Suffice it to say, many of us write our blogs and hope to find a loyal audience. To get a portion of that loyal audience, something else we do is visit each other’s blogs and, when we can, we write comments on those blogs. It not only helps us in potentially getting people to follow the link back to you, but it helps them because not only are you contributing to the community, but you’re also helping their community grow. It seems that people love commenting on blogs that show some kind of activity.
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If you wanted to, you could say that’s a way to “game the system”. I don’t necessarily believe it, but the truth is that it’s nice knowing there are some people who have your back from time to time.
However, I’m betting most of us can’t compare to what’s been reported about the Chinese government. It seems that China wants to change its reputation around the world in the worst way (so many ways to go on this one). So what they’ve done is hired 280,000 people to write good things about the country. Not only on their own blog, but on other websites that even mention China:vacation sites, political sites, product sites… you name it.
This isn’t new, really. How many folks remember the tale of Belkin, a company that was caught having its own employees review their products in many places, including eBay and Amazon, favorably, until someone found an internal memo and leaked it? It’s that sort of thing that brought about the FCC’s new policy on disclosure.
At the same time, who can compete with 280,000 people being paid to say nice things about you, other than India? That’s really gaming the system, and that’s just not right. I mean, almost no one here would be upset to get that kind of great press for their blogs or websites, but at the end of the day, it’s disingenuous, false, and no one benefits from it, including the person being talked about.
How do you feel about this one? Am I wrong?
Propaganda at it’s finest. China has been doing it for years internally. Now it’s got the Internet (which it fights to control) and extending the propaganda to the cyberworld. Either way it’s BS.
I bet none of the 280,000 leaves you a nice comment here, Mitch. 🙂
.-= Scott Thomas´s last blog ..Assignment 6: Recap =-.
You’re probably right, Scott; they’d probably be wanting to call me out for something, which would be just fine with me because publicity is publicity sometimes. Imagine being a national speaker on the topic “Chinese critics came after me”. lol
Most probably your blog won’t even appear in China’s search result Mitch. – lol.
That’s true Ample, but it’s because I don’t have 280,000 folks writing about me lol
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Seems that the Chinese government is using these 280K people to further promote whatever it is they want to promote, all for the purpose of “hiding” other matters which are really of concern to the free world. Anyway, I ditto Scott on this one, probably all BS
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I’m with you on this one, Francisco, and I hope that, if Google notices some weird patterns, that they’ll totally shut China down instead of what they just did by moving the servers to Hong Kong, which belongs to China anyway.
Absolutely right my friend. When I first started I played the follow the guru game and got so tired of seeing the same faces time and time again on testimonial sales pages and the like.
You just know, more then half the time, they never even saw the product.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Comment Contest Continues Through April! =-.
For sure, Dennis. If we’re paying attention, we see many of the same names over and over. That’s why I always wonder about testimonial pages with 20 or so people on them; I much prefer something like, well, mine, where there’s only a few people, but real people.
20 is fine, 50 is fine, 100 is fine, HOWEVER, I would insist the giver allow contact if someone wants too.
Write something like, if you think I’m full of crap, contact them. LOL
I think that’s fair for a backlink or two. 😉
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Comments and Blog Comment Contests – Lets Chat about Paying for Comments =-.
That’s an interesting thought, Dennis. Then again, for me, that many testimonials and I doubt I’d finish reading. lol
Me either; just sayin’ lol
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Mitch,
I’d a different view, every government in the world would somehow protect their own interest regardless of what their political view.
In the US, most write up are saying the negative side about the Chinese gov. On the other hand how many US investments has gone into the so call controlling gov? If the Chinese is that evil why would the US allow their investors to chip in their money in China?
If you surf in Chinese gov sites they have another side of their stories that says the US are evil. If the US are really evil to the Chinese, why are the Chinese exporting their products to US? Why not shut the door to each other?
If fact I see them in such good understanding that “you can use my names as bogeyman to unite your contryman on both sides” – just my two cents 😛
Sorry for using a nickname and no gravatar because I’m still in a 9 to 5 job and I’m afraid my boss would see my photo online and thats a conflict of interest due to my job nature (I won’t let that stop me from building my own online business).
cheers
– Ample web design 🙂
Interesting interpretation, Ample. However, you miss the fact that, because America is a free country, the government doesn’t have the right to stop its citizens from investing in countries that they haven’t labeled as, well, countries the U.S. doesn’t have relatively good relationships with. Same with China; in the long run it all comes down to money.
On the other hand, paying people to search the internet and write good things about you is false advertising; if that occurred in the United States, someone would be facing charges of fraud and potentially going to jail, especially with new FCC regulations. That the government would spend that kind of money for that purpose and not spend it helping its people, many of whom are suffering, is abysmal in my opinion.