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Marketing On a .EDU Domain
wrttnwrd, an Internet marketer, opens a can of whup-ass on
LinkAdage and the Pickering Institute, which have teamed up to rent blog space on a .edu domain for $50 a month. Technically legal maybe but undermining of the trust a .edu engenders.
Last time I was at an .edu domain all I saw was photos of perfectly diverse students hanging out on perfectly manicured lawns. Not really something that engendered trust.
Why would anyone have any trust in a blog just because the author is associated with a University? All sorts of Universities have faculty and students associated with them who can say anything they like on their "edu" blogs just like the .com blogs. One might think that bloggers associated with universities may be smarter or better writers, but I doubt experience would confirm this.
As far as I see it, advertising on an EDU is perfectly ethical if it is used to subsidize bandwidth (and NOT line the pockets of a greedy bureaucrat).
And when the schools introduce a method of reducing their need for your hard-earned money, you complain?
And anyone savvy enough to know the difference should also be sceptical enough to not get suckered.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It seems that pi.edu is not a CHEA accredited institution. It claims founding in 1994 and accreditation by the Association of Christian Schools and Colleges (ACSC) which is not on the nationally recognized accreditation list. This means it's not supposed to be valid for them to receive a .edu TLD for their institution. They've only had it since 2006, and their technical contact uses a hotmail address according to the .edu whois on whois.educause.net.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The site is located at: http://blogs.pi.edu/ and if you visit the parent site: http://pi.edu/ it looks less like a school and looks more like one of those over-the-internet places... but with very little actual information. It makes me wonder if they obtained the EDU status by some technicality to begin with... there's no evidence this "school" has any students.
It looks they use that same blog software on their home page, I'd say it's pretty obvious this whole set-up was with selling blogs in mind. Think about it: "pi.edu" that's prime internet real-estate.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Does the "Pickering Institute" even exist? Their home page is a WordPress blog. They have no contact information other than an e-mail address.
Their domain registration has an address of "2 Cityplace Drive, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO", which is also the address of Bin95.com, which does industrial equipment maintenance training.
Y'all got some big brass ones to post an article like this... aren't .org domains supposed to be for non-profit organizations, et al?
Anyone else notice that slashdot.com redirects to slashdot.org, and not the other way around, as it should?
Hey, I've got no problem with Slashdot being a for-profit venture: I'm rooting for you, honest I am. But, for the sake of all that's nerdy, how about a little less hypocrisy and a little more honesty in advertising?
Yes, I know: "I must be new here".
Let the modbombing begin!
For those who were not aware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.edu#Other_uses I personally find it a bit sad, but what are you going to do with grandfathered domains? -JAK
Woops...
:)
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I don't see what the problem is. If it's okay to advertise mcdonald's on a child's report card, stuff his school full of taco bell, pizza hut, subway as well as pepsi and coke machines and pump "educational" television feeds with customized advertising to them in the class room, then what's wrong with a banner ad or something on a *.edu?
It's 2008. I think the idea that educational institutions are anything but commercial meat-grinders has expired.
They emailed me a diploma!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
More proof that not even the editors read the links. The "about" page of the .edu in question links to a Rickroll video, and the application for registration immediately asks for credit card info using poorly written English. I suspect people will be more likely to fall for this because of the edu domain, which is a shame.
"It's 2008. I think the idea that educational institutions are anything but commercial meat-grinders has expired."
Honestly, most people have either not figured this out, or are in complete denial about this.
the odd link is a rickroll now.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It's 2008. I think the idea that educational institutions are anything but commercial meat-grinders has expired.
No, the idea is very much alive. The existence of these various outrages doesn't mean the idea is dead; it means we should fight against the new outrages that pop up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The article was written well but they guy didn't touch on what people will be doing with these sub domain names that is bad as well as how the SEO industry works. So I'll try to touch on this a bit. .edu domain names are considered a cash cow in the SEO/link selling industry. On many of the link exchange and link selling sites if someone is selling links on .edu domains you can see the monthly costs for a link on one of these sites sell for sometimes hundreds of dollars. Thankfully .edu links are very rare, but sometimes people get access to posting links on these domains; don't ask me how but I'm guessing it happens through bad practices.
.edu domains? Well most search engines assume that anything connected with a .edu domain is very relevant to what ever topic you have on the domain, and links going out of the domain are very relevant as well to the subject matter. Normally .edu domains will get very high page rank (google ranking) and will show up very fast and get a top listing with very little content or back linking. This means seo, link sellers, and blog spammers will try to take advantage of this as quickly as possible. I checked some of the biggest link selling/blog spamming sites and thankfully a link to this blog site has not shown up, but I'm sure now it will very quickly.
But why do people care so much about getting links on
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