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AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

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Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#11

Post by _delirium »

mattmiller wrote: post #7

I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website…

When it's possible to make it a business model like this, churned out on a routine basis, it makes me think it's more exploiting a sort of brain-hack than providing useful services. They've found a formula for baiting digg/reddit/etc. users into clicking on chartjunk, and are selling that formula to anyone who will pay: if your college-textbooks site needs some SEO, we'll whip up an infographic about bottled water that you can get linked everywhere. Because we want to inform people about bottled water, are doing serious research on the subject to present a well-thought-out position, because it's even relevant to your site at all, etc.? No, just because it gets clicks, and we'll decide what to put in the chart 100% based on what will get the most clicks, not based on what is actually true about bottled water or anything (I imagine they don't go out of their way to make up stuff, but clearly an interest in bottled water is not their motivator).

I agree that linkbait in general has many of those features, but I'd consider most linkbait to be at least a cousin of spam. This is somewhat notable just because it's so openly cynical about it.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#12

Post by patio11 »

tptacek wrote: post #8
mattmiller wrote: post #7

I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website…

Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.

Is this distinguishable from a startup creating OSS, which will cause people to "lie to Google" when citing the OSS, and if so how? (I happen to know two reasons how: they're much, much cheaper to crank out at scale than OSS is, and they're typically backed by an outsourced promotion team. These do not strike me as having ethical significance.)

Are we maybe leading with our geek brains here? The geek brain that maybe isn't quite 100% onboard with "it is ethical to attempt to market $FILL_IN_BLANK , even in ways which are effective"?

Edited to add: I do not often ask myself, after typing in A HREF, "Am I being true in my thoughts and deeds to my primary reason for all linking activity, which is to preserve the sanctity of Google's link graph?" Should I? Really?

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#13

Post by ergo98 »

mattmiller wrote: post #7

I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website…

"I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money."

They're doing so dishonestly. Dishonesty on the tubes is why so many of us are jaded and believe nothing.

Few of the examples said "Here's a professional infographic pandering to the current pop meme, surrounded by some monetizing ads", but instead it was "HERE IS MY FIRST INFOGRAPHIC!" (always ad free because that's a part of the bait-and-switch meme approach), and once it got boosted the URL turned to a 301 permanent PageRank forward to some spam factory, polluting search engines with garbage.

Meme herding itself is really the root cause, though: Once Digg showed a propensity for top N lists, the web became awash with vapid top N lists for everything, humorlessly produced by SEO drones.

Not all content follows this shallow, deceptive practice.

There is a dating site -- I honestly can't remember which one right now, and am not suppressing their name on purpose -- that keeps releasing compelling analysis data, predictably boosting them to the tops of all of the social news sites. In return for producing interesting content, they get lots of incoming hits and page rank goodness. Their motives are clear as day for everyone, and there is no surreptitious BS.

Sidenote: 99% of infographics are terrible.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#14

Post by ergo98 »

tptacek wrote: post #3
ilovecomputers wrote: post #2

The Oatmeal responds: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...

And his response is (aggressively paraphrased): "it's probably spammy, but so what? they're my friends, they're a small shop, and the guy pointing it out is probably a competitor." Not very compelling.

His response is horrendous. I've enjoyed a couple of his entries (although they get a little formulaic), but that response had him dropping several notches.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#15

Post by tptacek »

patio11 wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.

Is this distinguishable from a startup creating OSS, which will cause people to "lie to Google" when citing the OSS, and if so how? (I happen to know two reasons how: they're much, much cheaper to crank out at scale than OSS is, and they're typically backed by an outsourced promotion team. These do not strike me as having ethical significance.) Are we maybe leading with our geek brains here? The geek brain that maybe…

Who creates OSS and uses it to market "scholarships" for online colleges by scrambling Google's notion of what the best site for online colleges is?

SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve your OSS's position: just peachy.

SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve someone's IRS settlement site: not OK.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#16

Post by mattmiller »

vinhboy wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.

This is no different than a startup paying an SEO company. In the end, both places researched and surfaced something that the end user will find interesting. I dont see anything wrong with that. I think it's Google's job to decide what is relevant or not in the search result. Personally for me, I am waiting for the day when Google decides to de-list sites like eHow. PS. sorry mattmiller, I accidently down-arrowed you…

I don't think Google will do that. I think one of two things will happen:

-A lot of smaller vertical search sites will pop up. MedicalInfoSearch.com will not show entertainment or economics info, and its ranking will not be based on backlinks from entertainment or economics sites. I think we are seeing the beginnings of this with Blekko.

-Or, and I say this at the risk of sounding like one of those social media people, the link graph will start to give more and more weight to Facebook Likes and link sharing and twitter sharing and any future social network sharing. If you think about it, this was the reason Google went with the backlink strategy to begin with. Back then they had no social networks, so they only way someone could vote for a site was by putting a link to it on their website. If you did not have a website you did not get a vote. Now almost everyone has the capacity to vote on a websites quality, but for some reason only website owners are allowed to. Social networks love info graphics, in this future you are going to see a lot of them.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#17

Post by tptacek »

mattmiller wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.

I see what you mean, but I would call that moderately unethical. The reality is there are probably less than 5 legitimate mesothelioma websites (FDA, Wikipedia, maybe some charities...) and the rest are all junk put up to get ad-sense dollars and leads for lawyers. Every single one of the hundreds of thousands of other sites is doing much less ethical link building.

Torches and pitchforks: no.

Flag with extreme prejudice: yes.

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#18

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #15
patio11 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this distinguishable from a startup creating OSS, which will cause people to "lie to Google" when citing the OSS, and if so how? (I happen to know two reasons how: they're much, much cheaper to crank out at scale than OSS is, and they're typically backed by an outsourced promotion team. These do not strike me as having ethical significance.) Are we maybe leading with our geek brains here? The geek brain that maybe…

Who creates OSS and uses it to market "scholarships" for online colleges by scrambling Google's notion of what the best site for online colleges is? SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve your OSS's position: just peachy. SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve someone's IRS settlement site: not OK.

[deleted]

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#19

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who creates OSS and uses it to market "scholarships" for online colleges by scrambling Google's notion of what the best site for online colleges is? SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve your OSS's position: just peachy. SEO schemes that get people to cite your OSS to improve someone's IRS settlement site: not OK.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

#20

Post by Malus »

ergo98 wrote: post #13
mattmiller wrote: post #7

I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website…

"I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money." They're doing so dishonestly. Dishonesty on the tubes is why so many of us are jaded and believe nothing. Few of the examples said "Here's a professional infographic pandering to the current pop meme, surrounded by some monetizing ads", but instead it was "HERE IS MY FIRST INFO…

The dating site is OkCupid (http://www.okcupid.com/) and their data analysis can be found on OkTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com/).
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