Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking • Hacker News Board

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#31

Post by rimantas » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 1:36 PM UTC

Maro wrote: post #27

tamas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is this guy anyways? I saw lots of submits to his blogs on HN and other sites, but they seemed short, shallow and uninteresting, so I figured they were posted because Seth Godin is some kind of authority, not because they were so good posts. But I never figured out when and how he became such an authority.

I guess he wrote some books. Also, he has a very distinctive hairstyle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Godin

Some of his books are not bad actually. At least I did like „Survival is not Enough“ and did agree with many things he says in „Permission Marketing“.

His recent activity however is not interesting at all, I quit reading his blog long time ago: http://rimantas.com/en/archives/2008/04/29/bye-seth/ :)

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#32

Post by tmorton » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 1:45 PM UTC

The problem here isn't the "brandjacking", it's the "curate this page" option. As a customer, this sort of site is only useful if it's uncensored and focused - I want to read about the Kindle DRM problems along side the fawning reviews.

Basically, "curated" pages become useless. Non-curated pages might be useful, but I'm not going to trust a site whose business model depends on "pay us to take down negative reviews."

This isn't an ethical issue, it's just a big gaping hole in the business model.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#33

Post by wheaties » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 1:45 PM UTC

Ah and here I thought online piracy was relegated to backwater communities and such. At least he's open about how he's trying to extort money from you. I have only two things I'd like to wave his way and they're both fingers.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#34

Post by numbchuckskills » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 1:46 PM UTC

"Brands in Public is nothing more than a 5k a year public Google Alert" - so true.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#35

Post by adrianwaj » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 1:57 PM UTC

It's jump on Seth day.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#36

Post by qeorge » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 2:21 PM UTC

Viewed through the lens of a customer seeking to evaluate a vendor, an aggregation of the social media community's feelings about said vendor could be quite useful. What he's put together isn't that great, but the idea is sound.

But by ransoming control of the page to the brand he's gone awry. Are we to assume that if Allstate pays the $400/month they can censor whatever they like on the page? If so, that destroys the value of the site completely, and it does start to seem more like brandjacking. But more than anything, this strikes me as a ham-fisted attempt to make the hapless Squidoo.com relevant.

Also, a lot is being made of the SEO play here, and in my opinion its much ado about nothing. Squidoo pages haven't ranked for anything in years, as any noob at Digital Point forums will tell you. And they shouldn't - the majority are meaningless aggregations of unoriginal content thrown together by a user who will never update it again, or an amateur SEO wasting their time trying to get a free dofollow link.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#37

Post by qeorge » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 2:23 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #2

Like GetSatisfaction, stripped to its essentials this is "I have an authority domain and can rank for your brand name. Such a wonderful brand, would hate to see anything happen to it. $5,000 a year is cheap to you, isn't it?"

Not really. GetSatisfaction was misleading customer's into thinking their site was an official support channel for the brand. Apples and oranges.

Besides, Squidoo.com isn't an authority domain, and its "lenses" don't rank for anything on Google.

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#38

Post by tjic » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 2:27 PM UTC

Quick - someone tell Seth that his brand is being crapped all over at [sethgodin].news.ycombinator.com, but he can own the sidebar for a low low monthly price of ...

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#39

Post by zach » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 2:41 PM UTC

tamas wrote: post #24

Maro wrote: post #22

"This morning, Seth used his much respected blog..." His blog is not much respected.

Who is this guy anyways? I saw lots of submits to his blogs on HN and other sites, but they seemed short, shallow and uninteresting, so I figured they were posted because Seth Godin is some kind of authority, not because they were so good posts. But I never figured out when and how he became such an authority.

Godin is not a great blogger. He is primarily a speaker to business and seems quite good at that. Here is a video of him at Google three years ago (i.e. at the apex of Google the company) where he basically summarizes all the things he gets worked up about. I think it's a pretty effective message.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

Re: Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

#40

Post by buugs » Thu, Sep 24, 2009, 3:21 PM UTC

rms wrote: post #20

Why was Skittles.com a great idea but this is unbelievably evil? Now all of these companies are getting a Skittles.com for free.

Because a company was trying something new with its marketing. Now you get all this for free but if you want any control you need to pay a fee.