Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out

A lesson is being taught over at FEMA for all of you Web 2.0 "pioneers."

Seems FEMA held a fake news conference where FEMA employees pretending to be reporters asked softball questions about the agency's handling of the current wildfires in San Diego. The ruse was quickly uncovered and the agency looks pretty stupid right now.

But the same thing is happening all over the blogosphere all the time. Let's say some self-appointed new media guru lands a client and sells them on a blog. As the blog sputters and tries to die, the guru will inject fake life into it by commenting anonymously or setting up fake profiles that make it seem as though people are reading and actually care. Or she'll go around commenting on other blogs as she tries to drive traffic to the client's blog. You get them all the time on your own blogs: "Hey, great post. Love your blog. Come check out mine at Awesome Medical Insurance Alternatives."

Or it happens with models like Pay Per Post, where people who don't give two shits about your product are paid to blog about your product. Some investors threw 7 million dollars into this idea, apparently unable to see the potential for disaster and failure. (Currently, Orlando based Pay Per Post is looking to hire a "Director of Customer Love." I will pause while you stop gagging....OK?....Now get this: If you are picking up what we are throwing down check out the listings in each department listed on the side of this page. I am not worthy of the hipness being thrown down at Pay Per Post.) Everyone's a loser in this: the whore blogger who no one trusts - and the client who was so desperate that they paid for random and obscure blog mentions. Oh, and the investors in this model.

This is such a no-brainer and yet people keep trying to do it. It's called ethics. You can't hold fake press conferences. You can't post unrelated, irrelevant comments on blogs and expect to drive traffic to yours. You can't pay bloggers to write about obscure crap while maintaining any credibility.

Man, I am really looking forward to the next dotcom bust.