for my wife, yea I am an old sap romantic.  I don't use Limewire because I am too cheap to buy music, I use it because it best serves my wants as a person that listens to music.  There are millions of people just like me out there, make no mistake about it.  

I also feel that we should be paying about half or less for music in soft copy not just as much or even 90% of the CD price as most music works out from Apple, Microsoft and the other services.  Damn it we spent all those years from the dawn of vinyl records all the way through the golden age of the CD and what did the music industry claim was the reason for what we called the “high cost of CDs”?  The industry claimed it was manufacturing and packaging and shipping driving up the cost, which remained the standard answer all the way up until the iPod age.  

Funny how that old excuse is just not heard any more, now they have new reasons (excuses) and guilt us with sob stories about the “poor artists”.  Anyone with any industry knowledge knows the artists make very little on the album sales and earn most money from touring which they have to fit the bill for and manage mostly for themselves by the way.  Besides from Garth Brooks to the Chili Peppers to old timers like Bachman Turner Overdrive all the artists seem to be doing quite well for themselves.  Well, everyone but the Dixie Chicks, which teaches us the lesson of know your target demographic before you open your mouth in public!

You see unlike many of our youth (which I consider those under 25 or there abouts) I have not grown up with mostly electronic music, CD burners and iPods.  No, I still remember the first tape decks and how the music industry tried to stop them because according to industry fat cats back then, “people recording the radio was going to destroy the music industry”, yes they really said that.  I remember the first dual cassette decks where people could dub one tape to the next and how the music execs forecasted doom and gloom and the very death of music and the same reaction to the first CD burners and then finally when P2P music came out the same cries of doom were uttered.  

The crying of the music executives is an old story and despite how long it has been going on the bigwigs at Sony, Time Warner, etc still have leather walls in their offices and marble floors.  I don’t begrudge them from making the big bucks and officing in downtown Manhattan either, no that is fine with me, I am a capitalist and making money is the American way just don’t sing me a sob story when you eat caviar for lunch, drive a Jag and have LEATHER WALLS! 

(note:  I have visited the Sony Building in New York, Yep they really do have leather walls.)

So now I have totally ripped the industry how about the solution I promised?  I am getting to it I just wanted to lay the foundation first so you could see how the solution actually fixes the problems and why the model I am going to propose would not only work but work better and still create plenty of profit for the music industry the service provider and the artists.

Side Note: If you are one of those types that thinks that all corporations are bad and profit is a vulgar word, go live in the woods because with out profit you would not have any of the things that make your life enjoyable, like your iPod, your Car or your house.

The solution is really pretty simple…

First, charge a reasonable price for each down load that should be 25-30% of the price of a hard copy, or about 25-35 cents per download.  I am sorry Mr. Sonny Executive but you can’t tell me cases, disks, printing, etc are your biggest costs for 5 decades and expect me to forget about that now.  I believed you then and I still believe you today, your amnesia is not contagious, I won’t forget the reality of the cost of materials, distribution and printing that you told me about for 50 years.

Second, follow a principal of real Web2.0, which is the more people that use a service the better it performs.  This is how Limewire works, the more users that have a song the faster it will be to download it.  With an iTunes model the more users the more resources Apple must provide to serve them.  Bandwidth transfer is a huge expense for any music provider. 

Simply put a token of some type on your tracks (not DRM) or allow your system to compare files so pieces of each track can be downloaded from multiple users.  This guarantees a user high quality music but defers a huge piece of the expense from the provider and improves the user experience. 

That is win-win and it works just fine, my music off Limewire is proof.  Honestly if, iTunes or Napster music is “better quality” it is a difference beyond my hearing ability and that of most other honest people as well.

Third, don’t DRM the music let people burn CDs, put it on any PC they want, etc.  Why?  Simply because you can’t stop it anyway, millions of people are sharing that song every day on Limewire and other P2P networks, emailing them and hell most new music is on 50 different YouTube videos anyway.  Stripping out the audio is pretty easy, even an old men like Mark Cuban and myself can do it. 

When I thought about this my first intention was to explain how greed is the problem here.   The music industry executives are so afraid of loosing sales because of greed they can’t see the opportunity to make more money by getting people who are using services like Limewire to start using a paid service.  The more I thought about it though, I think greed is the solution!  Greed is bad when you fear loosing but when you think of what you can acquire, greed can be good.

The music industry needs to redirect that greed from preventing legitimate users from sharing music and point it at how to get non paying users to voluntarily and happily start paying for music.  You see more people “steal” music then buy it today, a lot more!  The system I am outlining would be able to capture so much volume and reduce costs to such a level that the industry could make MORE MONEY by doing it.

Fourth, Take sharing to where Microsoft should have gone immediately.  Devices like Zune are just the first ones, PDAs have been beaming contact info since the 90s the technology is not hard to build so more players will come.  I do believe that music users should not be able to beam songs at will to non-paying members but the solution is pretty simple.  Let users who are paying members beam any song, let them play it a lot but at some point yes the song goes away.

You don’t have to universally DRM music to do this!  Just DRM music that is beamed as it is BEING BEAMED.  Don’t let users move beamed songs to PCs or burn disks, etc.  Now here is the real kicker, if you have a unlimited download service, then token the users device to allow unlimited sharing for paying unlimited users.  Why the hell not?  If they have unlimited downloads they could get it anyway, right?  Consider that if you did this again you are following the Web2.0 concept and the receiver does not use your system resources to redownload the song across your system.

Then do what the clueless Project Manager from Microsoft thought they were going to do and allow any music or any files not from your service to be exchanged at will.  If you are thinking about lost sales, keep the greed pointed in the right direction, more users = more sales = more money.

Fifth, Follow the Web2.0 concept of Google and make money with advertising.  Now this is not the nonsense that Spiral Frog tried.  I know as an adSense Publisher that ads do not work well in environments where users are “highly involved” like downloading music or in forums.  When a user is doing a task not just browsing they have a huge degree of ad blindness.    In other words on a general information page some of my ads do better then 15% click through but on a forum page with high return visitors and user interaction my ads are generally below 1%.

So, knowing that people downloading songs won’t be in an ad clicking mood and knowing the most relevant things you can sell them, music and players they are already buying (from you buy the way) what source of quality third party advertising revenue can you find.  One word Artists!  Sure Puff Daddy, Jessica Simpson or Justin Timberlake won’t pay money to get you to offer free downloads their music (not at first anyway) but tens of thousands of undiscovered talent all over the world will.

Think about this you are a garage band or bar band trying to make it.  You have cool original sound, your small group of fans love you so sending them out with a bunch of Zune type players, to beam you to users is not a bad idea right?  Well with out the stupid three-day, three strong restriction.  Well, what if you could have your music on a service like iTunes (I know technically you can already, stay with me here) or Zune Marketplace but it would work this way.?

The artist would classify their music almost like a pay per click account at google specifying the type of music they play, say alternative rock and list a group of artists who are famous say Pearl Jam, Breaking Benjamin, Fuel, etc. who their music is most similar to.  Then when a downloading customer was downloading a track from Breaking Benjamin they would get the opportunity to also download the unknown artists track for free.  Now, you charge say 5 cents a download to the artist to promote his music for him.  So for about 500 bucks the Garage band could be heard by 10,000 new fans all over the world!

Now you tell me what other form of advertising that is highly targeted exists that is this affordable even at twice the price to undiscovered talent.  What a MySpace page?  Really?   With several million (at least) fake accounts and no association with the listener’s favorite artists.  With a annual marketing budget of say 2000 dollars a year a new band could be broadcast to over 40,000 fans each year and with viral sharing possibly a lot more.  Of course you would track the sharing and let the artist know that he paid for 10,000 downloads but now 15,000 fans know about them.

I hope you don’t miss how the user benefits here!  Every time they download some music they get a track or two from undiscovered talent for free, they start to develop a really cool and different music library!  You over time can have an algorithm get better at targeting them by asking them to rate the free tracks on the simple star system.  In time collective intelligence will take over and deliver the perfect type of music from the undiscovered artist to the waiting fan.  Again the more people that use it the better it gets.

Sixth, Browser Integration is the final need in this service.  Users should log into an account via a browser and all outbound traffic should open new tabs in FireFox or Internet Explorer now has tabbed browsing too.  This will keep users on your portal as often as possible.  Jazz it up with things the way Live.com works where users can drop in sports scores, news and other rss feeds.

Of course all users have accounts and all their actions are monitored and demographic profiles are developed.  Partner with Google, Yahoo or Microsoft adCenter and work a deal for demographic targeting of seach results.  Put a search box on the main portal and now you have highly targeted visitors whose traffic can be sold to your search partner.  Since people need your page to download music and get those cool free tunes from unknown artists they will use it often.  By making it browser based you make them use it more and keep them using it longer. 

Now you don’t have to be a genius to understand that if the unknown band has a website the user gets to visit it while downloading the free track do you?  The unknown band can now sell their full album to the user of course most likely across your service and sell their other stuff, T-Shirts, CDs etc directly from their sites.

You should be seeing the final piece by now!   With this type of angle the big artists will want to buy LOTS of free downloads for their fans too.  Think about it, buy 100,000 give always for a big artist is nothing, they spend more on one trip to the shoe store.  With this type of promotional tool, they can then expect to do great with their new album, get lots of traffic to their sites and do what makes them the most money, sell ticket to concerts!

Ok that was long but honestly the above is a complete business plan for the right way to run a music distribution service.  It does the following,

1.  Cuts the cost to download music to a price low enough to make using your service more attractive and adds enough cool features to make it more fun then “stealing” from P2P applications.

2.  Provides a way for users to share resources and relieves the provider of a huge expense all while making the user experience better.

3.  Creates not one but three ad revenue streams from unknown artists, established artists and general search traffic while creating what might be the best demographic targeting in the online world.

4.  Becomes part of the users daily online life, like email or google.  The long-term revenue from this type of visitor loyalty is almost hard to comprehend.  Just ask Eric Schmidt!

5.  Fights piracy by embracing sharing rather then trying to prevent it.  YOU CANNOT STOP sharing music.  People will do it no matter what you do, your goal hear is to capture as much of the untapped market as you can.

Is my plan perfect?  Not at all I am not naive enough, not to know that as you started to build this product that all types of “problems” would show up.  Yet the framework of this plan is in my honest opinion better then any model we have in existence today.  The biggest obstacle would be getting the music industry on board, so it would take a company with enough clout to make Sony fear Time Warner and vise versa, etc. 

Honestly what Microsoft has done with Zune could be turned into my model far easier then anything else today.  Still I think it will need to be some start up with a big named backer to get it done.  It all goes back to greed, the big companies fear what they have to loose with misplaced greed.  The start up would channel greed for what can be gained in and that would send them in the right direction.

I believe a model like this will come to be some day and when it does remember you saw it laid out in full, here first.

So what additions could you make to my proposed service?  If you are a band would you pay 500 bucks to get your music into the players of 10,000 plus fans?  Do you think a model like this can work or will ever occur?  Let me know with your comments below.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Well I have been on a tear lately about paid links, buy blog comments and Google Requesting Link Narcs and I thought I was about done with it.  Yet after commenting in a few blogs who are all worried about Buy Blog Comments as the fear du jour and seeing the responses to my posts I realized that there is a giant disconnect with the "reality of web marketing" and the "fantasy land of blogotopia".  The problem lies in the belief that many bloggers have that blogging and the commercial world are not intertwined or at least should not be.

So what does this have to do with hate crime legislation?   Everything!  Let me explain by starting with actual hate crime law, which to me is going into the world of becoming "thought police".  A basic hate crime law would work like this, Joe kills Frank because Joe is a scumbag and wants to steal from Frank so he shoots him and takes his wallet.  The crime is murder and in Texas where I live and in many states Joe may very well face the death penalty.  Now same scenario except this time Joe is a racist pig and kills Frank because of his ethnic background.  Some would like to label this a "hate crime" with stricter penalty if that can be proven to be the case.  So I guess they want to kill Joe twice in the death chamber? 

The real problem with such law is it makes one victims life or freedom worth more then another's.  It it for all intents a stupid attempt to make people feel better about the core problem, violence and crime against the innocent.  The solution is pretty simple, don't worry about this nonsense and punish the guilty for the crime they commit not the intent they had when they committed it.  

Now onto paid links and the Internet.  Let's look at Buy Blog Comments as a starting point, if you have not heard about this service yet it basically works this way.   You pay a company a fee in return they go out and find blogs that practice dofollow and create links for your site.  The real intent is to drive search engine results higher.  This is a relatively new concept and it has what I call Chicken Little bloggers running around all upset and dreaming up creative ways to stop this pending doom.  They want to find anyone associated with this and "blacklist them".  

My friends that is a "online hate crime law", this is judging the intent rather then the content.  In reality for years bloggers have filtered their contents and deleted or not approved many of them.  To do this they looked at the post and simply said "does this post add to the topic at hand", "will it make my blog better", "will my other readers benefit from it" and "does it link to anything my personal blog policy prohibits".  In other words bloggers judged the action not the intent, if they guy got a link for MP3 Player or SEO Advice, so what as long as the action was with in the bounds of the personal policy the blogger set for his blog, great if not, nuked!

Simple no?  Now with this new service emerging bloggers want to "police the intent".  How are you ever going to do such a thing?  There is no fricken way you can ever be sure of the intent the commenter had so just apply the same "law" to comments you always have and rock on.  

Let's look at recent history to see how this is yet another false drama about how paid links and paid blogging will ruin everything, .  Consider when services like PayPerPost, Reviewme and Blogvertise came out.  The same reaction occurred!  Blogs buzzed with gloom and doom predictions of all blogs becoming commercial in nature and readers would "not be able to trust blogs in the future".  What a crock of sh-t!  What really happened?

Well a lot of bloggers who never made a dime found a way to earn a few hundred to even a few thousand dollars a month online.  With that they paid off debts, got a nicer home or did what ever the hell they wanted to.  Advertisers found a cool new way to reach their audiences and a great new way to build links formated the way they wanted.  In fact this has become one of the best ways in the world to get good links and good buzz because if your service is crap the bloggers will not blog about you!  In short good products and services are getting better results because an INDIVIDUAL takes the time to evaluate whether or not the subject is worthy of their time and blog.  Sure there is a fee, yet it is clear that bloggers have not sold their souls.

If fact wasn't this a logical extension of blogging?  Blogs are a lot like a talk radio show in form and function.  You get one persons unique view and you get the opportunity to agree or disagree with them.  That is the "information and entertainment" component of blogging and radio.  Then both blogs and radio have "traditional advertising".  On radio it is the sponsors you hear about several times an hour on a blog it is adsense, banner ads or text links.  Now no one gets out of shape about this.  Yet on radio there are also "select sponsors", these will be the ones your host talks about and mentions personal experience with.  He will say "I bought my car at Joe's Toyota and they are great", or "Kevin at Texas Lending got me a great mortgage and I can not recommend them highly enough".

Everyone knows the host is advertising but the ad takes on more authority and more creditability then the typical ad because of the format.  This is exactly what paid blogging is like, the blogger reviews the service or product, judges it and finds it worth of posting about for a fee.  They take the opportunity and post about it.  Now, as a reader what do you do, should you apply "hate crime logic" to it and judge the intent or apply common sense and judge the content.  You may just change the dial until the show comes back on or you might actually enjoy the paid post and learn about something cool.  

The reality though is the sky did not fall when PayPerPost and others came on the scene despite their remarkable successes.  Everything turned out fine and bloggers and readers both got a new source of content.  Some participated others did not and the free market handled it all like a champ.

Our memories are short lived though the same "hate crime concepts" came up when these paid to blog services came up.  People wanted to ban blogs that participated in paid posting from blog services or have their "feeds tagged", etc.  Why it all went back to judging the intent rather then the content and the result.  A blogger who just blogged for money and blogged about any topic with the right fee was never going to have a successful blog anyway, so why care, why bother?

Whether it is Google Soliciting Link Narcs, Bloggers trying to "blacklist buy blog commenter's" or people loosing faith in blogs because of paid postings the reality is all the same.  Making a bit of money for your efforts is not evil, (Google does it and they have a no evil policy ) and the market always does a great job at sorting our bad ideas from good ones in just a little bit of time.  In my opinion there is no room for hate crime law online, judge the results not the intent.

A company buys links for a term and get a great rank on Google for that term.  Judge the result, is the page on topic, quality, did the searcher find what they want?  If so good the system worked!  If not then it is up to Google to fix their algorithm not for web masters to narc each other out!  If a comment sucks it is up to the blog owner to use filters and moderation to keep it off his blog, not for a black list of people that often will NEVER HAVE DONE ANYTHING WRONG to be punished by some automated process.

In life and online, just judge the action and results, not the intent.  None of us have the supernatural ability required to be "thought police" and history has shown every attempt by man to do so has punished far more of the innocent then the guilty,

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: hate crime, buy blog comments, paid links, link narc, blogging, make money online, internet advertising, radio advertising, sponsored posting, payperpost, blogvertise, reviewme

Popularity: 20% [?]

Long ago before I was a web marketer I was a salesmen and I really came into my own in that industry in the 90's working for a Network Cabling company called DataConnection. (I am in no way responsible for their website, )  During this time I did sales and design specification for a company known as AudioNet which soon became the Internet IPO giant of the 90's known as Broadcast.com.  Today I read a post by Mark Cuban about that Initial IPO and how today is the 8th Anniversary of it.  Mark has a pretty cool promo Video from all of those years ago posted and it really brought back a lot of memories.  The other thing it did was make me think about two things.

• First - when I watched the video I could not help but think about how if this story were being told by a new company today how Venture Capital would flow in like crazy because it sounds almost as cutting edge today as it did in 1999 and how pathetic it is that Yahoo after buying them never understood what they had and let the whole thing flounder into the abyss of nothingness.

• Second - It made me think of some old friends I had down on 2929 Elm Street.  A few names jumped to mind including my main contact by the name of Curtis Rogers along with Craig McCue who worked the account with me at DataConnection.  The name I thought of most while watching this video though was Patrick Seaman.  Patrick was a huge part of building Broadcast.com and the least known I think of the real core.  He has a huge heart for helping others as well which is the biggest reason I remember him still to this day.

Spurred by the memory I decided to see what was up with Patrick Today, he is doing well and has a pretty cool blog up and running.  After watching Mark's video on Broadcast I really found one of Patrick's recent posts very interesting.  It is called 

What’s in store for digital media and distribution for the next 10 years?

You may want to give it a read as it is an explanation as to why digital media really has not come as far as most people think in the past 8 years and why there are a lot of road blocks in the future for it.  As it is written by one of the web's true pioneers of audio and video online I would also state it is probably spot on.  The summary being that the future of Digital Media is going to be more concept driven then content driven if the DCMA etc can get out of their own way.

I think Patrick would probably enjoy my post called, The Music Industry is Stupid.   Anyway I agree with Patrick on a lot of what he has to say about Digital Media today and into the future and thought you might enjoy a unique perspective from someone who really has been there and done that.  Patrick also has a pretty cool presentation on Net Neutrality posted, shocking that he seems to agree with my position on that.  Anyway I think if your take a look at Mark's video and then read Patrick's blog post it will drive home just how much still remains to be done in the digital media world and how in their own way much of the industry is.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: patrick seaman, mark cuban, jack spirko, broadcast.com, audionet, digital media

Popularity: 13% [?]

Have you heard about PlugIM yet?  If not you may want to check it out, for lack of a better description I would call PlugIM as a clone of Digg that is Internet Marketer friendly.  In other words while you have to be a Michale Angelo of writing to make an SEO or Marketing story survive the bashing angry 14 year old pimple faced, video game addicted Diggers at Digg your Internet Marketing story is likely to be very well recieved at PlugIM.

That said there are some rules of the community and some things you can do to get your stories "plugged" and spend some time at the top of the list.  Here is what I have noticed so far to be effective or what to avoid.

1.  Just because PlugIM is specificly for Internet Marketers does not mean it is for any thing you are trying to hock, sell or build links for.  Forget stories about your credit cards, cell phones or um, enhancement products.   The categories on PlugIM are, Products, Development, Business, Search Engines and Marketing.  Now this is important the story should be in some way how they relate to Internet Marketing in other words "Products" is not a dumping ground for any generic "product".  This is a community of Marketers sharing intel on Marketing, so again your porn links, herbal viagra or other such nonsense are not welcome, so don't bother.

2.  Make your story something unique or different.  If some topic is hot in the community you may want to present the other side of it.  Even if you tend to agree with conventional wisdom you still might present the other side.  This is good journalism not just being on the other side of an issue, you learn a lot when you logicly present the unpopular side of an arguement.  The big key is just don't rehash what everyone else is saying, have a unique view and present it in your own stye, voice and from your own unique view.

3.  Write a good title and summary.  Don't just drop in a "snipet" from your story, think about what you are wanting people who see just your headline and summary to "get" about your story.  Ask if your summary and title would get your attention if you were a third party.  In short write it like advertising copy or to really grasp the mind set you need to have follow the old "talk radio rule".  The rule on talk radio is in your opening sentance, "have a point and don't suck".  This applies to PlugIM and in fact most social bookmark type communities.

4.  Submit your own stories.   Unlike Digg or Reddit where this is considered a crime against humanity and all that is touchy feely in the universe it is totally acceptable to submit your own stories to PlugIM.  The nice thing is people can plug you with out logging in simply because PlugIM tracks IPs.  So any of your readers can plug you so long as your story has been submitted.

5.  Ask for a plug!  Do you have an email update list on your blog to notify readers of new posts?  I have not been doing this yet but I am going to start and I expect it to add a plug or two to most stories.  A simple appendix to your email alerts saying, "If you like our latest story please click on the Plug This Button at the bottom of our story to help us get the word out" can add some backing to your efforts and of course you are paying back PlugIM a bit too by helping them get their name in front of your readers.

6.  Get active in the community.  Plug other stories, when a known user plugs you pull up their profile and IF they have any good stories give them a plug back.  Take a look at the newly submitted stories and plug the good ones.  Drop the feeds into your reader and pay attention to what is comming in.  PlugIM has become a great source of new content and ideas for me.  The boards are MOSTLY free of spam and carry tons of stories the Natzies at Digg would never allow.  So be involved and make use of the content because that will make PlugIM better for everyone.

7.   Blog or write articles about other peoples stories that got plugged.  Again not some tired rehasing but either an opossing opinion peice (be respectful if you do this) or expand the idea and take it to a new level or point out an unmentioned concequence.  Then let the person know you wrote about their article.  This builds new relationships and will probally get you a plug or two for your efforts.

8.  Integrate your efforts at PlugIM with MyBlogLog.  Most PlugIM users seem to link to their profile at MyBlogLog so contact pluggers with good content, especially those you see produce consistant good content over on MyBlogLog and form those all important relationships.  This will grow your entire effort not just your efforts at PlugIM.

9.  Think carefully before you choose to submit by automatic rss feed.  One nice feature of PlugIM is just drop a feed in with your profile and all your posts will get submitted automaticly.  Now if you blog is always about "marketing" or "search engines" this may be OK but many of my posts are about varied topics and honeslty some are just not right for PlugIM so I turned off that feature for my blog.  Also if you choose this option you don't control that summary and that gives you less control over the small peice of content that's whole point is to get the readers attention in just a few seconds.  So while the option is very cool think about whether it is right for your blogs style and content.

10.  Make it easy for your visitors to Plug your story!  Notice the button below this story all a visitor has to do is click "plug this" and I get a plug.  Make sure if you want to be plugged you use the PlugIM widget both on your main blog page and on your individual post page.  The beauty of PlugIM is as long as the user has not plugged you yet, he or she can with just a click even if they are not logged in or don't even have an account.  So take advantage of the ease of use and the widget.

I have been working to get my posts into PlugIM for just a month so far and have found most of my stories well recieved.  A few got dumped by the system but I actually communiated directly with Ryan "Dravis" Knowles who founded PlugIM via MyBlogLog and he helped me out with that.  This is what really sold me on PlugIM, the fact that the founder was not only willing to help me but sought my input as to how to help make PlugIM better.

Overall I am really happy with PlugIM both as a way to promote my blogs and as a really cool source of new content, stories and view points.  I encourage any blogger to take a look at it for both of those reason, hopefully my tips will help you to get the most our of PlugIM quickly.  Oh and if you would so kind as to give this story a quick plug by clicking the button below I would really appreciate it,

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: plugim, plug im, social networking, web20, web 2.0, social bookmarking, digg, reddit, widgets, blogging, social marketing

Popularity: 11% [?]

When we began the creation of Marketing ICE back in January we put a lot of the free videos on YouTube.  Initially this was to save bandwidth by only providing hosted videos to paying members and letting YouTube fit the bill for the free members.  The issue was that the YouTube videos were small and the quality was not doing us any favors on the site because some of our customers felt they would still be looking at the smaller YouTube videos if they paid for the upgrade.  So we decided to give all members access to 640 pixel width hosted videos.

Still I left the videos on YouTube and they have done well there for us, bringing us a lot of traffic and customers.  However there is one pair of Videos that still have very few page views and they are actually very good videos for a lot of new people and even some fairly experienced folks as well.  They are Part One and Two of Understanding how and why to use Includes Files.

We teach quite a bit of advanced stuff with PHP at Marketing ICE, like rotational content so we did the Include Training on PHP includes.  However, you can use any method such as asp or cfm or what have you.  The videos will still help new people to understand and plan better sites with proper include file use.  So here are the two videos, I hope you enjoy them and when in them I tell you how much it cost me not using them myself I'm not kidding either.

Part One

Part Two

 Now if you want to see the mechanics of using PHP for Includes as in exactly how to do it that video is in our free members section over at Marketing ICE.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: php, includes, web skills, web design, marketing, seo, youtube, video training, seo training

Popularity: 9% [?]

I try to avoid over promoting my personal companies and agendas on this blog and keep it primarily informational and conversational but I did want to toot our horn a bit about Marketing ICE.

Marketing ICE (ICE stands for Interactive Creative Education) is a company founded by myself along with Mark Barrera and Ben Fitts.  Together we created earlier this year a full training system about SEO, Internet Marketing and Effective Blogging.  This system is made up of video based training which leads our customers step by step through the how, what and why of basic to advanced marketing and blogging techniques.

We provide 12 free videos for people who simply join our mailing list so they can get a feel for how good our training is and how it works.  Paying customers get private access to a members only forum where every video has a dedicated thread.  We personally answer all questions and this is building a smart system where most new clients questions have answers waiting for them. 

If you would like to get a look at our free videos and how our training works just visit Marketing ICE

Yet what I really wanted to mention today is some of the positive buzz we are having in blogs across the internet.  Here are a few recents posts about Marketing ICE.

• Learning SEO Doesn't Have To Be Hard
• SEO Training Techniques with ICE
• Becoming a Better Marketer with SEO
• Selling ICE to Eskimos

We have also been featured in the official PayPerPost blog for our video on you guess it PayPerPost.  The infamous Michael Lemm of Best MLM Resources also featured an article on us called, MarketingICE - Internet Marketing Training and our Training on the FireFox Browser for SEO Work was picked up by The ShoeString Marketing Blog.

We put a ton of work into creating Marketing ICE and we are continuing to try to make it better, we even are working on a top secret social networking concept to help our customers.  More on that to come later on,

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: marketing ice, seo training, seo, sem, internet marketing, ben fitts, mark barrera, jack spirko

Popularity: 10% [?]

Wikipedia (who sucks, practices nofollow and considers all SEO's spammers and therefore does not get any links from me) defines a narc as "A narc is a person who notifies authorities of illicit activity, betraying someone in the process".  Now this is why I call anyone that would notify Google that they have found paid or sponsored links that are not using the rel="nofollow" attribute a NARC.

"a person who notifies authorities, betraying someone in the process"

To me anyone traveling the web looking for such things and then reporting back to Google can only be described as a "link narc".  Oh and make no mistake if you are this type of person Google LOVES you, they want to communicate with you and they want to make it easy for you to rat on fellow marketers who are GASP!, buying links.

Check out their blatant solicitation for rat finks that will sell each other out, Google Webmaster Post - More ways for you to give us input 

Nice title?  They should have called it, "Webmasters, help us by narcing on your fellow webmasters".  They want to make it nice and convenient so they provide a nice form so you can report, "sites buying and selling links for purposes of search engine manipulation".  In other words because they have an algorithm that has huge short commings, an algorithm that largely ignores on page content they want to you to narc out other site owners for buying links.

Now if you want to sell or buy links that is OK according to Google, just use rel="nofollow", from the Google post,

"If you are selling links for advertising purposes, there are many ways you can designate this, including:

    * Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the href tag
    * Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"

So once again why is this, like I said yesterday because I can get a page with nothing on it at all about "kangaroo rats", no pictures, no words, no tags but with enough links pointing to it that say "kangaroo rat" it can rank #1 for the term!  So rather then fix their own problems, Google wants to tell us how to manage our sites, the way we should link to others and the terms by which we should do business among ourselves!

Further when any of us dare go against the dictates of Google they want us to narc each other out!  To behave like children and tattle on one another!

So here are my questions for you,

• Are you a link narc?
• Would you admit it if you were?
• Do you know a link narc?
• What is you opinion of anyone who would fit the description of a link narc?
• Do you think Google has any business telling webmasters to narc on each other or dictating that we must use nofollow?

I am interested to hear your opinions on this,

 ~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: link narc, google, goog, buying links, paid links, rel=nofollow, dofollow, buy blog links

Popularity: 11% [?]

I am about tired of this topic so before I just become totally fed up with it I had better say my piece on the whole mess.  To me the simple reality is this, there will never be a way to know 100% if links are purchased or traded for or natural.  No matter what system or algorithm anyone comes up with all the SEO community will do is adapt and find a new way around things. 

My solution, just quit crying about it and I mean everyone.

• Google should stop whining and their soliciation for people to become "link NARC's" is just plain stupid. Seriously if you have time to run around trying to find paid links with out rel="nofollow" condoms on them and then go tattle to Google about it please get a life, a date or at least a Nintendo Wii.
• All the bloggers like Chris Garrett that are so concerned about new services that you can hire to go do blog commenting on your behalf should also eat a valium for god sakes.  Who the heck cares if Joe comments in your blog with good content or someone he hires.  Get this through your thick blogger skull, more comments are GOOD for your blog so long at they are on topic and do not link to content you object to.  At this blog you can link to anything other then porn, pharm or gambling when you comment, if your comment is useful and on topic.
• All the SEO folks so worried that paid links will stop working, be smart.  Don't buy links from people that put "sponsored links" or other nonsense near your links.  Hire cheap copywriters and give people free content as a way to "buy links".  Hire a few overseas people to do manual link building or use intelligent networks.

See to me this just isn't a problem for anyone.  If a person buys links and pushes a rank higher good for them.  If their site sucks and does not convert then it won't matter, they won't be able to keep buying links for very long.  There are so many things that make a website successful, ranking is only one component and while it can be commoditized to a degree that can only take you so far.  As the Libertarians would tell us the visitors will handle everything if you just trust in the wisdom of the free market.

Instead of whining about SEOs, specifically the Black and Gray Hats among us, Google, Yahoo and everyone should be saying thank you to us.  Look at how much better search results are today then say in 2002.  Why do you think that is?  Because SEOs keep pushing the system and making content and links better and better that's why.  With out us you would still be looking at results like Lycos provided back in the days when someone actually used it!

So what should Google do?  Make their algorithm better that's what. Remember when to rank for a term the term actually had to exist somewhere on the page.  Today I could put up a page with a picture of a car on it, write text about tennis balls and call the domain /peanuts.htm and title tag it "elephant butts are gray" but if I got enough links that said "kangeroo rat" pointing to it, I could get into the top ten for "kangeroo rat".

Now is that my fault?  Am I the one who is out of line for working the system the way it was designed?  Further this is not 1999 anymore as an SEO I am not just supposed to bring traffic I must make it convert, be it on my own site or a clients.  So I won't be buying links like the ones I described above in the first place.  Trust me when a client buys links to content today the page is on topic and has decent "quality" as well, if not again how long can they afford to push a ranking that does not equal dollars?

Let's be honest a lot of people in the web community want everything to be nice and democratic.  Yet that has nothing to do with why Google, Yahoo and the other engines don't like link buying and other SEO tactics.  They really hate it because as long as I can manipulate SERPs and others can as well we don't have to spend our money on PPC ads.  This "war on paid links" has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with money, don't be fooled and stop worrying.  The Internet has done fine for a long time now and it keeps getting better, like us or not SEOs are a big part of why.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: seo, sem, link buying, rel=nofollow, nofollow, do-follow, dofollow, google, goog, yahoo, yhoo, search engines, nintendo wii, link spam, link condom, paid links, sponsored links, comment spam, paid blogging, link narc, link narcs

More on the horrors of paid links

• Google Requests the Assistance of Link NARC's
• Google Suggests nofollow for Comment Spam even though it is useless

Popularity: 12% [?]

Chris Garrett just did a post on his blog about comment spam and how it may "ruin the do-follow community", you can read the article here, Comment Spammers the End of Do-Follow Movement? Personaly I probally should have nofollowed that link just to poke Chris for making the comments he did about returning nofollow to his blog's comments section.

Basicly what Chris is saying is that there are services that provide link building for clients that amount to nothing but comment spamming blogs that participate in the do-follow community such as the one Andy Beal runs over at Bumpzee.  

What Chris is missing is the entire point in the first place, that rel="nofollow" does nothing to prevent spamming in the first place.  Spammers spam and besides there are major question about how effective the command is with search engines in the first place.  I commented on Chris blog about this, you may want to do the same.

Now to be fair I am kind of teasing Chris here, he is entitled of course to do what ever he wants with his blog!  In fact I am pretty sure posts like mine were one of his goals in doing it in the first place.  That said I figure it this way, if you comment to my blog and provide good and on topic content then link to what ever you please with in the bounds of my comments policy. 

So what if all you want is a link!  All I want is my readers and visitors providing me with good content, feed back and discussions.  If it takes giving you a link to get it, well take as many as you like.  What do you think about this?

To me what Chris is saying is that, comment spam gave birth to rel="nofollow", people realized it did nothing to solve the problem and screwed over posters.  So the do-follow movement occurred which  has led to people comment spamming, which means we might as well use nofollow again, which did not work in the first place.

Sound like a circle of insanity?  There's a reason, it is!

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: nofollow, dofollow, do-follow, rel=nofollow, chris garrett, andy beal, link building, blog spam, comment spam, blogging, internet marketing

Popularity: 8% [?]

I was just reviewing a video about a new service called Socialstream which is a joint project between Google and Carnegie Mellon University and it is designed to take social networking to a new level.  Based on the ease of use and integrated viral network components I also think the real goal is to reach the uninitiated who have yet to give social networking a shot.  Such as the vast majority of those people over 27 who not only don't have a MySpace Page but also have zero plans to ever have one.

Looking for the bigger picture though I see far more then a new spin on MySpace or Facebook here.  I see a powerful new business tool being developed with the eventual goal to totally decimate the expensive solution to company intranets that are run on Microsoft SharePoint. 

Think about it this way, Google Docs already has a MS Word and Excel clone.  They just bought a company called Tonic Systems which is effectively MS PowerPoint in an online shareable format.  I have predicted and am predicting right now again that Google will buy either Gliffy or a similar company with in a year or two and that will give them a Viso replacement.  Google in fact seems intent on buying the best online solution to every issue addressed by Microsoft of other big software companies and just bought Postini for instance which helps provide security and protection for online applications. 

Are you starting to see a picture form here yet?  Oh one more little detail, Google Apps now works with Linux, what is beginning to form is a total online integrated solution for all personal and office needs devoid of any and all things Microsoft, yet if you want to use Microsoft for parts of it, no problem.  Now I want you to think about this if you took a tool like SocialStream and integrated a new Google Docs that had every bit of the MS Office solution in it why would anyone use SharePoint ever again?  

Securtiy is the first concern but by having the company "own the social network" locking fired employees out etc. is just as easy if not easier then SharePoint and the system can be made every bit as secure.  This solution would solve two big problems one had Network Administrators and the second one had by would be successful Social Networking Companies.  Here they are…

• First - The number one problem with solutions like SharePoint is techno weenies may use them but Joe Average only uses them when forced to.  By building this system to be used by companies as a SharePoint or basic Intranet replacement Net Administrators get a simple to use platform that their users will be more likely to use consistently.  By walling off networks employees can have their private life management and their business life management in one consolidated point.  For the Administrator and for the Manager alike this is a carrot to get employees to use a common tool and properly document their work.  Workers get a single tool that integrates their social and work lives together.

• Second - The biggest problem facing social networks today is getting people other then teens and early 20's into them. Some would argue this is a short term problem because in 15 years the 20 something will be the 30 somethings and from there it will only get better.  Well, try telling that to  venture capital firm that wants a 5 fold return on 5 million dollars in 2-4 years and see how that works out for you.  What a platform like this would do is get companies and businesses to push employees into this technology as part of their employment.  This is exactly what happened with other Internet Technologies like e-mail, DSL and Online News.  Think about how many people use such technologies today who's first exposure to them was part of their job requirements.

So that is the end game I see for Google's new social networking platform.  What do you think?  Is Google just looking to get into Social Networking as we know it today, or is it a much more involved plan.  If my predictions are correct what do you think the odds are of it being an effective strategy for Google? 

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: social networking, web 2.0, web20, google, goog, facebook, myspace, socialstream, social stream, sharepoint, microsoft, intranet, business networks

References and Additional Information

• Socialstream Beta Site
• Socialsteam Demo Video - On Google Video
• Google Buys PowerPoint Solution - From The Google System Blog
• Improving Google's Social Network - From The Google System Blog
• Google Buys Postina - From the Official Google Blog
• Google Desktop Now Works With Linux - From the Official Google Blog
• Carnegie Mellon University

Popularity: 12% [?]

Part of the joy of having been online since 1998 (at a time when FFL and Safe Lists worked) is you are so blasted with spam you usually get to be one of the first people to see new types of spam emerge, oh the privilege!  So just when you thought all the dirt bag tricks had been tried with email spamming, just when image spam starts to be filtered and decline we find a new way for dirt bags to spam us.

What is this new method you ask, take your stupid penis patch or viagra or total crap investing advice and roll it up into a PDF, then come up with a catchy email sender name, catchy subject line and catchy file name and email your spam list with a PDF attachment.  Now as far as I know PDFs are not scanned for content by any existing email programs and to make it more difficult PDF Spam is apparently being mixed with Image Spam to make it even more difficult to stop.  Here is what I mean, this is a sample of one such POS email I was sent, excuse the black boxes but I won't let these vermin have the pleasure of showing my readers their BS stock symbol or name.

Note that this PDF was not text but image based, so what has happened is as Image Spam delivery rates declined the spammers just took their image spams and turned them into PDF spam.  Nice huh?  Now I don't know how effective this will be, PDF's must be opened and so far the use of email subjects and sender addresses has been pathetic.  In addition so has the use of file names!

For instance this file was named, Cancelled.WADICEQJ.pdf and the subject was, Cancelled.WADICEQJ.pdf attached so the only reason I opened it was I wanted an example for this post.  One thing is clear though it will be hard to filter and with some brain power applied to the sender name, subject line and file name it will get more effective at being read.  

And now as Paul Harvery would say, "here is the rest of the story".  I just love a good conspiracy especially when it is at least plausible so don't go trying to convince me that Neil Armstrong drank beer and hung out with strippers while we were led to believe he was walking on the moon but here is a possible "conspiracy" that is plausible. 

Given that this method is not really ever going to be that effective who would stand the most to benefit from a new type of spamming?  Spammers would get better results from old fashioned spam then this method as it sits now, I just can't see it lasting long term as a tool by real spammers that actually do influence stocks and sell penis patches with some level of success to those who can still be sold to with blatant spam.  Nope this one does not really have the hallmarks of a true spammer on it to me!

So who do I think is behind this?  A software company or software programmer!  My instinct is that the "magical scanning software" to combat this "new problem" already exists.  The plan is to get spammers using it, encourage them to do so and make this a "new issue in work place productivity" to sell the solution to a truly non problem.

All you do is buy a few million emails in spam lists from the spam brokers and spam away.  You go into spammer forums and talk about how great the delivery is (yes spammers have spammer forums) and get lots of spammers trying it out.  In time you genearate a ton of buzz about his massive new problem and then swoop in with a massive PR campaign around having the solution.   Then you try selling your solution to the consumer or if you are small time you sell you solution to a bigger company.

Think I am nuts?  Try this run a Google search for PDF spam, then search Google blog search and google news search for it.  What you will find with each is massive amounts of buzz about this new scourge on humanity.  How it is causing tons of problems and making life hard, how there are "massive campaigns" being run by PDF spammers.  Now as the process runs its' course and all the Romanians, Indians and Russians try out this new full proof method of spamming the "problem will grow" and the market should get better and better for a solution.

See here is the thing, I actually think most spam is being sent to create a market for email filtering programs this is just the latest one!  Do you really think anyone is buying a Penis Patch because a spammer tell them, "your wifes says your weenie is teenie"?  Seriously there are real spammers who spam millions of people a day but some of the stuff you get you just look at and go, "what".

Could it be much of the spam we see is nothing but "legitimate companies" making their market bigger?  I believe so and I certainly believe that is the case with PDF spam.  So anyway I am off to put on my tin foil (um I mean black) hat and do some honorable evil marketing.

~ Jack Spirko

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