Deep Jive Interest's Tony Hung describes The Truth About Viral And Social Marketing? Its All About The Sock Puppets. and calls for a "New Media Literacy" where people can figure out what's really viral in Social Media vs. what's been manipulated by people like Dan Acker Greenburg (who revealed how the company he works for creates viral videos on YouTube it basically boils down to marketing tricks, and less to do with the content itself, according to Tony Hung).
I agree, and wrote about it last night - Viral Videos - Secrets Revealed care of TechCrunch - reaction is mixed but I didn't it as well, in a humorous fashion, as Tony, who likened the whole thing to a bunch of Sock Puppets (more or less -see below).
But Tony Hung brings up a more personal point - many of "us" that were penalized, usually unjustly, by Google last month in a series of PageRank adjustments - even when there was link buying (which many didn't actually do who were penalized) were actually being honest and open while Google doesn't appear to have any way of punishing the much more "sinister" type of viral marketing that Dan Greenberg and companies like his routinely do.
"…At times like this I almost feel bad for Ted Murphy, one of the guys behind PayPerPost. Not just because I met him and he seems like a nice guy. But rather that he tried to build a business that was attempting to do something in a fairly open and transparent way, and with the new Google PageRank adjustment is getting burned for it.
Whereas guys like Dan Greenburg? They’re paying bloggers and list owners under the table where Google will _never_, *ever* be able to tell, and they’re making out like bandits. And that’s besides the practice of creating puppet accounts to pimp their “viral” marketing tactics.
Again, am I surprised and shocked? Not really."
Sure, Google is going after the "low hanging fruit" and paints a "wide swath" perhaps correcting more sites than they needed to or should have - but my point is …should Google be correcting anyone's site - if they can't stop people like Dan Greenberg - if they don't have a plan or way to do it?
I don't think so. I think that Google is great at algorithms corrections, as far as it goes - but when they supplement the algorithms with humans - they often make situations much worse than if they just left the whole thing alone. If people start seeing Google and it's properties as a "mess" - it's because the algorithms failed - let them fix that - and keep people out of making "subjective" judgements about sites - as Google has failed to do a good or even fair job of it (they don't even have a decent process where you can "speak back" easily to them or even know why they are penalizing you - how fair is that?)
Because, to be truly fair, why should Google penalize Ted Murphy but not Dan Greenberg? Is it only because they can go after Ted Murphy but not Dan Greenberg? Maybe Google should stop policing their search engines (including YouTube - and just stick to the algorithms - since that's all they're actually good at - to the point the algorithm can do the job).
