Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

http://delyan.me/08-01-2013/samsung-agency-is-buying-off-stackoverflow-users/

by ZoFreX • 13 years ago

447 155 13 years ago

delyan.me

CmonDev• 13 years ago

Those kind of competitions are really just work with non-guaranteed pay.

coldcode• 13 years ago

$500 to be a whore. No.

mathattack4• 13 years ago

So is it just a matter of price? At which price would it be ok?

Anderkent• 13 years ago

When you can enough for the community using the money you'll get to outweigh any damage this spam would cause.

Assuming these posts would be moderated fairly quickly and thus not have that much impact on the site, would it not be worth posting one of these if it means a $1k donation to stackoverflow.com? How about 10k?

Surely at some point the benefits outweigh the damage.

Blahah• 13 years ago

looks like a significant overvaluation to me:

$2 is about right (http://www.thepricegeek.com/results/my+integrity?country=us)

josephagoss2• 13 years ago

500BTC is my price.

adam12• 13 years ago

I would have asked a few questions on a message board for $500. Sorry everyone.

aylons• 13 years ago

Actually, I don't thing being a whore compares to this. Prostitution does not involve deceiving anyone and is not unethical.

What Samsung asked him to do is way worse than prostitution.

icefox• 13 years ago

Well he did post the email and now WAY more people have heard about this thing they are doing. He better get his $500.

0x45696e6172• 13 years ago

We should make a collection of 500$ and give them to him as a reward.

D3nver• 13 years ago

You realize you're promoting it on HN now right?

btipling• 13 years ago

It doesn't exactly put it in a good light. It's quite stomach turning actually. Having said that, I'm a little tired of HN's never ending ability to find something to be outraged about, so despite this particular thing pushing everyone of my buttons I'm going to pass. The internet is a big place, filled with lots of people doing things, and there's probably enough material out there to always be outraged every day of your life if you really want to be.

iurisilvio2• 13 years ago

They explicitly just wanted visibility, even if it will be downvoted.

This is an awesome post and it is fair to be in HN, but in some way just gave to Samsung what they wanted.

jpttsn• 13 years ago

Everyone keeps saying this, but what's the option? Discourage exposing scammy behaviour whenever someone could theoretically profit from the attention?

rootbear2• 13 years ago

Merely discussing something is not promoting it. The GLBT community has fought this battle again and again, when various parties sought to suppress any mention of homosexuality in public schools, because that would be "promoting the homosexual lifestyle". This discussion may make more people aware of the Samsung contest, but it is in no way a promotion of it.

greyman• 13 years ago

Merely discussing something is not promoting it.

But in this particular case it is. There will be people who are interested in the contest, and doesn't mind that dishonest promotional tactics was used.

pbhjpbhj• 13 years ago

Max Clifford I think it was said something along the lines of "there's no such thing as bad publicity".

If people are discussing something then you've made them aware of it, you've shown them "this is worth discussing" and you've displayed it as normative. Ergo promotion.

Samsung have got more publicity from this guy than they'd have got if they paid for it. Indeed the conspiracy theorist in me wants to research whether this is actually the primary method of promotion that was intended ... but that's just madness.

iurisilvio2• 13 years ago

And then you put it in HN front page. It is probably a lot more than the visibility in StackOverflow... =)

damoncali5• 13 years ago

I would argue that HN is much easier to game than SO, which makes it doubly ironic.

farmdawgnation• 13 years ago

This is, in my mind, evidence that companies like this are out of touch. They want to treat Stack Overflow like a search engine and marketing tool to be optimized, and, in their ignorance, don't see it as something different than what it actually is: a community of people passionate about their craft and helping others with it.

Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that toward doing something is to become a respected member of the community yourself. It seems that today is not that say for Samsung. Honestly, they would have been smarter to just have their engineering team dedicate time to answering questions on SO every week, then have a piece done in tech media about why. That is still a bit gimmicky, I guess, but much cooler than this method.

I know that I, at least, would be really entertained to have an exchange with a Samsung engineer about a problem I was having on SO.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Out of touch? This guy maybe, but I would be surprised if SO, like most other communities, wasn't already successfully being gamed by marketeers a hell of a lot smarter than this clown.

And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.

No place where human beings gather, virtual of physical, is safe from this. It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.

eksith3• 13 years ago

I'll bite.

"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."

You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.

Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.

Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.

It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.

In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.

You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.

kbenson• 13 years ago

It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.

Those seem fairly contradictory to me. Unless you are saying HN and pg are clueless and lazy, then I guess not.

norswap• 13 years ago

Samsung is a big (really big) company. Of course some people, especially in the marketing dept, are bound to be out of touch. It does not necessarily means no one at Samsung knows what he's doing (even marketing-wise).

gnoway• 13 years ago

They aren't really out of touch at all. They (or more specifically their marketing arms) just don't care about abusing "communities of people passionate about *" for advertising purposes.

This is really no different than stuffing your mailbox with flyers, sending you spam or having the tv people write product placement into your favorite show.

Evidently it works, which is really disappointing.

ojbyrne• 13 years ago

I try to refrain from being a spelling nazi here, but "So, I shot back this brisque email" made me laugh. It's like a portmanteau of "brusque" and "brisk."

pavlov• 13 years ago

For a more daring approach, try sending a brisqué email.

smickie• 13 years ago

brisqué | adjective abrupt or offhand in speech or manner which is showing a wish to deal with things quickly and slightly indecent and liable to shock

GrinningFool2• 13 years ago

I once tried to send a brisket email.

It... did not end well.

damoncali5• 13 years ago

I've gotten brisket in the mail. It is surprisingly good considering it was shipped accross the country. http://www.rudysbbq.com/store/c-10-smoked-meats.aspx

Sarkie• 13 years ago

http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7192/update-on-gpu-optimizatio...

Maybe they know that the HTC One is a better phone?

fabian2k• 13 years ago

And their example questions would be off-topic on Stack Overflow and likely closed immediately. Whoever is behind this seems to have no idea what SO is and how it works beyond "it's a huge site with programmers on it".

Shog9• 13 years ago

This. Folks try this kinda crap all the time; the community and/or mods just delete it.

Still sucks that legit users end up being contacted over it though.

mmed• 13 years ago

Gumtree (Craigslist equivalent in UK) offered me money to do similar kind of stuff for the sake of "Word of mouth" marketing. They offered bonus if I could post a blog on my personal blog too.

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

That's sleazy, but it's to be expected now SO is such a significant player in the online developer market. The interesting thing being a question along those lines would be flagged, and closed pretty sharpish.

I can't imagine that this is the last time we'll see people trying this trick though.

mathattack4• 13 years ago

I'm very interested in how this plays out. Right now I add Stackexchange to search queries in Google, precisely because the SEO effects haven't hit.

The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange? Unfortunately, it only takes a small amount of people doing this for a variety of products to ruin the site.

My impression of this as an outsider hearing only one side of the story is Samsung asked an agency to help get the word out in the tech community. The agency probably knows more about advertising than digital, or views digital advertising as Twitter and Klout. I think their less than subtle approach will backfire.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange?

By "monetize a Klout score," you mean spam your followers on social networks sites, right? That seems pretty morally clear to me.

mathattack4• 13 years ago

Is it morally clear though?

Kim Kardashian gets paid to plug god knows what, and it's not immoral to be a shill.

That isn't to say that I would do it. (I won't) But it isn't black and white. It might be a dark gray, but it's still gray.

graup• 13 years ago

"Need some feedback on the app I am about to enter for the Samsung Smart App Challenge."

I guess that one could have worked. A real question on some programming problem having this as a side note...

They didn't really understand SO, but they could have done worse.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

What's up with the blatant Samsung bashing recently? Does Apple have to fall back on these kinds of tricks?

regularfry• 13 years ago

Believe incompetence before malice...

Tyrannosaurs• 13 years ago

You've rumbled him. The only reason he's bashing Samsung is because Apple came back with a better counter offer.

rsynnott4• 13 years ago

Sorry, pointing out Samsung's use of unethical marketing is "bashing"? What?

Does Apple have to fall back on these kinds of tricks?

Are you suggesting that Apple is pretending to be Samsung and soliciting shills? That's impressively tinfoil-hat-y, especially given that Samsung has been caught practicing questionable marketing techniques before (http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting..., http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-sams..., http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/samsung-sor...)

ceautery• 13 years ago

"Make it look organic" is a lofty goal, but I don't think it's realistic. As Misery from Ruby Gloom says, you don't tell people you're starting a craze, a craze just happens.

TheRealDunkirk• 13 years ago

Whatever. If you don't think this sort of thing isn't happening at EVERY web top-100 web site, you've got another thing coming.

buro9• 13 years ago

The agency (FLLU) seem really small. Too small in fact, because most companies would engage a substantially larger firm and have account managers and would handle all of this stuff coherently from one place rather than use potentially hundreds of firms this size (3 people).

Before everyone jumps to conclusions... could it not be the case that someone with just a very small bit of budget said "Wouldn't it be great if..." and then hired this little company "I know a few guys who could..." to help promote it, failing to understand what form that promotion would take.

Of course, it can and should be argued that Samsung (and their many departments and entities) had a tighter leash for their managers and such "little" projects and initiatives... but I wouldn't argue that not having a tight enough leash is tantamount to Samsung consciously trying to bribe users.

This is where I long for journalists over bloggers... perhaps someone could find out who hired FLLU? Then perhaps someone could ask that someone the basis for the campaign and whether it was authorised by Samsung.

damoncali5• 13 years ago

There are a lot of big companies who cannot even function without hiring tiny companies and freelancers to do the work. I've done marketing contracts for public companies as a one-man operation and had a shocking amount of control over the messaging. It's likely you'd find people at Samsung who think this sort of stuff is great and others who think it is abhorrent. That's the nature of big organizations.

Ergomane• 13 years ago

Samsung hires lots of small companies, usually on a per-project basis.

eonil5• 13 years ago

(1) Size of company doesn't justify abusing and lie. (2) Hiring external agent doesn't clean client's purpose. (3) No big Korean company hires unknown firm.

So they knew who they're, what they do and how they do before hiring them. Do you think this is one time mistake, not the daily work of the firm?

When I heard this news, I didn't surprise because this is what Samsung does daily basis in Korea. But it was surprise that there's a person who can imagine this happen by mistake.

mariuolo• 13 years ago

Shame on them.

penetrarthur• 13 years ago

So in the end you've chosen to advertise it on HN?

csmatt• 13 years ago

They'd be better going after people who center themselves around Android dev and have a lot of followers on Twitter, G+, etc.

archivator4• 13 years ago

Hi all. Delyan here.

I'm kinda bummed I didn't submit this myself. I would've loved to cash in on those most precious of internet points. Oh, well. :)

To address the question of discussing this publicly: I don't think I'm doing them any favours right now. I'd like to think that the developer crowd (especially the one at HN) is not as easily swayed by competitions, challenges and brands as to forget sleazy behaviour like this.

I'm calling them out publicly because our places of discussion are very rarely guarded by tall walls. Instead, they let everyone in (and that's what makes them great). The price is that every once in a while we all have to push some people out. That's what I'm trying to do by writing this post.

Also, I apologize for the spelling and grammar, I wrote it early in the morning and my brain was still complaining about sleep deprivation and whatnot. Stupid brain.

P.S. also, guys, can I ask a quick favour? If anyone notices the site is down, please drop me a line (my email is in my profile). It's shared hosting and I'm not sure how well it will cope with top-of-HN. Especially when PST wake up.

thedufer• 13 years ago

FYI - the 'email' field is not publicly visible. You have to explicitly put your email address in the about section for us to see it on your profile.

archivator4• 13 years ago

I thought I had! Done now.

ceeK• 13 years ago

Bit off topic, just seen your CV and that you interned at TAB in 2011. Interned there in 2012, small world.

justplay• 13 years ago

Your website is working fast and up,which host you use? It scaled up brilliantly.

archivator4• 13 years ago

I'd love to say it's my amazing architecture and optimizations skills. But it's not. It's just a static blog, generated with Ruhoh (http://ruhoh.com/) and nginx. I'm on Webfaction's cheapest plan, on the Amsterdam servers.

Angostura• 13 years ago

Nice try Webfaction marketing guy

(I kid).

teamgb• 13 years ago

Fascinating that this story has far more upvotes and comments than another similar story, yet both boil down to essentially the same thing: money buys influence.

"Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users"

"NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140881

antihero• 13 years ago

Think about it this way - capitalism is a positive feedback system, and thus unstable.

cruise022• 13 years ago

They could have just bought some ads on Stack Overflow. From the Help Center:

If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.

http://stackoverflow.com/help/behavior

That would have been a lot less sleazy, and probably would have gotten more views than most questions about programming contest code.

eonil5• 13 years ago

And now you should know the price was not the issue.

ebbv• 13 years ago

Anyone who finds this shocking, I have news for you; every large company has been and is doing this type of astroturfing all over the internet for well over a decade now.

I guess it can be surprising when you get asked to participate in it directly, but every type of site that's driven by "the public" (Slashdot, Digg, reddit, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.) is going to be a target for this type of activity.

It's usually pretty obvious, and I think if we ever want it to stop I think it's important to publicly shame companies who do it like this.

natch• 13 years ago

Really? Come on. To be fair, since the immediate comparison that jumps to mind is between Samsung and Apple, let's put it right on the table: I don't think Apple does this.

ksec3• 13 years ago

I am sorry if this comment spark off any other pointless debate and argument or offended any Apple Fan boys or Samsung Fan boys.

But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.

Ans Samsung are at the top of this game. They are number 1 in spending on advertising and they spend double the advertising budget compared to 2nd in place. ( And their Rate are pretty awesome too compared to others )

You see heavy advertising on a Newspaper from Samsung? Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence? You should make up your own mind.

Compared to all other dirty thing that Samsung does behind the scene, these things are really tips of the iceberg.

6ren• 13 years ago

On reddit, I often see comments about upcoming games that really strike me as astroturfing... It's mainly that it makes so much sense for manufacturers to do this (word of mouth is more compelling than "advertising"), that I can't imagine them not doing it. So when a post is just emptily positive in a generic way ("Really looking forward to this!"), with no content to suggest it's not astroturfing, I assume it is.

I think one way it can be given away is not from an individual comment, but in the context of all the comments on that story. But if it's done well, it's impossible to distinguish.

yuhong3• 13 years ago

And that is not the only example.

benologist• 13 years ago

Anything "growth hacking" and "social media" are literally jobs where you're paid to shill and spam.

xradionut2• 13 years ago

It's been fun watching the shills from Redmond squirm this year after all the stumbles...

btian• 13 years ago

Citation needed. If what you said is indeed true, then can you explain why people are so outraged when such things happen?

Karunamon• 13 years ago

Mm, probably the reason that everyone "knew" that the US was engaged in extralegal spying for quite some time, but the outrage didn't legitimately start until the actual documents were leaked.

That said, I'd be really, really surprised if Apple engaged in that kind of shenanigans. Their own customers are better product evangelists than any PR shilling company could ever hope to be.

Toshio• 13 years ago

"I have news for you; every large company has been and is doing this type of astroturfing all over the internet for well over a decade now."

I'd have to agree, but Samsung's flavor of astroturfing is pretty gentle and benign compared to the viciousness of microsoft' attack dogs.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

Except those sites are driven by votes and comments float to the top via lots of anonymous voting. Which is both a boon and a bane. It helps drown out the crap but also helps to promote idiotic groupthink and censor dissent.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

Which means that combatting voting rings and astrovoting is an ever-present challenge if a site wants to remain clean.

snorkel• 13 years ago

Wow, this is an interesting topic. I especially like the informative news link. I was also wondering if anyone here has heard of the Samsung Smart App Challenge because I was thinking of entering. I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices. I also heard that Samsung devices are 4X faster than leading competitors devices because of their advanced technology. Does anyone else here have questions about Samsung's latest products and services because I heard they have great brochures and contests all the time and amazing fast technology in their devices that are affordable for all budgets.

Thank you and please visit our web site .... Oh wait, am supposed to paste this paragraph too? I better ask John do I paste the entire email body or just the first paragraph?

Hi John,

I pasted the email you sent as instructed. Is it $500 per paragraph per post? I have high HN karma so my rate is $500 per paragraph. Also I responded to several posts about child trafficking because it was a very interesting discussion, hope you don't mind.

Thanks. Still waiting FOR MY Check, John!

codesuela• 13 years ago

Hey snorkel,

I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices.

yes I heard of it too and I am going to submit an app! Wish me luck. I am submitting my battery draining app. By the way do you know how Samsung Touchwiz manages to heat up my phone? It is an awesome feature and it seems to be unique to Samsung because I could not find the function the Android SDK! Can you believe that?! Ha!

I really look forward to winning the new Galaxy Note as I compared it to a bunch of other Android phones and it seems that it not only offers the best hardware but also the biggest surface for heat dissipation. I have a cold currently and can't stop thinking about how awesome it would be if I could use my cell phone as a portable hot-water bag. That reminds me of a story about Samsung and illness: 2003 I had a heart attack. I was so shaky and panicked that instead of the emergency services I dialed the Samsung hotline. I got to speak to a support agent instantly! He calmed me down and explained to me how there is a secret resuscitation function built into my current Samsung phone then he hung up. As my heart rate came to a halt I yanked up the vibration strength in the settings menu and with his callback a powerful electric shock ran through my body giving my heart the much needed kick to start beating again.

As I thanked him he explained that this function was not openly advertised because Bill Gates had a patent on breaking bones through muscle contractions caused by an electric shock for using a Linux product. But because the implementation was too similar Samsung hid the feature.

Beat that Apple!

pbang• 13 years ago

Soooooooo... Anyone know anything about SSAC?

axus• 13 years ago

Wouldn't have heard about it except for this article :) Could I get some feedback on this app I'm about to submit to the SSAC?

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

Another warning to big companies who are employing sketchy marketing companies. With more and more of these stories coming out, I'm wondering when companies are going to stop taking chances with these "agencies" and simply bring their marketing back in house. Then they can have more control and oversight on what goes on with their brand.

This just makes Samsung and the whole Android community look bad, regardless of who actually was doing it.

spo81rty• 13 years ago

They ended up getting some amazing free advertising out of this via this HN post!

coin• 13 years ago

Why do sites like this disable pinchzoom? What purpose does it serve?

mmphosis• 13 years ago

What is even better is that you complained about this in a blog, and posted to Hacker News. Before this I didn't know anything about the Samsung Androids, but thanks to your blog and posting on Hacker News probably more people know about this than any fake $500 posting on stackoverflow. And, Samsung didn't have to pay a cent for your publicity -- or maybe they did pay you for this clever bit of marketing.

Dylan16807• 13 years ago

You didn't know Samsung had androids, really? Because the only real information content about whatever this 'Challenge' is is that they want you to buy some.

pcunite• 13 years ago

I'm the developer of a small but "better than current offerings" product. Everywhere my product gets mention two or three shills jump in to recommend theirs. Wecome to WebSpam 2.0

cruise022• 13 years ago

This is the main reason that the entire "product or tool recommendation" category is off-topic on Stack Overflow. Those types of questions invite that kind of spam.

petenixey• 13 years ago

Why is this so bad?

Samsung know that developers are the key to apps and so they go to help promote them by getting questions asked on Stack Overflow. They didn't specify exactly what the questions should be, they didn't say that they had to link to a particular site.

I often hear devs bemoan the fact that the OS/hardware combo they love isn't used by anyone and how despite the fact that it's THE best platform/hardware combo around today they just don't have the apps on it they want.

The way apps to get built on hardware is that manufacturers support and nurture a developer community. So a company comes along and uses some pretty intelligent ways to go direct to the developer community (help increase the documentation around the system) and they're lynch-mobbed for it.

Granted, the questions were naive (about a competition rather than technical) but there's no need to hang the poor guy or publish his email for it. He's a marketer and doesn't realise SO isn't for idle chat. Instead of lambasting him as the mortal enemy of devs why not just write back to him and point out that SO is the wrong place to promote a competition?

archivator4• 13 years ago

A. He published the email himself, in a comment on a public blog post.

B. Whatever the forum, this sort of astroturfing is undermining discourse. Yes, it's particularly out of place on SO but it'd be equally bad on XDA (where they don't even need it! Samsung have such a huge following over there that it's almost a religion!) To me, these people need to be called out on it. They need to understand that underhanded tactics will not be tolerated and I stand by every decision in this case so far (explicit or implied).

rsynnott4• 13 years ago

This is astroturfing; that is, a form of marketing where the advertisement is disguised as natural behaviour. Most countries have laws to limit or ban it. It's not normally considered legitimate marketing.

Samsung was recently fined by Taiwanese authorities for an astroturfing campaign there, though, so it's not like it's new.

nimh• 13 years ago

Samsung is always using scam PR agencies, see before:

http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-sams...

http://int13.net/france/blog/i-won-a-contest-to-go-to-the-lo...

EdM• 13 years ago

Okay, be honest. After reading this, how many of you searched for "Samsung Smart App Challenge".

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Samsung+Smart+App+Ch...

I'm not sure that Samsung hasn't won this round...

jama22• 13 years ago

Looks like they're already in damage control mode. My buddy just received this e-mail from james@fluu.com

http://pastebin.com/EVm8jH3s

sologoub2• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure that SO/SX already run various promotional products, like the Microsoft Windows Phone app challenge/contest. That said, I'm also sure such promotional deals come with a set of rules to ensure SO integrity. After all, a lot of work has gone into making SO one of the best (if not the best) places to learn and interact with dev community.

Would be interesting to see how this revelation affects any dealings with Samsung...

ahsteele• 13 years ago

The Stack Overflow Microsoft app contests rewarded people for asking legitimate Stack Overflow questions. In fact some of the contest prizes were hard to obtain because they required X questions/answers with a score X or more votes. Many of the topics were sufficiently covered already, making additional questions/answers duplicative. However, this ensured that the integrity of Stack Overflow was maintained even if it did make the contest more difficult.

sologoub2• 13 years ago

But it's the right way to do it!

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Half the scumminess here is that they don't understand StackOverflow isn't a general purpose forum, I think. It would be less offensive if they were paying a popular forum member to mention the contest. On StackOverflow, however, you are supposed to post questions about something you are programming, however. So it really isn't valid to just bring up a contest as a contest. I suppose theoretically, if they wanted to do something close to what they want they'd have to pay someone to try using their APIs and post questions they encounter and mention the contest on the side. Although even that is kind of stretching it.

gearoidoc• 13 years ago

Yup, AirBnB did (kinda) the same thing to listers on Craigslist.

mwfunk• 13 years ago

I really hate the practice of astroturfing, but what's even more annoying is when someone accuses someone else of doing it in an online forum. For every time someone maybe, possibly legitimately calls someone out for being an astroturfer, it seems like there are 100 or 1000 instances of someone doing it just because they disagree with what the other person is saying, and they're too immature or whatever to realize that reasonable people can come to different conclusions about things without one person being paid to do so.

Astroturfing is one of those things that by itself probably has limited impact, but a much worse side effect: fueling paranoia in online communities and giving dumb people one more tool in their flamewar toolbox.

mindstab• 13 years ago

Reminds me of

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/02/10

and William Gibson's 2003 book Pattern recognition that dealt with this.

This is a pretty old and known thing. Whether it's the street, bars or online forums, this has been going on for over 10 years at least.

rsynnott4• 13 years ago

Astroturfing via StackOverflow has to be the most pathetic possible form of unethical marketing.

rweba• 13 years ago

What is so difficult about promoting it via the usual channels? Advertisements, (legitimate) posts on appropriate forums, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Assuming they are presenting an attractive value proposition I don't see why it would be hard to get the message to the right people without resorting to this kind of thing.

This subterfuge only seems to make sense if what you are promoting fundamentally sucks or if you have a very limited budget.

bbayer• 13 years ago

So everybody now know about Samsung Smart App Challange. Mission accomplished.

eonil5• 13 years ago

And no change at all on brand image. If their brand value is already -INFINITE.

jaydles• 13 years ago

I work at Stack Exchange, and contacted Samsung as soon as this was brought to our attention last night.

1. The company engaging in these tactics was not hired by Samsung; they appear to have been sub-contracted for some promotion by the company they did hire. Now, it's obviously possible that they turned a blind eye, or don't want to know what methods are used, but in fairness, there's no evidence that they had any idea this was happening. And given the directness of it all, I suspect they'd have objected, if only because it looks so bad.

2. Everyone who was contacted due to being a user on our sites has now received a follow up communication from the company that sent the first message redacting the offer and apologizing for the inappropriate contact and request.

None of that makes any of this... lovely, but it does help clarify that any potential harm or noise this might cause seems to have been contained.

iyulaev• 13 years ago

Big company decides to pull a grassroots-focused marketing campaign. Picks an inappropriate venue. Backs off.

Is fb, for example, a more appropriate venue, selling likes and all that? They explicitly allow sponsored posts that appear to have been made by friends. I think the marketing person figured that stack overflow was similar to fb for nerds. Whoops.

BrandonMarc• 13 years ago

Yep. Reminds me of the time WalMart paid a couple to blog about their RV trip across the US, without the couple disclosing the entire trip and blog was a WalMart marketing experiment: http://kevin.lexblog.com/2006/10/13/fake-blog-walmart-gets-c...

Nate75Sanders• 13 years ago

Hilarious, especially in light of this text from the front page of their website:

"Paying for followers will not get you the results you need. Follower growth needs to be organic. We like to keep things All Natural here at FLLU. It's all about Organic Growth! "

http://www.fllu.com/

eonil5• 13 years ago

No surprise for Samsung is doing this. Abusing community by ad is the only their real professional at.

shard• 13 years ago

Does anyone else besides me think that this is a very cheap technique to use in a smear campaign? Throw up some fake "viral marketing" company website, offer to pay $x to some people for fake reviews / secret paid promotions but don't actually pay, and wait for public complaints from either people with ethics or people who didn't get paid?

tripzilch• 13 years ago

cheap yes, effective not so sure. I really wonder what the net effect for a giant company like Samsung will be for a little scandal like this. any of the big electronics corporations seems to have scandals or fuckups or unethical actions of some sort or other.

it might be pretty devastating to smaller companies, perhaps? although it's still hard to say, depending on how they deal with it, it might even result in a net positive publicity.

Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

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