In yesterday’s show #120 of FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, Shel and I talked about the teenager who gamed Google News with a fake press release.
That pales in comparison to this story from VNU’s Silicon Valley Sleuth today which, if true, is far more alarming:
Something extremely weird is going on over on Digg.com. Today for the third time in a short period, a story got promoted to the front page where a blogger raises a baseless rumour about Google buying Sun. And as is explained further down, it appears that this is the result of a coordinated effort to fool Digg into promoting the story. The blog author has no sources, zero credibility and most importantly his reasoning is completely erratic.
Threadwatch dissects events a little more and concludes:
Spreading rumors and news to drive up the stock prices is nothing new. Using internet “news” and “citizen journalist” sites like Digg to do it is. We all know that viral and buzz marketing is an important factor in today’s market. Have “white collar spammers” recognized this, and [are] now begining to act on it?
That’s a very good question.
Caveat: don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers online.
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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
