TeledyN

Yes! Now you too can Pee in the Pool for Profit! Ok, I'll block out the culprits here because (a) I don't want to encourage them by boosting their SEO and (b) they are not alone, this is the new rampant Really Cool Marketing Idea to pollute the value of the internet in the service of selling somebody's swag -- we have our local version in a ploy that wants you to stuff YouTube with adverts for the Wiarton Groundhog Festival and thereagain, it is nothing unique because I dare say they didn't just think of the idea themselves

The LA Examiner has some news up about a contest put on by la-based RamenKlub. ... The contest is fairly simple, make your own original "How to make Ramen Video.” Once you make it, post it on Youtube and send the link to the folks at RamenKlub and you’re entered.

Gee, they make it sound like so much fun, but what are they doing? They are attempting to boost their inbound links and inflate an illusion that folks are hyper keen on their wares/festival/whatever when in fact the entries are stuffing your search engine results with irrelevent and effectively paid-for advertising that dilutes the Internet Collection. Are they asking kids to upload their vid to their own hard-drives, showing the entries at their own expense? Or are they making a ploy to hijack a free public resource and slant it to their own product-line shareholder needs?

Gets me ire up, it does.

Is this any different than paying people to write stories about medical dysfunctions and then tag each with the brand name and like that conveniently sells the associated pharmaceutical and then blast them across random blogs as 'comments'? If I tell a thousand people to write glowing Wikipedia reviews of my shows on the chance they might will a $500 prize, does that mean my shows are great? Or have I committed a sinister kind of payola. Even if it isn't soliciting positive product endorsements, it doesn't matter to the search engine ranking algorithms. As Andy Warhol said, you measure your reviews not by the like or dislike, you measure your reviews in inches.

You may feel differently, but what this tells me is that these advertisers (and their clients) think so little of the Internet, they don't see it as the great information salvation for humanity, but as an endless free 'unmonitized' fence-space that deserves no more respect than to be plastered with their crowdsourced marketing handbills.