Corporate sock puppets run amok!
Cory Doctorow: Nvidia stands accused of hiring online actors to create dozens of personae in online forums, where they won gamers' trust by talking about subjects unrelated to Nvidia's products, and then splurged in an orgy of sock-puppet boosterism of Nvidia's stuff.
...
I interviewed for a guerilla marketing business in San Francisco that targeted web forums.
I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.
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ION, Microsoft is really swell....
Just popping in quickly to say that Olivia Rose is a bueatiful girl with a beautiful name, and to give Trudy and family {{{{{}}}}}}}.
msbelle, if you don't go to work today (WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT DO), you could come over to watch GA here. I have to leave at 1:20, but you could stay. You too, sara.
I'm so glad I didn't watch that with a migraine. It would have made it worse.
I'll be right up!
So, since the chance I'll see the ep before next week is something approaching zero, someone just tell me
who got maimed, killed, smashed by a helicopter, delimbed or otherwise bruised?
My god, I hate it when college students come to work in their pajamamas. I just want to send them en mass to What Not to Wear.
sara,
no one in the cast was maimed, but the episode ended with Meredith with her hand INSIDE this guy's chest cavity, stabilizing an UNEXPLODED BOMB. And Bailey's husband in surgery in the next room with a brain injury. And Bailey in labor.
Basically.
It was a really quotable episode too. If I were in the market for a tagline, I'd have several to choose from.
an orgy of sock-puppet boosterism
Let us take a moment and enjoy this phrase.
Although I agree there's an ick factor in the "company pays me to play so that I'll plug their product" concept, it's just a development of the "stranger in Times Square asks you to take his picture with Cool New Camera Phone" concept. Advertising that you don't know is advertising till you think about it (or till somebody blurts a telltale).
What I'm busy thinking about is, dude, 50+ identities, 5 posts/hour? If it's a 40-hour work-week, that's only 200 posts a week, which is not enough to sustain 50 identities worth a damn. If it's more than 40 hrs/week, then sign me up for some of that overtime.
