Tag Archives: Marketing

Jul 14 2012

Prediction: Dislikes – No Thanks – Not Interested

The interactivity of the internet has really changed the past couple of years since the “Like” buttons arrived on the scene. Honestly, I don’t use them at all, with the exception of liking other people’s blog posts. Mostly, I do that because it has become inappropriate to leave two-word comments like: “I agree”. And I must say this convention keeps the blogosphere a bit less cluttered, so I’m all for it. Besides, since I have lost so many brain cells to the internet, I have to confess an odd fascination of clicking through the “like” pictures every now and again after I read a blog post. I.e., there’s great time wasting in them thar links.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really see the value in Facebook, and I’ve been too lazy to get into twitter (but soon,… soon).  Because of my anti-FB predilections, I assume this is why I don’t bother with the more general likes that can be found on essentially every page these days. I admit it. I ignore the number of likes. They don’t tell me much, except that if I were a stats nut I could probably come up with formulas that tell me what percent of page views “likes” represented. So, don’t care…

What I’m curious about is how long it will take before the “Dislikes” button comes out. When it comes to regular pages, most sites aren’t going to want to post how many people disliked the page, unless the point of the page is to be controversial and anti-establishment in some way. Then the number would be worn like a badge of honor. Besides, no one likes negative people anyway.

However, I do think the “dislike” button is coming soon to an internet near you.

Why?

For the same reason the like button has become so ubiquitous. It’s knowledge, it’s quantitative, and thus has value. Any extra knowledge that can be garnered from you, businesses will want to know about it. Businesses like Amazon, and…, and… Wait, is there any other place to buy stuff online?

Well, those places too.

I believe “dislikes” are on the horizon. They may be disguised as “No Thanks” or “Not Interested”, but they will essentially yield the same information.

When I was browsing Amazon this morning, I noticed (which happens once in a while) all the “suggested” stuff and “Best Sellers”, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t interested in any of it. This is information Amazon would want to know, and thus, one day they are going to get it. If I could click a “not interested” button for “Fifty Shades of Grey”, they could blast me with something that is actually marketed toward my demographic.

As usual, I may be behind the curve on this one, but that is my prediction for the day*.

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*This statement does not suggest or imply that I will ever make another prediction. Results of prediction are not guaranteed. If said prediction becomes actualized in any fashion, this result is no guarantee of future results on, as yet, unactualized predictions.

Nov 12 2011

Advice to the Reader: Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

I have to say spam is an amazing thing.  Not the meat product.  Sorry, that stuff’s not quite so amazing.  Naturally, I’m referring to the messages I get in the comment section.  Most of them don’t show up on the site.  The algorithms used in spam detection have gotten very good.  The detection software used by WordPress.com has not had a false positive or false negative yet.  That is, they’ve let all the legit comments post properly whilst stopping all the spam posts.

I made a post last month, I Have Arrived, that commented that I had finally gotten my 100th spam message and therefore I was now someone.  Truth be told the more active a blog is, the more spam it gets.  Especially when you use active search terms like I’ve been using in my posts, viz, The Link Economy, Multi-Level Marketing, NaNoWriMo, and even the term Spam.  All such labeled posts seem to attract more than their fair share of spam comments.

So many comments in fact, that in the last three days the spam detector has rejected over 50 comments.  I’m on pace now to get well over 250 by the end of the month.  As of yesterday, this blog has had more spam comments rejected than actual page views.  I’m not sure how such a thing is possible, but clearly when a bot or spam program makes a comment it must not actually load the page, which makes the comments even more amusing.

Take this one:  “Wow, your post makes mine look febele. More power to you!”

This one being rejected from the post: Someone Should Make This Go Viral. A post where there was no real message other than a link to a music video featuring a song that has been described as Science meets School House Rocks.  I thought it was cool.  Upon further reflection, it turned out I was right.  Again.

This one’s good:  “I have exactly what info I want. Check, please. Wait, it’s free? Aweosme!”

A comment rejected from my Advice to the Reader: NaNoWriMo post.  A whiny post that didn’t so much suggest to the reader they should try NaNoWriMo, which would have been actual useful advice, but a post where I whine about not being able to do NaNoWriMo for the third year running.

I could go on, but the ridiculousness doesn’t stop.  I have to ask, what’s the point of these comments?

There can be only one explanation.  These people are actually making money doing this.  If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be doing it.  This then begs the next question:  Who’s buying?

The answer is:  YOU.  Maybe not you in particular, but the royal YOU.  The YOU out there that’s foolish enough to click through on random links and buy stuff on the other side.  the YOU out there who click on random links and java script pop ups that infect your computer with malware that then trick YOU into paying $50 to get your computer clean because YOU let it take your device over in the first place.

And for the YOU out there who own a Mac, YOU’re part of the problem.  YOU think because you own a Mac YOU’re somehow impervious to malware and viruses.  I hate to break the news to you, but because PCs have gotten so good at protecting themselves against this crap, and the users have gotten slightly more savvy, Macs have become tasty morsels for the spammers because they’ve found out how naive Mac users are.  Even though Macs make up less than 15% of the market share, their users will accidentally click into malware problems at a far higher rate than PC users because they think they’re safe.  You’re not anymore.  So Mac users need to get more savvy in a hurry.

Of course, there are still plenty of YOU coming from PC land so don’t act all superior.  YOU’re still part of the problem.

So my advice to the reader:  Please be a little more careful on what you click on.  If something’s too good to be true, it is.  If a pop-up tells you you have a virus, you do.  The program that’s making the pop-up is the virus.  You can usually get these things eradicated for free with a Google search rather than pay the hostage fee.  If we could all not fall into these pathetic traps, the spammers would not make money, and they’d go on to other things.  Thus making the internet a more enjoyable place for us all.