Just want to give FC users a peek into what's happening on the web in terms of manipulation of 'social websites' and blogs to try and game consumers to purchase through a WS/OG.
Exhibit #1
Yahoo! Answers
Registered users can post questions for other members to answer. Some of the Answers get highlighted in Yahoo's regular related queries. So for 'free' exposure, do you think companies might be posting questions and then lining up answers.
George L asks about Valentine's Day roses (the week after Christmas):
Exhibit #2
Paid Bloggers
Search Engines love inbound links and what better, easy way to get them than to cough up a few dollars and pay blogger to say something nice about your site and then link to you with 'on topic' text.
How many of these 400 bloggers do you think ever purchased flowers from dotflowers.com? I understand the going rate's about $17/post. It does work as shown with this important Google query: Valentine's Day Flowers
(Food for thought - Just image how much power we all fail to exercise by not linking to each other.)
Now, who's gonna post "Who's the best florist for Valentine's Day in Orange County?" on Yahoo! Answers and let me, Ted, Eric, Rich and Cassandra (florist123) fight it out? :>
Exhibit #1
Yahoo! Answers
Registered users can post questions for other members to answer. Some of the Answers get highlighted in Yahoo's regular related queries. So for 'free' exposure, do you think companies might be posting questions and then lining up answers.
George L asks about Valentine's Day roses (the week after Christmas):
Note how the first two answers (one included a link) and a few others were for the same company? Note how 'good answers' were given thumbs down votes? Coincidence?
Exhibit #2
Paid Bloggers
Search Engines love inbound links and what better, easy way to get them than to cough up a few dollars and pay blogger to say something nice about your site and then link to you with 'on topic' text.
How many of these 400 bloggers do you think ever purchased flowers from dotflowers.com? I understand the going rate's about $17/post. It does work as shown with this important Google query: Valentine's Day Flowers
(Food for thought - Just image how much power we all fail to exercise by not linking to each other.)
Now, who's gonna post "Who's the best florist for Valentine's Day in Orange County?" on Yahoo! Answers and let me, Ted, Eric, Rich and Cassandra (florist123) fight it out? :>
