Essentially, this guy’s admitting to perpetrating deceit on the web, and doing it with a smile. I’m sure there are companies that love that kind of attitude and will line up to work with someone who’ll lie for cash. Certainly we’re seeing posts on here from people who love what he’s doing (probably the same people running auto-adders on MySpace) but I would never do business with someone who admits his business model relies on dishonesty.

What this guy does is nothing new. Everyone’s invited a buddy to digg a post or fave a photo. What’s new here is the addition of an organization that has zero moral qualms about doing this and taking it to the Nth degree.

Why act surprised about it happening with the newest forms of computer-mediated social interaction?

I am getting annoyed by the fake comment posts for Dan here. Has anyone looked at TC forums? There are a bunch of spam threads running there. “Catch online infidelity” and overrun by spam posts? It’s ridiculous.

Please, Michael, frame that and post it on the front page.

At one end, is the implicit expectation that we all have of YouTube and similar sites - that popularity is purely organic, driven by legitimate viewers and word of mouth snowball effect.

In the middle is what we’d like to imagine is the reality: that most videos are legitimate, but that some gaming among circles of friends and colleagues takes place.

Then, at the extreme other end is DAG: the pretense of social is dropped completely when multiple accounts, fake comments, etc. are packaged as a paid service; its a dismissal of the expectations of UGC consumers, and that dismissal is actively concealed from audiences.

When compensated for this service, I don’t see how it can be perceived as anything other than unethical.

5 yrs later, whoever who doesn’t admitting or doing unethical things will be dishonest.

Do bad, worthless quality videos need the black hat optimization and good viral does not? I don’t have the answer for that yet, just a thought after watching Terry again.

Again different tactic from Dan, it’s the story in the video.

Seth Godin is a marketing guru, Dan isn’t. A huge difference btwn their philosophies on marketing.

Dan “Greenburg” - hey, what do you expect from the ‘editorial process’ at techcrunch?!

Same to #12 Mike

At some point will be get to the underlying issue here? Does any of this ‘traffic’ translate into $$$?

But what about defining precisely why this type of “marketing” crosses the ethical line? That surely is the value in all this discussion and what the industry ultimately needs to pinpoint.

Cheers!

False analogy. Spam is unwanted email sent to a user by folks whom the user doens’t know.

Top ratings on a video site is not something forced on you unwittingly. You have to go and look for it.

Finally, viral videos sent by email are forwarded by friends — not by unwanted spammers.

Kudos to Greenberg…smart kid, saw an opportunity and took it.

I can’t believe all the hype TechCrunch has given this guy.

No wait. I forgot, this is the new TC.

I can believe it.

Dan went from “we do this” to “we don’t do this, we just are sharing what ’some’ might use”. Seemed to change once the bashing started. The CNN interview was really a 3 minute infomercial more than anything.

Second, there are parts of Dan’s thoughts and ideas that are great optimization techniques. And then there are some parts that aren’t and are below the belt.

Just as I asked in Part II of this trifecta of virality, I asked Dan to detail which pieces his company uses and which they don’t. He still hasn’t done that.