Internet Marketing Consultants - suddenly there are so many....

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Interesting development in the case of the Tagged.com "social media service" I posted about earlier in this thread:

60 million stung in social networking rip-off: official
9:12AM Friday Jul 10, 2009 - by Verena Dobnik

NEW YORK - New York's attorney general says that Tagged.com stole the identities of more than 60 million internet users worldwide - by sending emails that raided their private accounts.

Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sue the social networking website for deceptive marketing and invasion of privacy.

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said in a statement. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologise to all their email contacts for Tagged's unethical - and illegal - behaviour." ...

Started in 2004 by Harvard math students Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, Tagged calls itself a "premier social-networking destination." The California-based company claims to be the third-largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace, with 80 million registered users.

Cuomo said Tagged acquired most of them fraudulently, sending unsuspecting recipients emails that urged them to view private photos posted by friends.

The message read: "(name of friend) sent you photos on Tagged." When recipients tried to access the photos, Cuomo said they would in effect become new members of the site - without ever seeing any photos.

Recipients' email address books would then be lifted, the attorney general said. ...

Crikey! There are some real shonky characters playing this game, by the look of it, aren't there? - P

Read full article at the NZ Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology...ectid=10583620

[Perry]

Recipients' email address books would then be lifted, the attorney general said. ...

At the risk of being seen as a cynic,
anyone who elects to use Windoze
address book is naive, at best.

[whitt]

Funny thing lately.
Checking my emails I notice I got one from the self proclaimed interent guru's Geekversity.

But why had 2 peices of software marked it as Spam. Outlook junk folder is pretty common and I thought most marketeers sent a single test email first. To test they are not being trapped in junk folders etc?

[Perry]

Anyone participated in one of those Internet Use surveys? The
ones that ask a series of questions like, how often have you:

• Looked for product or service on the www
• Looked for product or service and purchased on the www
• Looked for product or service and purchased @ a walk-in shop

I often wonder what the number dazzlers make of such results.
I've done all three and I suppose I have some undefined set of
criteria that I use in deciding whether to buy via the www, or not.
Web pages don't talk back, don't make suggestions, don't tell
one that there's a new model due out in six weeks . . .

One hotel site mentioned a feature being a hairdresser. When
asked about this, the reservations person said: "no, just hair
dryers in the rooms." After steering the person to the features
web page of his establishment, he said, "Well, I never. I am
sorry sir, but that's a fib. I must tell the manager of that error."

Another aspect of that same reservation process was the hotel
web booking page showing rooms @ a special rate - one rather
less than I'd been quoted, earlier. I asked if I should make use
of that web-based option. The person looked up my booking and
compared the web page prices and volunteered, "leave that with
me - I'll change your quoted rate to the same as the web page
rate - for the duration of your stay."

That was a saving of $27-50/day, for the price of an international
toll call. Try achieving that on the web.

A month or so ago, I phoned to check the process of getting m'ship
of something. The person volunteered that - if it didn't interfere
with my plans - I should leave my application till the following week.
Why? As it was the last week of the month and as their internal
renewal processes worked on the 1st day of the following month
as the anniversary for the renewal payment. Being not time critical,
I followed that advice and saved a month's subscription. Try achieving
that on the web.

The Internet very definitely has great uses. But I doubt if it will ever
displace people - especially astute/good people.

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Can't help with that, Marc, but I stumbled across this 1 minute ad ...

...which says something about what I see as the underlying theme of this thread: the authenticity (or lack of it)
of marketing claims -- e.g. of 'expertise', 'quick-and-easy wealth' , impartiality, 'endorsement' by others, etc...

Where's the substance?

The youtube clip I linked to has stopped working ... so here's an updated link. Cheers, P


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up9LipCONDI

[PeterEmpowerEd]

So long Twitter - "I want my private life private; I'm living for me"

I've always thought when facebook and twitter got mainstream the kids would leave for somewhere 'cooler'... as happened to MySpace.

Now Miley Cyrus (1.1 million followers) has [reportedly] bailed on twitter... too intrusive, too demanding, too ADHD, would be my guess.


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tSOTQPUQoU

Twitter followers are not friends. For many, facebook 'friends' are often not friends either.

In my view there's a lot of the commercial equivalent of 'cupboard love' happening -- "Follow me and I'll follow you", or "I'll follow you to see if I can copy you" etc.

Is the end nigh?

[tpr2]

Good point Peter

A lot of the people i follow I follow because it's an easy way to get info,i.e someone posting a lot about mortgages or real estate for example. I don't feel the need to go looking for stuff myself because I know I can just jump on and scroll down a few pages to get tonnes of tweets about what ever it is I am looking for.

Someone else doing my homework I guess would be the best analogy

[Perry]

Diploma in Diminished Discretion

Hula hoops, rubric cubes, rune stones, limbo rock,
frisbees, gigapets, teletubbies, wombles, fatuousbook,
birdbobrain, twitsandtwerps, emptyheadspace, dippity-do,
Gibbs dentrifice, on and on. Recent history is littered
with the detritus of the short-fling commercial derelicts
and the debris of dumb, abnoxial, sociopathic ideas.

Yo-yos come and go, but human foibles go on for ever.

Bah! Humbug!

[tpr2]

so thats www.twitter.com/perry or just @perry

[Perry]

Well, Terry, you already know my penchant for
correct / proper grammar & written expression.
So an un-capitalised proper noun would not be
me, now - would it?

[PeterEmpowerEd]

A few 'umble thoughts about social media ...

Someone else doing my homework I guess would be the best analogy

Yes, Terry. I’m all for leveraging off other people’s research and involvement (did someone say ‘obsession’?) on a topic which also interests me. Everyone is a librarian of what they’re focussed on and we can learn so much from each other. The ‘global’ aspect of the web is a wonderful revolution. Nothing short of it. (Plagiarism/copyright infringement is a whole different thing, as we have discussed.)

Like you, I guess, I’m a fairly heavy consumer of what I think of as ‘content aggregators’ -- media/politics sites like Huffington Post, news sites like NY Times, Guardian, BBC, WashPo or various tech sites and tech-focussed blogs like Daring Fireball or Roughly Drafted Magazine or FSJ, PT (obviously), and various other discussion forums ...

... they can be sort of the online equivalent of the social time at a club -- a concentration of ‘talking shop’, chit-chat and gossip, jokes and interesting tidbits, even sometimes quite heated exchanges of opinion. All good, as Donna says.

It’s a big step from visiting a site to the always-on, always-connected, ‘What are you doing now?’,’Getting on a bus, what about you?’, ‘Ironing my shirt’, ’Waiting for a lift’ stuff. [Gawd, I watch my daughter and her SMS text-life: "sup wif u?" (2,000 a month seems light to her!)]

I’m not anti-Twitter, really, (nor is, I think, ‘bah humbug’ Perry) but I DO have a reaction (I’ll let Perry speak for himself) to the hype generated around it.

Especially when the hype is used to sell people on a new wave of ‘internet marketing’ snake oil (like this example from AndrewK and following, or as Marc points out) ... pitched by the usual suspects with thin track records gushing about how easy it is to ‘replace your income’ (i.e get rich) through inadequately-disclosed affiliate schemes for flying circuses. (I read an interesting article about all SEO [search engine optimisation] ‘services’ being bogus, recently, which really made me think. I'll dig out a link later if you're interested.)

I suggest the instant micro-blogging mania will turn out to be a fad ... leaving flotsam and jetsam bobbing around in the interwebs for some time ... just as Perry so eloquently suggests above. Time will tell.

Does that mean I agree with Alvin Toffler’s vision of extreme individualism, with each of us reclining in our own cocoon, ‘connected’ to our own ‘channel’ of entertainment 24/7, headphone and personal display glasses welded to our bodies?
Well, not really. Not that extreme. (But count the white earbuds you see next time you’re out in public.)

Re Twitter, to quote Miley Cyrus on why she’s outta there:

The reasons are simple, I started tweetin’ bout pimples
I stopped living for moments and started living for people.
Yeah you write what you’re doing but who really cares
if I’m playing with Noah or just doin’ my hair?

Quite right, Miley. Who cares? Not me.

It’s the triviality, the sheer banality of many (most?) such micro interactions/content that risks wearing out Twitter’s welcome, as this talented, sensible young woman has worked out.

These are my opinions, as always. I could be wrong, of course. (It’s been known to happen.)

--
On Facebook

But Facebook is a different thing. As I mentioned above, Facebook has become mainstream ... it has settled into a groove for all ages.... from the ‘Look at me, I have 2000 friends’ peeing competition to a fairly customised-customisable connecting internet thingy which I happily use with my [real] friends and family to a varying extent. (Yet, there's always been tension about the privacy aspects of Facebook . That hasn't gone away. Let's discuss that another time.)

Whether Facebook retains the crown or not (Google is going hard after it, and others are looking for integration with their own sites to prise eyeballs away from Zuckerberg) remains to be seen. Monetizing the business (as opposed to the founder/shareholders selling slices) is the challenge, it seems to me. But I don’t know much about that.

Apropos, I heard on the BBC this morning the Auschwitz Holocaust Museum has just opened a Facebook page ... setting out to be a discussion forum, according to the AP article in the NZ Herald...

The page aims to be a forum for discussion, reflection and learning about the Nazi death camp...

Cool. But they’re going to strictly CENSOR SOME CONTENT...

So far, the site has seen no postings by Holocaust deniers, Sawicki said. If they do show up, they will be removed quickly, he said, adding that engaging such people in dialogue is "a waste of time."

Fair enough, that’s their call. There’s some stuff they don’t want talked about on their forum.

But then, they’re NOT promoting themselves as ‘free and independent’.

- regards, Peter Aranyi

[tpr2]

perhaps that's why Miley left twitter.
Or perhaps it was really because there is a cat with some 1.4 or so million followers.

Now that is weird.

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Brett McFall ... ?

Just got fax spam this afternoon pitching another 'make-millions-from-your-computer' type thing: Brett McFall's "brand-new event called, 'How to Make Money While You Sleep LIVE'..." complete with yada-yada about laughing at the recession, instantly producing big money, you don't need a product, no face-to-face selling, but with "embarrassingly high" profits (!) ... etc ...

You will discover how you can start a hugely-in-demand business that right now you may know nothing about - but be able to use it to instantly to produce astounding income (and I'm talking $500 an hour if you really want it - more if you really commit to it).

It goes on in that vein, "how to make serious amounts of money" (why is it never hysterically funny amounts of money, I wonder? I'd be attracted to that) ... all with this declared agenda ...

"I want to prove to you that I know my stuff and that I'm the real deal. And then if you're comfortable, you may consider me as one of your mentors.

Oh. I see.

Do whatever it takes to claim the kind of lifestyle you really want.

I know nothing about Mr McFall. Has anyone heard of him? Terry? Marc? Whitt?

Peter Aranyi

[tpr2]

I've never heard of him.

I have some friends who's income from the web make my eyes boggle so I know it can be done however the one thing these guys have in common is that they have all been at it for some 10 years or more now.

Sharon for example just traded her 10,000th .com this year, She started in 1999.

Mark wrote the first e-book to sell over 1million copies in 1997 (something like that)

James lives in Japan and has not worked a real job for 8 years, he lives off the income coming from his e-books and commissions from e-bay.

The problem is though that for every Mark Joyner or James Allen there is 10,000 people pretending to be like them telling the world that they have the secret to wealth and untold fortunes.

Something I find humorous on twitter is when some one sends me a tweet and a link telling me they have the system which will provide me with 1000's of followers and when I look at their profile they only have a handful. in fact one person sent me just that message and when I checked the profile they had not a single follower.

Interestingly enough I have never received one of those tweets from some one with more followers than me....strange that.

I guess Peter some people have heard the old saying Fake it until you Make it and with the internet providing so much anonymity it is very easy do this.

After 3 years and some heavy investing (100's k) I have a great portfolio but the cashflow is nothing to be excited about yet.

[Keithw]

I know nothing about Mr McFall. Has anyone heard of him?

He's a prominent Aussie Copy writer.
I've seen him speak a couple of times, he knows his stuff.
Up to you whether you think it is worth paying to see a guy like this.

He is the classic "fake it till you make it" guy.
fell into copywriting years ago, totally untrained and in an environment where it didn't matter. I doubt the same could be done today.
He has lots of knowledge that is very valuable to anyone starting out in internet marketing, but also to physical business advertisers/ marketers.

As someone said earlier in this threat- most is available for free if you search for it , or get onto enough mailing lists & it comes to you !.