Response to the UK Inquirer
Man claims CNN messed with his Blog, is the headline in the UK Inquirer (not to be confused with The National Enquirer). The inquirer reports:
That's the remarkable claim of Nick Lewis at smart campaigns.com, here CNN is spamming blogs in a sophisticated Google attack designed to lower the rank of posts critical of CNN, by introducing spam into the comment stream.
True, that was part of my story, however I seem to remember deciding to include the word "may" in the lead sentence that introduced the idea:
Most alarmingly, CNN may have also left malicious keywords at least 3 out of 13 with the intent of using google's keyword stuffing detectors to censor them.
What difference does one little word like "may" make... Oh well, surely the Inquirer would mention the heart of the story; using guerrilla tactics to create buzz in the blogosphere. After all, this story doesn't work without that crucial part:
They are also trying to post press releases to well-read blogs, it is claimed.
No, I don't remember claiming that they were trying to post press releases to well-read blogs. I remember noting that the "news article" they left me read like a press release. However, these articles are always found with the guerrilla spam, and not all of the spam included these "articles". So actually, no: CNN isn't going around posting naked press releases, and that was never my claim.
What Lewis claims is that the CNN spinsters wanted the title of his page, "CNN: Televisions [sic] Great Orifice" off the first hundred results for the Google search.
Had our reporter read my story more closely, he would have probably thought it was important to mention that those keywords were found in 3 out 13 of the most nasty and critical posts about CNN. In addition, he would have probably thought it was also important to note that most of the spam did not include the keywords. He might also have noted the contect of that quote a little better:
In effect, whoever left the spam clearly wanted the title of my page, “CNN: Televisions Great Orifice†off of the first hundred results for the google search “CNN Blogsâ€[7]. I immediately deleted the comment, and decided that this deserved a thorough investigation.
Surely, I thought, the reporter would include some of the background that this story depends upon to be believable; surely, the reporter would include a mentioning of why -- as a marketing tactic -- guerrilla spam makes sense:
Since the person’s IP address could not be connected to CNN, Lewis thought he had hit a dead end, so he set a trap. Figuring that CNN was using technorati to monitor its campaign he posted a blog post with the words "CNN" and "Spam" in the title, and sure enough the next morning it got 13 hits from a technorati search. The IP address, from New York, has popped back to have a look several times since. He is convinced that there is some CNN plan to take over the blogs for its own purposes.
"He is convinced that there is some CNN plan to take over the blogs for its own purposes." That is what I call a reporter telling a lie. What I believe is that CNN experiemeted with Guerrilla marketing tactics, and my have attempted to influence search engine results. What I believe is that marketers are going to attempt to blend into the blogosphere as real people, when they are in fact spam. What I do not believe is that CNN has a "secret plan" to enslave every weblog to their domination.