racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

FarmOut Central Intouch has been writing spam comments on blogs.  Yuga has been vigilant enough to notice this early on, even as other bloggers like myself almost just passed the comments off as written by passers-by with something to share.

The first comment left on my publications was over at the J Spotter, under the “Christmas town” post.  Being a “merry christmas” message (with a link at the end), I tried to be patient and asked the comment-author to say something about FarmOut–could be a good article material here or over at PTB.

But alas, it turns out that they’ve been at it for quite some time, and FarmOut seems adamant in its attempt to generate buzz (or backlinks?) by leaving comments on blogs that most likely come up from search engine results for “call center” related keywords.

Later the same day, I got a comment here at the J Spot from another author from FarmOut.  Yes, it was under a “call center” related post, but the comment reeked of “generic, spam-type comment.”

For the record, here’s a little something about comment spamming from Wikipedia:

… originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly fill a guestbook with links to their own site and no relevant comment to increase search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given it is often just “cool page”, “nice website”, or keywords of the spammed link.

This is very bad PR, IMHO.  They do not even try to be relevant with their comments.  It’s just like what those porn and online casino sites write.  They say “Great post! Visit blah-blah-casino.com,” hinting that they did not care at all about the article content.  They see a comment-box and paste away.

Kind of reminds me of the “caveman clicker,” or more appropriately, “caveman commenter,” phenomenon common in mass-directed websites/blogs, such as those relating to showbiz (paging Marc Macalua, who initiated–at least among us Pinoy tech bloggers–the use of the term “caveman” this and that in this context).  People see blue, underlined text (probably AdSense), and they tend to click on it.  Same with textareas: people see a chat board, and they come up with all sorts of silly messages.

At any rate, the FarmOut people could have at least had the decency to put up an introductory message about their services, and try to post the comments under relevant articles (like, for instance, posts written about the call center industry or other related topics).  Maybe then, they would succeed at jumpstarting their marketing efforts.

I remember runing a program, back at i.PH, which we dubbed the i.PH Blogger Program, where we asked bloggers, both established and new, to write articles about i.PH and to post relevant comments on their friends’ blogs.  Some considered this to be “distributed spamming,” but we emphasized that the comment-posters should fully disclose that they are part of the program, and to use discretion in posting comments, which are supposed to be relevant.

But as for FarmOut, they chose the porn/casino site way.

I hope these guys read up on Business Blogging.  There are a handful of blogs on the topic, and some good ones can be found on my blogroll under the Business Blogging and Public Relations/Marketing categories (try out Micro Persuasion, or Corporate Blogging Blog).  Or maybe they could contract out some of their blogging work to the handful of local probloggers (like myself ) who would be better able to generate buzz–after all, blogging is as much about personality as it is about content.

So to the guys over at FarmOut, I’m sorry, but this is the way it goes with the blogosphere.  You act, and you can expect a response.  Markets are conversations.  And the blogosphere is one hell of a conversation.  Your intentions were good, but the methodology half-baked.

Postscript. Here are some interesting links on comment spamming:

• Comment Spam Manifesto
• Wikipedia: Link spam
• Blog Spam database
• The Norwegian Spam Huntress

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