Nationwide Domain Name/Yard Sign Conspiracy

robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."

Comments

peh.

[apodyopsis]

yes, yes, yes, I'm sure you uncovered a conspiracy of epic proportions behind the dating sites, but this is /. and only one thing matters....


did you get a date?


why yes, I am new round here.. how did you know?

Conspiracy?

[kalirion]

Do the yard signs read your thoughts and beam them to a satellite? Are they emitting high levels of gamma radiation? Are the dating sites linked to Al Qaeda?

Don't tell me...

[novalogic]

Even singles sites are lonely enough to pay for some action... I thought I was the only one willing to pay out $100 for head...

Guerrilla Marketing

[apt142]

This is extremely fascinating. I'm not quite sure how it becomes news for nerds. But fascinating none the less.

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[MrSparkle]

Guerrilla Marketing indeed. The article itself is a slashvert for the author's company. Nice.

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[Red Flayer]

Why is it news for nerds? The same reason you found it fascinating.

Guy observes something odd related to his field of work.

Guy notices more oddities, all related.

Guy gets an itch to figure out what is going on, and scratches the itch.

Guy keeps on scratching until he's completely satisfied.

Seriously, what nerd hasn't done the same thing in their particular field of interest? Whether it's the grepping to find instances of an odd item in your logs, or statistical analysis to compare voting records by state to federal balance of payment figures, or figuring out how to make the pelvic actuators on your girl robot work properly, one thing all nerds have in common is sleuthing.

Nerdhood, to me, is defined by inquisitiveness and a strong dedication to finding answers and increasing our knowledge. So yes, it's news for nerds, since we can all relate to the author's search for truth.

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[eln]

why didnt he just fill out the form and see where he would be redirected to or wait for someone to contact him?

Because he's already on 3 other dating sites, and his wife is starting to get suspicious.

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[RobertB-DC]

...or figuring out how to make the pelvic actuators on your girl robot work properly...

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[Facegarden]

This is extremely fascinating. I'm not quite sure how it becomes news for nerds. But fascinating none the less.

Maybe you're being sarcastic, but i really don't see why this is interesting, really. Upon reading the article, it seems to me the guy has the reasoning powers of a shrew - it was obvious to me after seeing just two identical signs with different addresses that this company must be doing this all over the place. The author makes it sound like it's some crazy complex conspiracy and blah blah blah. Hey, guess what!? BayAreaHelpWanted.com is also part of a similar situation! There is also SacramentoHelpWanted.com and a bunch others. Gasp! Someone is using location specific domain names as a way of appearing more local!

Next he'll find out that the Shane Co. is not a local mom and pop diamond company, but a huge nationwide chain, with ads targeting specific areas (our ads only mention the 3 local stores, for example, and Tom Shane always makes himself sound so down to earth that he couldn't possibly be the head of a huge chain).

Really, i'm surprised that anyone is surprised by how this works.
-Taylor

Re:Which URL?

[PPH]

StayOffOfMyLawn.com

missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point. You were suppose to go to the URL to get a date NOT research the registration.

Re:missed the point

[Dekortage]

This gives me an idea for a new set of yard signs: "Single? Bored? www.slashdot.org"

Re:missed the point

[Not-a-Neg]

I wonder how secure the database is? Why not just hack into their servers and steal their database, then you'd have thousands of potential dates in every state to hit on, and since you know they're desperate (having submitted their info to one of the sites) you're chances are greatly improved. You could even call them pretending to be from the company and tell them you've found a perfect match for them, then set yourself up on dates with them! When you're all done, you could then sell the whole database to some other sleazy marketing company.

Re:missed the point

[megamerican]

These signs were a great way to break up with my girlfriend*. A few dozen Single? signs in her front yard gave her a pretty strong hint.

*Girlfriend may or may not actually exist (this is /.)

Fines?

[Ecuador]

Now that we know who is behind putting up all these signs, apparently without permission, won't there be some huge fines coming up?

Re:Fines?

[HTH NE1]

In my city, a little old lady was arrested walking down main street placing more of these signs by none other than the chief of police. The signs stopped appearing for awhile, but apparently they got someone to replace her.

Re:signs

[HTH NE1]

We should start a counter-campaign:

Married?
LincolnSwingers.com

It's disappointing to see. . .

[smooth wombat]

the low percentage of signs advertising for asians.

Mmmm, asian women. You can eat a lot because you never fill up!

Re:It's disappointing to see. . .

[mschuyler]

Ha ha. I used to live in Macon. I worked at a B.Dalton--Bookseller store out at the Macon Mall. The cops busted us and stole 500 copies of the "Joy of Sex" because it was 'pornographic.' Naturally, every cop in Macon wound up with a copy. There was even a trial. It wound up in a 'hung' jury. Oh, man, minimum wage was fun.

My garbage can is full of these signs

[Anonymous Coward]

These signs appear in my neighborhood about once a week in the wee hours of Monday morning. I usually remove about 10 of these signs from my neighborhood by 8:30 am. To date I have disposed of about 250 yard signs. It is illegal to post the yard signs on my property and my fellow home owners property without our permission. Thanks to your research our lawyers will be able to send letters to the proper people now.

It's an interesting story...

[Minwee]

High churn rates mean new customers have low, volatile expected lifetime values. This has a negative impact on the equity value of each customer, making it difficult to justify the valuation multiples seen by membership-driven websites in other verticals.

...but an English translation might be more accessible.

Re:It's an interesting story...

[Red Flayer]

Well, since the author kindly provides a plug for his company's services, the translation is:

If you can understand what these terms are, I can communicate with you professionally, and maybe you could use my services.

If you don't understand these terms, I hope you enjoy this story.

If you don't understand these terms, or only somewhat understand them, but feel like you want to use these terms to impress your bosses, you need my help. Contact me and we'll work something out.

Re:It's an interesting story...

[EricWright]

So you don't make that much money per customer

Dude, did you SEE how much they were charging?!?

Re:It's an interesting story...

[Hoi Polloi]

So they work on the Scientology model?

The "from the..." Department

[D Ninja]

I know I'm slightly off-topic here, but I really have to wonder about timothy's choice of department for this article. It is:

from the tragically-yes-I'm-single dept.

Now, I am not trashing people who are in relationships or who are married or anything else. Please do not take my response that way. But my question is - why is it so "tragic" these days if someone is single? It seems as if everybody spends much of their waking time thinking about whether or not they have a date Friday night and the never do something with their lives. I personally have a number of a friends (girls tend to be the worst offenders) that gain their self-esteem from whether or not they are in a relationship. That seems horrible to me (and a really crummy way to live).

I don't know...mini-rant I suppose. I guess I just don't see what the big deal is about being single. Yeah, it *can* be lonely at times. But even people in relationships can be lonely. (On the flip side, I do know singles who can be alone, but their not lonely.) Being single offers so many advantages - your time is yours, your money is yours, you aren't tied down, and single people (especially ones who are content with that) tend to adventure a lot more.

Why being single = a bad thing, I don't think I'll totally understand.

Any response back from anybody here on Slashdot?

Re:The "from the..." Department

[smooth wombat]

More or less agree since the logic is that if you're single, you're somehow worth less than someone who's with someone (i.e. you're a loser). Sort of like if a woman isn't married by 30, she's over the hill.

As far as the money/time/etc is concerned, agreed, it is yours and it is great not having to worry about anyone bouncing a check, spending more than you had planned or a whole host of other things.

The flip side, as you allude to, is that there are those times you want to spend it with someone, whether a football game, a movie or a simply walk in the woods. Then there's the whole human touch thing for those of us who are of the affectionate type. It's especially difficult when you work with a few cuties and your mind has lascivious thoughts of them throughout the day. Not good for work performance.

Then again, dating is like combat so it's not necessarily an easy thing to do.

But then, what do I know? I have an entire region of women who want nothing to do with me unless they want a problem solved.

Re:The "from the..." Department

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that, quite frankly, one of the most painful issues with being single for geeks is when we have friends who constantly enjoy the pleasures of physical relationships. I, for one, have a friend who is constantly "pulling women from the bar" because "variety is the spice of life". Sure, he's always complaining to me that he will never find a good girl... But at least he's getting to have some fun in the sack.

For us pragmatic geeks who think about consequences, consider other peoples feelings, and simultaneously have the same mammalian urges as our more risky, wreckless friends, it's clear how one can feel that being lonely is tragic. ... comming from a 24 year old virgin who has more experience writing in assembly than hacking into panties.

Re:The "from the..." Department

[merreborn]

why is it so "tragic" these days if someone is single?

I believe the "moral" imperative to "be fruitful and multiply" comes from a desire of certain subgroups (mostly religious and ethnic in nature) to grow themselves. People born in to your church/ethnic group are pretty likely to stay loyal to it.

From this simple goal come many other "moral" values: anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-homosexuality, anti-promiscuity, anti-interracial marriage, and anti-singlehood.

However, the world in which these values formed is very different from the world we know today. A few centuries ago, with high infant and childhood mortality, a much higher birthrate was necessary to produce enough adults of childbearing age (the extra hands on the farm helped too).

Today, childhood mortality is incredibly low meaning most children make it to child-bearing age. The threat of overpopulation, rather than extinction, is now looming. Additionally, birth control dramatically alters the consequences of sex.

Our moral values are only slowly catching up, hence the intense clashes over abortion and homosexuality.

In short, being single is "bad" because we still have yet to shed some antiquated moral beliefs that aren't nearly as applicable in the modern world as they once were.

Thank You.

[cadeon]

I've been wondering the exact same things, but been too apathetic and lazy to do the work.

This is genuinely relevant to my interests, and made my day better.

BTW, those signs are illegal

[sootman]

If you hate them as much as I do, visit this site for tips and contact your local code enforcement office.

Legally, they are no different from litter. If you don't have a permit to leave something in a public place, it's nothing but trash. That said, the neanderthal assholes who post them might not be aware of that* and almost certainly won't be happy if they catch you taking them down, legally right or not, so be careful when picking up trash.

* and I'm sure the assholes who SELL the signs never mention it, either.

Re:Well done

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to bitch about the submitter advertising his company in the summary but after reading the article, I say that he has earned it. I didn't much care about this company but the whole detective process was quite fascinating.

Agreed.

What I'd like to see next is this guy taking out the "Crazy Fox" scam. Late-night TV commercials with the same video, namely a poorly-rendered CGI fox, talking about what an awesome home-based-business... yadda yadda yadda. The commercials are identical, except for a random number prefixed or suffixed to the domain name containing the string "crazyfox".

It's obviously a pyramid scheme of some sort, but the mechanism of spamvertizing it is ultimately the same as that employed by the "randomaffiliatename"{singles|dating}.com scam. The only difference is that it uses TV commercials (which are probably the "thing" being "sold" by the people at the top of the pyramid) instead of lawn signs.

Re:Slow News Day?

[RobertB-DC]

Okay, I understand the need for new and fresh content to keep the customers coming back, but an article about a dating site that uses town names from across America?

Let's think this through:

1. Anyone who wants to get more Obama can go to news.google.com and read through several dozen international news sources, as well as the Huffington Post and Fox "News", and get more than enough of the regular headlines.

2. Slashdot, as a news aggregator, is finding slim pickins on the tech side, as Obamamania sucks the oxygen out of every other news story. Cool for us political wonks, not so cool for CowboyNeal & co.

3. This really is a nationwide conspiracy. Every tiny suburb and exurb of Dallas is frequently spammed by these guys. I thought they were a local outfit, so it's very interesting to see the extent of their reach.

4. The way the guy investigated is cool, and I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my own DomainTools.com account to "paid" status, now that I know that it really works.

5. Last, but CERTAINLY not least, it's about a DATING SITE. Dating, as you may have heard, is part of the mating ritual of Homo Sapiens Solaris, aka "those of us who have emerged from our parents' basements". It involves meeting FEMALES, which is kind of an awesome concept when you think about it. Opportunities for +5 Funny moderations abound (deserved or not).

I think the "Together Dating" guerrilla marketing behemoth, with its sign spam, is reaching the same shallow end of the gene pool that buys enough v1@g@ra to keep our inboxes full of e-spam. Pretty sad. Especially when there's a free dating site that almost certainly generates better results. But I guess some folks think, if you don't pay for it, it's not worth anything. Hopefully, those folks won't be asking me for a date.

Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Has been around since long before the web- this is just their latest marketing technique. I'm actually a somewhat satisfied customer- turned out to be a great way for a geek to get a family, just faxed them my commute map and they introduced me to a gal who became my wife two years later. It helped greatly that her apartment was halfway home on my commute.

Re:Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

$3600 actually, and that's where the somewhat comes in. It came to prepaying $100 for each introduction, used or unused, in blocks of 36. I only needed 5- so you could look at it that I was taken for $3100.

Women were charged significantly less- my wife bought in blocks of 6 instead of 36, and I was her 12th introduction.

The cost included at that time "therapy sessions" which allowed you to discover and refine what you wanted in a mate. Given the gals I was introduced to- I was either confused or they weren't using that part correctly.

Re:Together

[asylumx]

RTFA, it explains this (in my own words): The localized domains give the impression that this is a local shop so the perceived likelyhood of finding a match are higher.

Re:Together

[ShadowBlasko]

The hell with printing them... Just the signs alone.

The price of Coroplast has tripled over the last 24 months. I buy 4'x8' sheets of it for making cages for small animals. My price went from around $6 to over $25!

Recycling election signs works nicely though...

Re:Together

[demi]

I can see two or three minor arguments for using a top-level .com address: One is a result of your argument--among anyone who has a vague idea that domain names have to be purchased, they may have an understanding that it might be kind of expensive, and therefore it seems more "selective" than something which is obviously just a hierarchy. That is, the internal logic goes like this: "houston.dating.com" is just part of "dating.com", it's not special for houston, but "houstondating.com" is only for houston so there'll be a lot of locals in it. The second is that people actually just screw up subdomains to a surprising degree. People seeing a sign will remember the words "houston dating dot com"--they never remember dots or hyphens or anything like that. So they go home and type "houston dating.com" or "houstondating.com" in their web browsers and get your site. (In actuality, they often type "www.houstondating.com" as well, regardless if that's correct or not).

Re:Together

[Gat0r30y]

To give the illusion that this is actually some sort of local organization?

Re:Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That seems like a lot of money spent to find someone. But as long as your happy with what you bought, then it was a good buy.

Yes, in the end, I believe it was worth it. My little 5 year old is pretty happy to be alive too. Of course, had I known then what I know now about these dating sites, I would have argued with them and purchased a smaller block.

Guess the bonus for a female using the site, is that your going ot find a guy who has $3600 of disposable income. So, he should be able to blow some cash on you. lol.

That's assuming that the competition since then (it's been 10 years for me) hasn't drastically lowered the price.

Re:Together

[piltdownman84]

$3600 is only 18 good nights out at the bar, so its relatively cheap in comparison. Plus if you found someone you end up falling in love with then thats priceless.

Re:Together

[raehl]

$3600 is only 18 good nights out at the bar, so its relatively cheap in comparison.

There is something wrong with either where or how much you are drinking.

Re:Together

[conspirator57]

not in oversaturated markets. When these started springing up around DC with different neighborhood/town names in the same style I leaped to the conclusion the article draws. It is good to see it confirmed though. Additionally, since the geographical granularity is so hilariously fine, it seemed less than likely that non-transplant locals were behind it. (Of course it could have been non-transplant franchisees getting buffaloed by their franchise distributor.)

Franchise distributors have a strong proclivity to assume your market is like the market where they come from and bully you into making decisions that are more valid for that market than yours. E.g. I knew a Blimpie franchise owner who was bullied by the franchiser into following a NY-NJ business model for a fast food restaurant: find an office building and rely on the building to supply the majority of your customers. The problems with this in the DC area are several, but here are two of the biggest:

      -most DC buildings are smaller than NY buildings (esp in DC itself due to the convention of not building higher than the Washington monument.)
      -due to lower population density and poorer public transit, parking is usually needed in DC whereas NY restaurants can ignore this, relying on foot traffic.

These and others contributed to the failure of the franchise.

As an aside, knowledge of how to sleuth out domain registration and correlation is somewhat de rigeur for most of us in the Slashdot audience, and as such should reduce the newsworthiness of the story.

Re:Together

[ShadowBlasko]

No, thats fine. Ask.

We have a small animal rescue (wildlife and guinea pig) and "Cubes & Coroplast"(p) is about the best thing you can use for Guinea Pigs.

Most store bought cages are criminally undersized for active, grazing, social creatures.

Re:Together

[Chapter80]

Women were charged significantly less- my wife bought in blocks of 6 instead of 36.

This is exactly why I signed up for the service posing as a woman. Cheaper.

Unfortunately there's no checkbox for the ladies to check "Seeking Man Posing as a woman to get a better deal", so I had to resort to posing as a Lesbian.

Wonder why I am still single.

Re:Who you gonna call?

[Enry]

Ghostbusters.

Duh.

Re:but do they work ?

[0100010001010011]

If you're looking, I'm a big fan of plentyoffish.com. I'm a bit biased since I met my current girlfriend there. It's 100% free. Minimal (very very minimal) ads and ... I like it is all.

I always thought they were NSA and CIA messages

[HomerJ]

I thought secret agents about various towns would go to these websites and put in their "special" information. Then they could get secure messages back and forth. If someone else used them, they just got some boiler plate thing. I thought the whole thing was a vast government project. Like those CIA numbers stations.

I'm disappointed to find out it's nothing more than spam for a "dating" site. Really kills my faith in conspiracy theories.

Re:but do they work ?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Ok, here's a negative- they took me for $3100 for introductions contracted for that I never used because they required guys to buy in blocks of 36 introductions where they only required women to buy in blocks of 6.

Of course, I haven't had contact since they closed their Oregon office a year after I got married....

Re:but do they work ?

[eln]

plentyoffish.com

That sounds like the perfect site for me...people tell me I'm plenty offish all the time!

Re:signs

[billcopc]

Naw, because some asshat lawyer will steal the idea:

"Married ?
LincolnDivorce.com"

And then we'll have to kill them.

Friend got scammed

[db10]

.. I didn't believe him when he told me he paid ~$2500 for this.. He tried to get his money back after he realized that he wasn't getting any dates, with no luck. A fool and his money are soon parted my friends.

Re:Well done

[ShaunC]

I'm more concerned about the "send us your old and worn out gold jewelry ads".

Rob Cockerham recently tested out their scam by sending them a bunch of junk spray-painted gold. They sent him back a check! It was only $1 or so, I guess it's a consolation prize they send to anyone who bothers to mail in an envelope.

Someone else tried it with actual gold and found that the prices they're willing to quote you (at least initially) are way below the true value, but if you complain about their offer, they'll make a reasonable one.

Re:How Much Did You Pay?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Nope, never used the remaining 31 introductions, and my local office of Together got sold to something called Relationships NW, which went bankrupt a few months later.

That was 8 years ago.

So the only thing I got out of it was a very satisfying marriage and a little boy with CP who is happy all the time (in fact, that was his first word- happy- amazing that his mother and I, both of whom are very pessimistic people, have a child who is so happy).

Re:but do they work ?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I think she's worth the full $3600, plus the wasted dates with the 4 other women I met.

Re:How Much Did You Pay?

[Nefarious Wheel]

$3600. About $3100 of that was wasted, as I purchased a block of 36 introductions and only used 5.

Yes, most things you spend on toward a wedding are a ripoff, anyway. I bought two dozen oysters for our wedding night and at least three of them didn't work.

Re:but do they work ?

[bytta]

I think she's worth the full $3600, plus the wasted dates with the 4 other women I met.

I'll give you $4000 for her.