[BNM] [OT] Please digg me…I’ll send you a lollipop

[Tom Hume]

How Raj promotes himself and his business is his err business - it's  
not your or my style, but it is his. If people feel they've been  
conned into visiting his site, they'll probably react negatively to  
him. This sort of thing seems to be particularly rampant on twitter  
nowadays (with some tools - Qik? - which look to actively post adverts  
for your content onto your twitter site). At least Raj is having the  
decency to do it by hand - perhaps in 100 years time we'll look back  
on the days of such hand-crafted email promotions with nostalgia ;)

Being a bear of little brain, I find the line dividing baiting,  
bribery, persuasion, and advertising to be pretty blurry. I'd agree  
that that's not a good thing, mind :(

What's "real content" btw? LiveJournal blogs by teenagers? Automatic  
tweets promoting blog posts? Lolcats and kitten pictures? I'd bet the  
general public would define a hefty chunk of BNM content as noise, or  
at least excrutiatingly dull, if polled - and some of them haven't  
heard of Digg or PageRank, either.

Kitten pictures ftw! :)

On 31 Aug 2008, at 21:35, Josh Russell wrote:

> you know, it's just possible he's making an incredibly subtle comment
> on that sort of behaviour, maybe i missed it..
>
> but that's not his style.
>
> it's more, "hey guys, i discovered this amazing thing google do, it's
> called page rank! i mean, wow!!"
>
> as someone else pointed out, it's baiting, or bribery. both of which
> are common things that happen in the industry. neither of which are
> useful, form long term trusted relationships, build a level of mutual
> understanding and make me want to be associated in any way with those
> companies. but more than anything else, they don't fill the interwebs
> with real content, they just create noise. which 100 years from now
> will either be a massive problem that other companies are constantly
> trying to solve... or be really embarrassing that we ever used to let
> people get away with it!
>
> so, it's either an incredibly uncharacteristic, very meta, comment on
> the state of media abuse of the industry, or exactly what i've come to
> expect from the history of other posts, most of which only occur just
> after a blog post and then link to it.
>
> which is it raj? genius or noise?
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Tom Hume <Tom.Hume at futureplatforms.com 
> > wrote:
>> Not conding Raj's approach, but isn't he effectively doing the same  
>> as
>> most of the ad/comms industry do when he asks for online coverage in
>> exchange for sweeties? Certainly in mobile-land there are an awful  
>> lot
>> of "blogger relations" programmes going on which are effectively  
>> toys-
>> for-coverage exchanges. I mean, he's being a bit more brazen but from
>> what I've seen that's just his style...
>>
>> On 31 Aug 2008, at 18:36, Josh Russell wrote:
>>
>>> Raj,
>>>
>>> i know you tend to write pretty spammy emails, but..
>>>
>>> 1) has your email been taken over without your knowledge somehow and
>>> is being used to send us this shit?
>>> 2) what kind of idiots do you think we are?
>>> 3) there is no step 3, because i can't be arsed to call you out, in
>>> fact i'm amazed with myself for writing this far..
>>>
>>> buhbai
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Raj Anand
>>> <rajeshwar.anand at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Sorry if you are not interested in a lollipop :) If you are please
>>>> Digg
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you don't know Digg <http://www.digg.com/> then check the
>>>> website out
>>>> now!! Over the last few days I have become a biggest fan of Digg
>>>> not sure
>>>> why ??
>>>>
>>>> And now I want to be on the first page of Digg. If I end up on the
>>>> first
>>>> page of digg, I'll send a lollipop to everyone who dugg that blog
>>>> post, 24
>>>> hours of me posting it on Kwiqq <http://blog.kwiqq.com/>.
>>>>
>>>> [image: lollipop by you.]<http://www.flickr.com/photos/74797703@N00/2814526456/
>>>>>
>>>> YES!!! Wherever you live. Digg my blog and I'll post you your
>>>> lollipop. Its
>>>> simple, you make me happy I return the favour
>>>>
>>>> Process:
>>>>
>>>> 1) Digg my blog (and if its on the first page of digg.com)
>>>> 2) Email me your postal address: raj.anand <at> kwiqq.com
>>>> 3) Wait for your lollipop [image: :-)]
>>>>
>>>> Thank you [image: :)]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Raj Anand
>>>> +44 (0) 75 900 28 678
>>>> skype: rajanand12
>>>> LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rajanand
>>>> --
>>>>
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>>
>> --
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>> e: Tom.Hume at futureplatforms.com
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--
Future Platforms Ltd
e: Tom.Hume at futureplatforms.com
t: +44 (0) 1273 819038
m: +44 (0) 7971 781422
company: www.futureplatforms.com
personal: tomhume.org