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Don't Click Here For A Free iPod
fermion writes "Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about? Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users would use their .sig line to push an offer that seems little more than a thinly veiled pyramid scheme? Answers to these questions can be found in this NYT article (personal information, with no free iPod, is required). The plan itself seems simple. Rat out your friends to advertisers, and get a free gadget. The firm in question, Gratis, Inc, gets a bounty on each customer. The firm claims to have a revenue of $15 million in 2004. They claim to give away 500 iPods a week. If, as the article claims, each contact earns a bounty of around $50, we might presume that 1 in 12 contacts get a free iPod. This firm seem fairly upfront. Another firm mentioned in the article, Consumer Research Corporation, seems much less so. As always, read the fine print."
I want you all to read this very carefully: Nothing is free , except true charity and this is decidedly not charity. Somebody (Gratis Inc.) is making money. Let me tell you a secret.....your identity and demographic information is valuable. Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out your friends to get in on this scheme, numbers start adding up and marketing firms and companies are paying big for this information, thus the 500 iPods/week adding up to $6.5 Million US/year and the company is decidedly making a tidy profit on top of this expenditure.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
It seems common sense [to me anyway] that to get a "free" iPod from some company or person that is giving one away, they stand to gain something in return. Since I don't know precisely what they are gaining, since it isn't money from me, and I have to assume they aren't doing it in the Christmas Spirit and giving for the sheer joy of it, then it only stands to reason that they are going to loot me in some way.
Some people might not mind having their personal browsing or comsumer habits monitored at every turn or click, but I'd rather keep some anonymity. Especially from companies which are quite obviously associated with spamming, and pyramid scheming.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out your friends to get in on this scheme..."
"(http://prometheus.me...b/pubx_pubx_bwj.html)"
Hmmm...
Anything else sounds shady to me.
Moderations are for the content of the posting, not the signatures. If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.
"If enough people start using bugmenot, these bastards just might stop requiring us to give them our life history to access a bit of information."
NYT doesn't require anything, just a unique email address, doesn't even have to be valid. Settle down.
"Derp de derp."
It's that it's a nasty scheme to harvest contacts for junk mail, telemarketing, etc.
Well put. Whether it is "legit" or not is a secondary concern. I don't put much respect towards people who run around spending all their time spamming themselves and friends to get things for free.
I mean, Christ-o-Mighty, We're talking 250-300 bucks here people. Get a job and earn it the old fashioned way. If true wealth were created merely by sending emails to people or by participating in some other pyramid scheme, everybody would be rich and nobody would work again (unfortunately, it would also mean that money grows on trees.) Also, it is an iPod... we're not talking about going to these extremes to feed a family. People are doing it to get a gadget that they can clearly live without.
This is similar to the people who continually sign up for store credit cards to get discounts or "free" gifts. Apparently, they either don't understand or don't care how their credit score is derived. I know people who live their whole lives trying to get freebies. If they spent half that effort improving themselves, I'm sure they'd get a raise, better job, or something.
"If anyone here is in marketing or advertising... KILL yourself..." - from one of Bill Hicks' standup routines. (Thought the quote should be credited..)
Actually, I don't dispute your explanation, just the conclusion. Those people who can't do math will continue, encouraging others to try again (hey, if he's still doing it, maybe it still works!). Those people will in turn encourage others... and somehow this becomes self-sustaining.
Truly, if this logic held, we would have been done with pyramid schemes in the early 20th century.
This is a newspaper you're reading. You get a free copy of one of the country's best papers, and you're whining about entering an email address and some personal info. Stop bitching, you're not paying anything and the Times doesn't sell your soul to the devil.
One Flaw,
Physical Property=Time * Effort * Material.
Intellectual Property=Time * Effort.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
$170 check from a free green xbox offer (now closed)
Xbox, from another free xbox offer. (Anyfreegift)
ipod, from freeipods.com
$700 check, from freelaptops4you.
I'll give you $50 to fuck your sister.
what's the insightful thing in that?
that's like saying that a pyramid scheme isn't a scam because they paid the first 10% who got in.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If you must work for it, it's not free. You're just working, for a wage of one ipod.
Personally, I'd put in my hours elsewhere and buy one (if an ipod was something I wanted that much) before working for some advertising company as their shill.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
In this case, the money is probably in the FIRST level or two of the scheme. I already don't have 5 people who would get 5 friends to sign up; and I'd be the first level if I signed up, so they'd get maybe $60-$180 out of me and my friends, and give out *NO* I-pods.
It's also not a true pyramid scheme in the sense that you don't have to pay any money to get in. There's a fine line between a pyramid scheme and just paying people to do sales. My company has a bunch of people we pay JUST to sell stuff. And in fact, some of the people they sell stuff too then turn around and sell it to someone else. We call those people END USERS.
In this case, the people who sign up for offers but don't get iPods are just the end users. The people who manage to get other people to sign up and get iPods are just a cheap sales force.
paintball
Some people are even modding down folks with that in their .sig. I've metamodded those as fair as I personally think the .sig should not be a tool for spam. We deal with enough ads already, we certainly don't need to put up with them in every .sig.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs