Cash For Tweets and Facebook Posts? Aussie Startup Pays You to Astroturf

An anonymous reader writes "While the celebs are already charging big money for their Tweets, an Aussie startup is ranking everyday people and turning them into product salespeople. After a successful start Down Under they have now hit Silicon Valley, but will Americans embrace selling to their friends?" From the article: "In a nutshell, individuals sign up to the Social Loot website and are assigned companies to promote to their circle of online friends. They are then paid on a sliding scale based on the amount of traffic their posts generate, and the quality of referrals and number of resulting sales. This is tracked by a code embedded in the links promoted by Social Loot’s spruikers."

Comments

This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[niftydude]

You make a good point. When the Alan Jones cash for comments scandal broke, he got absolutely slammed in court for not disclosing who was paying him to promote various things on his show.

The same should apply to tweets. They are broadcasts, and so the people making them should disclose whether it is advertising or not.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[zr]

Can't have it both ways. Either free speech, paid or not, or, a form of censorship. Because someone will have to be enforcing the disclosure requirement. and that someone would _have_ to be given authority to investigate any twitterer. On the scale of the internet this is _insane_.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Cryacin]

Sounds like the Twits and Facepalmers have a Web 2.0 version of Amway to me. Friends selling to friends (about to be former friends).

Re:This should be considered illegal

[clang_jangle]

It doesn't really matter -- twitter is cutting their own throat allowing this kind of slimy stuff. It's just a matter of time til everyone knows twitter is for suckers that want to read a bunch of really short astroturf. Plus this kind of behavior is practically eternal. "Caveat Emptor", "a fool and his money are soon parted". It's just real life continuing to spread on the internet.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[__aaltlg1547]

Since when is pitching products illegal. It's not something I'd do to my friends for products I don't believe in though.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Endovior]

If it worked as well as all that, you might have a case for 'fraud'. But in practice... it really doesn't. It's a fundamental principle of marketing... though people are pretty stupid, they aren't quite as stupid as you'd like them to be. If you go around advertising to your 'friends' on a regular basis, they WILL catch on, even if you try to be sneaky about it. And then you'll have less friends, and you'll have less people to advertise to. You can mitigate this somewhat by being selective, and not bothering everyone you know every time you get an offer... but if you do that, then you're seriously limiting your own effectiveness, and probably not making worthwhile money, unless you're VERY good at the selectiveness, and have particularly rich and gullible friends (unlikely). So you either crash and burn right away by doing too much or too little, and even if you try to strike a balance, you'll scare a bunch of people away regardless. As such, your job really ends up being a little bit of "think up clever advertising strategies", but mostly "make lots of new friends quickly to replace the ones you've alienated by vomiting ads all over them". This latter is called 'networking', and in practice, the other people who are doing it are in more or less the same line of work you're in. This is, not incidentally, why most of these things wind up becoming multi-level deals; networkers are inherently parasitic, and they can't really succeed without having some way to take advantage of the contact circles of lesser networkers. To actually make a living off this line of work, your job has to be "sucker other people into alienating their friends by pushing services on them for your own personal profit"; to get rich off it, your job has to be "find people who are good at suckering other people, and sucker them into working for you".

Given all that, you might argue that MLM's should be illegal (a worthy argument, but too much money behind them to make it stick). Compared to such juggernauts, small fries like Social Loot, that offer neither the multi-level structure nor all that much in the way of payouts, are hardly a blip on the radar. Seriously, they're hiring people to put more spam on Facebook. It's like pissing into an ocean of piss. It works, of course, because they only pay for results. Like with any internet ads, there won't be all that many. Essentially, their business model is "convince people to betray their friends for pocket change". And there'll always be more then a few assholes out there willing to do just that.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[similar_name]

What's the problem. This sounds like a revolution in web 2.0 synergies. You win and your friends win by getting vital decision making information regarding the brands they already love. For more information just follow this link?spammer=on&friends=off

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not insane, you just close down the Aussie business.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Kozz]

Phew. Thank you for reminding me to bump up my threshold after moderation.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[flappinbooger]

This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.

What if I post my dropbox referral code? I don't get anything but free space.

Ahem - hey, I like dropbox, check it out! http://db.tt/hfwPL1N Sign up with that code and you get 500 megs free too!

lol. It's funny because it's true.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[nedlohs]

It's specifically an Australian company. Australia does have some rules about having to disclose when you are being paid to say something.

They apply to the media, but who knows when a court will decide that a tweet is the same as a hosting a radio show.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[rtb61]

This has nothing to do with selling product. This is all about corruptly flooding forums with trolls, thousands of them. The marketing and promotional lie is selling products to friends the reality is poisoning every possible social network with an endless stream of bullshit marketing.

How long will an social site's last when you have a couple of hundred thousand trolls flooding the site with links, desperate to collect a couple of cents per click.

The guy is nothing but another mass trolling pig. Doesn't give a crap about people's social interactions, quite happy to bring them all crashing down, basically he wants to become a social forum spammer and that's what the arse hole is selling to corporations.

You can filter out some IP's but not hundreds of thousands of scattered ones, you can block robots but not hundreds of thousands of pathetic greedy ignorant trolls.

A purveyor of lies on a mass scale. Of course the trolls he employs will become the most hated people on the internet, kicked out of social network after social network.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Question - is Farmville advertising fraud? I assume my friends get some sort of virtual crap if I click their link and visit their farm, but that's not on the link I see. Virtual property is property too, and virtual referral bonuses have been all over the net for years. At least with a system like this, you can get some actual cash in exchange for shilling.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[EzInKy]

How do you know Microsoft Office respects your privacy, do you have access to the source? From what I've heard Microsoft at the very least keeps track of the hardware on which you run its software.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[million_monkeys]

You make a good point. When the Alan Jones cash for comments scandal broke, he got absolutely slammed in court for not disclosing who was paying him to promote various things on his show. The same should apply to tweets. They are broadcasts, and so the people making them should disclose whether it is advertising or not.

Or you could just not be friends with people who will spam you with crap so they can earn 8 cents a week.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[poetmatt]

Privacy Policies don't exist at the moment in a complicated form to help you or define your rights. it's for legal indemnity for any company that has them if it's more than 8-10 sentences long.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[joocemann]

This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.

Kill it before it multiplies. Hang and eviscerate on site.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[joocemann]

You dont understand ho astroturfing works. The goal is transparency and deception. Astroturfing appears as opinion, but is actually scumbag capitalism.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

The moral of the story is corporate capitalism is based on lies.

So for people who are against this let me serve the alternative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto

 

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no more fraudulent than ANY other type of advertising. You must be an American to claim, "There oughta be a law!"

How could you possible propose that lying should be illegal? Would you want to be held accountable for each and every untruth that has ever issued forth from your own maw? I think not.

But if it were possible to hold people accountable for their lies, where should we start? With the next round of politicians, the next cycle of television & radio spots, the next generation of humans?

Perhaps we should speak to God and seek the answer there?

Muahahahahaa!!

Re:This should be considered illegal

[EzInKy]

I admit I'm very impressed! I know I'm sticking my neck out depending on the eyes of many others to verify that open source programs such as libreoffice respect privacy, but you relying on the output of a disasembler to reveal all potential downfalls of a program all by your lonesome far exceeds my meager abilities. My hat is off to you!

Re:This should be considered illegal

[million_monkeys]

You dont understand ho astroturfing works. The goal is transparency and deception. Astroturfing appears as opinion, but is actually scumbag capitalism.

As I understand it, astroturfing doesn't work without people to participate in the process. Don't be friends with those people and you won't have to wonder whether you're hearing opinion or advertising.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[MiG82au]

Oh fuck no. Don't you start making "site" a homonym for seeing things (sight).

Re:This should be considered illegal

[wmbetts]

This will fall under what I call "affiliate marketing laws" and the FTC is very serious about them. Go read their website (the ftc) and you'll see how many people and companies they've sued recently.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[wannabgeek]

Are you telling me that this is gonna kill Facebook and Twitter? Really? REALLY?
Naa, you're just saying it to make me happy!

Re:This should be considered illegal

[EdIII]

I know!

Started to giggle like a little child on Christmas Day when I heard that :)

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, don't "loose" it; he "should of" said sight. ; )

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The point is that the entire of goal of astroturfing is to make it as hard as possible to distinguish astroturf from genuine opinion. If you can't tell the difference then you can't unfriend only the astroturfers. Especially when the astroturfer realyl is genuine 90% of the time and only schills on rare occasion.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Plunky]

Are you telling me that this is gonna kill Facebook and Twitter? Really? REALLY?

In previous years, usenet was a social gathering ground on the internet.. being unmoderated was its strength, but also its weakness and Canter & Siegel started a movement that killed it eventually. This has the capability to kill off twitter and facebook sure, but since they both have a controlling entity who could institute moderation then perhaps they can stave off demise by some quick thinking..

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Dr_Barnowl]

This one relies on embedded codes in their URLs to measure their effectiveness ; it wouldn't be difficult to detect.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[N1AK]

You can filter out some IP's but not hundreds of thousands of scattered ones, you can block robots but not hundreds of thousands of pathetic greedy ignorant trolls.

Which doesn't really matter on a social network. I have a limited number of contacts. If the filters the site use don't work then it's a few seconds work for me to ignore or remove the person who posted it. People have been doing company sponsored advertising for years, the get a free iPad links being one of the more recent examples. Some people don't consider the negative impact their astroturfing has on the people who it is sent to; remove them and if you feel like it politely explain why.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[genghisjahn]

They've been doing it on slashdot for years. Time to expand I guess.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[TheRaven64]

How do you know Microsoft Office respects your privacy, do you have access to the source?

You don't need it. It runs on your local machine, so you can check every network connection that it makes and, more importantly, you can trivially prevent it from making any network connections.

From what I've heard Microsoft at the very least keeps track of the hardware on which you run its software.

And the reason you know this (it's related to Windows Update, not MS Office specifically) is that people did intercept the data sent to Microsoft from Windows Update and found out exactly what was being sent.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[TheRaven64]

It's just a matter of time til everyone knows twitter is for suckers that want to read a bunch of really short astroturf

About minus four years?

Re:This should be considered illegal

[LordSnooty]

bit.ly much? Is it reasonable that I check the outcome of every shortened URL for referrer data?

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure all popular twitter clients unroll shortened URLs for you automatically. Unless you're reading twitter through netcat, there's nothing to check.

Anyways, someone will probably just launch a bot looking for links with that referral and calling out shills.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Maow]

I just knew you'd be here, blowing smoke up Microsoft's arse or slamming Google for something unrelated.

How much do you get paid for this bullshilling you have been doing now for such a long time under oh-so-many different accounts?

Do you look forward to the competition from Social Loot, or do you work for/through them now?

Anyway, good work - any pay you receive is too much as you are such an obvious shill.

And, before you protest that you don't get paid -- well if that's true then you need psych help; but we all know it ain't true. Real fan-boys don't put the care into their posts that you do; they're far too sloppy.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.

That's why manufacturers/advertisers should just pay Facebook/Twitter/etc to remove the negative comments. Like already happens on shopping web-sites.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad for this - Anything that ruins social networks is totally great with me.

They are responsible for ruining society (Along with talent shows and reality tv).

The end justifies the means.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[tbannist]

The guy is nothing but another mass trolling pig. Doesn't give a crap about people's social interactions, quite happy to bring them all crashing down, basically he wants to become a social forum spammer and that's what the arse hole is selling to corporations.

The world you're looking for is capitalist or "job creator" if you're Republican. This is practically the history of corporations. Find a new untapped resource and spoil it for everyone else by monetising it in the filthiest way possible until the "evil government" steps in to protect people from the "upstanding businessman" who is "creating wealth".

I fully agree with you, Facebook and Twitter will be entering a war with companies like this if they know what's good for them. This is really no different from the endless SEO war that is waged against Google's search engine. There are always people willing to ruin it for everyone else so they can personally benefit.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[jpapon]

You don't need it. It runs on your local machine, so you can check every network connection that it makes and, more importantly, you can trivially prevent it from making any network connections.

I'm not saying office does anything but malicious, but it would be trivial for Microsoft to put a backdoor in their own OS.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[jpapon]

Right, because there are only two alternatives, pure capitalism and communism. Brilliant.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Just hook a Linux box with wireshark and two network cards between your machine and the network switch or router, and Microsoft's backdoor activity (if any) will be revealed.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[queazocotal]

Assuming they are incompetent.
For example, the 'microsoft update' scheme is as I understand it run on an unencrypted protocol.
There would be nothing stopping office telling the update client to send a few bytes of data along with that stream.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Spacejock]

Yep, and if anyone tweets me this crap I'll just unfollow them. When enough people do that their scant pennies in commission will dwindle along with their followers.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Opportunist]

You don't have to, there's various "un-shortening" and "URL lengthening" services, along with plugins for pretty much every browser, available that do it for you, often fully transparently.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Opportunist]

Don't worry about Facebook (or, in my case, don't get your hopes up).

What will happen is simply this: FB will notice that there are people getting paid to spill crap. They'll change their TOS and forbid shilling (at least if you don't pay them for it), a few people will get their account banned and everyone else will cower in fear of being the next and the whole crap stops.

What's left is the "professional" shills. Just like you have today.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Opportunist]

Hush! If anyone from the IRS hears you they want some virtual property tax or similar bull.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Opportunist]

Damn rite... Its a sham two sea that people don't no their language and it's spelling rules...

Re:This should be considered illegal

[hackula]

Ha! Good luck with that disassembler. The output on those things is something between assembly language and vomited up hotdog. You would probably have to search through 10s of millions of lines of the stuff, which could not even be runtime tested, since there is no way in hell you are going to take the output and clean it up enough to recompile it. Also, it is probably not exactly labeled.

using Microsoft.IO.Evil

...

//Phone Home Module ------ Mwahaha

public class PhoneHomeMessenger(string firstName, string lastName, string creditCardNumber, List secretWebcamPhotos)

{ .... }

Re:This should be considered illegal

[rtb61]

How about destroying every public review site on the internet all full of pennies per review 10 out 10 for the crappiest products imaginable. The only saving grace, there are plenty of greedy arse holes just like him and they will end up eating each others lunch and going broke trying to run fraudulent scams.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[hackula]

Wireshark can be trivially bipassed. It cannot even sniff any https traffic. I am certain MS could encrypt this sort of thing.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[joocemann]

Wtf? reactionary hyperbole?

Re:This should be considered illegal

[RobertLTux]

do this the simple way and if you run FireFox load the "long Url Please" addon

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

brain ... hurty ...

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Dan541]

How long will an social site's last when you have a couple of hundred thousand trolls flooding the site with links,...

They seem to be coping just fine at the moment.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Dan541]

It's not Facebook or Twitter that need to react. It's the people who receive the message. I unfollow and unfriend people who post pointless spam, that's the solution. People lose their audience and soon they are worth nothing.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

But encrypted traffic can still be seen. Perhaps not the contents, but the fact that X data of size Y is being sent to Z server. And that's enough in many cases.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like your option worked out for anyone - the former Soviet Union, China (before they became hyper-Capitalists), North Korea, Vietnam (again, another country getting it's head out of its ass and becoming Capitalists).
Die, you stupid Communist.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Canter and Siegel did not kill usenet. The web killed usenet.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that you haven't learned anything about making wild predictions from your past experiences

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech is not "free to say anything and not clarify, explain or be truthful in what you are saying" this is not new.. Libel, Slander, Fire in a theater the list of abridgments of "free speech" is long and varied..

Also If you wanna speak just to advertising and how free speech interacts.. I point you at all the tobacco advertising you do not see on any broadcast medium at all in the US..

As to your enforcement nightmare the thing is.. that is trivial to block at the server level entirely by removing referrer codes which is already comically easy and done across every social medium by third parties.. but the best part is that it is illegal from the get go due to your friends not having gotten your permission to gather information from you, and relay it to their bosses.. this scheme will fall on its face.. as your friends list drops to 0, and you start getting blocked because all your doing is shitting out "noise" on social media..

But just because I am feeling prickish, you should be aware that there is *no* free speech within commercial world.. If Slashdot said that noone could ever say anything about Apple or Windows.. no "free speech" laws anywhere would protect you and let you rant about either company... similarly twitter is the ultimate arbiter of who gets to use its service and how they may do so..

So take your free speech and illogical misunderstanding of reality of both the "free speech" laws worldwide, as well as the realities of the internet and commercial use of same...and tell your Australian overlord's that the plan is doomed :P

Re:This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no saying that twitter is "allowing" it, and I am fairly certain that they are not focusing on twitter exclusively...

The interesting discussion is.. do you currently filter your moronic friends spamming crap from social media such as OMG GIVE ME MORE WHATEVER IN THIS GAME I AM PLAYING 20,000 times a day? or do you read it and click and respond?

I am fairly certain that even with *no* action on the part of anyone to actively shut them down they will vanish into thin air rapidly... as did all the throwup inducing comet cursor infested websites that people made in the netscape era.. if your signal to noise ratio drops below their personal threshold and they start missing the important lolcats and funny kitten pictures.. they will simply unfriend you /stop following you/ perhaps ostracize you in real life even! who knows its crazy!

Re:This should be considered illegal

[jpapon]

I was merely pointing out that there is a vast middle ground lying between Capitalism and Communism, and that it's ludicrous to try to push either one as the only viable alternative.

what Klout is about to be

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that.

http://klouchebag.com/#slashdot

oh no here come shills,

[lister king of smeg]

i quit reading facebook update because of all of the adds for different games and crap on facebook. all i wanted was to know what my freinds who do not live near me where doing in meatspace now all there is are posts of "look at this funny/inspirational/religious/photoshopped picture some else posted i and i am reposting" and "i am playing a flash game you need to play the flash game to" i don't want to see more freaking adds. can we a decrapafied section of the Internet where we all agree that any spammer or shill are to be kicked out and never allowed back in?

Re:oh no here come shills,

[r1348]

While I agree with your overall point, you shouldn't post when drunk.

Re:oh no here come shills,

[lightknight]

Working on it. First thing to fix: the search engine. I think Google has gotten all the money they are possibly going to get at this point from overlooking SEOs, and should start delisting all of them immediately. Ask the founders to try and find something using their own search engine; when they find it littered with ads, perhaps they will feel motivated to find a way to fix it.

On a separate note, I've been equally annoyed about the Web 2.0, sell your Facebook friends, kind of thing. I have a few friends who are busy pimping various products from their family business with constant updates, and frankly, it's getting annoying.

For the record, I do not mind (beware: the programmer variant of "mind") a friend or acquaintance letting me know that they provide services or products in a certain area. However, you only get to do it once (unless you change businesses, and even then, if it's more than once every six months...). Leave a business card, and do not try to convince me that being social means buying your product or patronizing your place of business. When I've reviewed your company, at my leisure, against your competitors, I'll decide whether to give you a try. Which puts you on the 1-0 cycle -> your company gets to put out one shoddy product before it gets back on track, or I drop it. That means you get to put out one Vista, one Me, one screw-up before I blackball your company. And I highly recommend not making a habit of it.

Re:oh no here come shills,

[MrAngryForNoReason]

can we a decrapafied section of the Internet

I don't really use Facebook so I can't give you a specific guide but you can just filter out all that stuff so only 'real' posts appear on your page.

Re:oh no here come shills,

[MrAngryForNoReason]

I don't see how any of that is different from having an annoying friend who constantly goes on about his business or keeps handing you leaflets every time you see them. Just tell them you aren't interested, if they keep doing it then tell them it is annoying and ask them to stop. If they don't stop then they are obviously so obnoxious you are probably better off not being friends with them anymore.

on a totally unrelated unbiased note

[Anonymous Coward]

Social Loot has the best service to offer so far. We testet all the available options besides Social Loot and Social Loot is the winner for us. Social Loot.

Re:on a totally unrelated unbiased note

[xQx]

Where are my mod points when you need them.

+5 Funny

Re:on a totally unrelated unbiased note

[Monkier]

Hey, you forgot to include a link!
http://www.socialloot.com/?ref=Monkier21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D

Re:on a totally unrelated unbiased note

[Chuck Chunder]

If only there was a website where you could pay people with mod points to mod for you.

Re:on a totally unrelated unbiased note

[LordSnooty]

I'm going to click that because I like your style.

Hellz to the...

[Anonymous Coward]

...yeah, bitches!!

--TechNY/TechLA/Bonch/OverlyCriticalGuy/DCTech/Insightin140bytes/InterestingFellow/Cgeys/westlake/D'Aldredge

:-)

Ah, excellent...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

According to TFA, this 'social loot' nonsense requires some sort of affiliate ID baked in(presumably to the usual bit of gibberish at the end of the URL) for tracking the spamming performance of their little minions.

With any luck, this should allow automated recognition of people who are astroturfing for these guys and it's always good to have a new way of identifying awful people. At a service level, the astroturf can then be removed, downranked by search engines, etc. At a personal level, we can each do our part by reminding those culprits we know that spammers are abhuman scum who go to the special hell, and deserve it.

Re:Ah, excellent...

[ohnocitizen]

Heh, my first thought too was that this is a way to filter people. For otherwise close friends, block their feeds, and have a talk with them in person. For anyone else, instant de-friending. Alternatively, it provides a way to get a list of companies who want to lie their way into your wallet. A useful thing to know and act on.

Re:Ah, excellent...

[tbannist]

Not really, most of them will probably be companies you never would have heard of otherwise. This is probably going to work on the same principle as spam. They'll post a million shill messages and if they sell 4 of the product, it'll be consider a "success".

Ah-ha!

[Black Parrot]

I was wondering why all my friends suddenly started trying to get me to buy a 747 with a big laser on it.

Re:Ah-ha!

[allo]

i would like a shark with a fricking laser on it.

sue them

[Smiddi]

This is a much better way to stay in touch with your customer base then suing them (eh MPAA?)

So, is it age related or IQ related...

[NotQuiteReal]

How Internet smart are you? (And, for a bonus point is it correct to capitalize Internet?)

I can see it both ways - the youth will be jaded with familiarity about how the world works (wait - new patent idea = "how the worlds works + ON THE INTERNET") vs the wisdom of the more experienced... I don't have a good sample - my kids, are, well, young(er) AND smart, so I have confounding factors in my data points... but they don't believe half the shit on the Internet as it is. How old is the phrase "caveat emptor", anyhow? And yet, a sucker is born every minute...

Bottom line; Everything evens out at an ever higher level of subtlety, as far as the trees go, but the rhythm of the forest remains the same.

In Britain...

[DemonGenius]

... this kind of business would be called "Shilling For Shillings".

Re:In Britain...

[ColdWetDog]

In the US, we can call it 'Prostituting for Pennies'.

Re:In Britain...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Vietnam, we call it "Dongling for Dongs".

Re:In Britain...

[Anonymous Coward]

how about twats for toonies?

Re:In Britain...

[Fluffeh]

In Poland, we call it "Peddling for Pebbles".

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'm happy to see this happening - it was only a matter of time before what you (each and every one of us on Facebook) endorse with your 'likes' become formalized, paid-for, advertising.

I'd like to see this blow up / wreak havoc on Facebook's ad revenue stream - this is akin to "social network optimization - SNO" as SEO is to google.

Hopefully this becomes widespread enough to inject enough noise into the signal that is Facebook's personally-focused ad targetting. Honestly, I doubt it, but it would be interesting to see it pan out.

Re:It's about time

[couchslug]

"Hopefully this becomes widespread enough to inject enough noise into the signal that is Facebook's personally-focused ad targetting."

Neat experiment. :)

Futurama new this day would come

[alittlebitdifferent]

It was true when they played it. Its still true: http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/udhxf8/futurama-31st-century-internet

Nice astro-turfing! You should have no trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

getting a job. Or are you already working for msft's google smear campaign? You sure sound like it.

BTW: your post makes no sense what-so-ever. And the company you love so well has been caught astroturfing and "phoning home" and much more.

Re:Nice astro-turfing! You should have no trouble

[symbolset]

I'm thinking that was sarcasm. Poe's law though being what it is...

Innovative new spam ideas!

[multicoregeneral]

Just when you thought all the innovation in spam ideas was over... they hit you with another one. This is only marginally better than the 20,000 or so previous innovative spam ideas, but it's still missing the point of direct advertising on the internet. You're not moving product on the internet unless you're giving people a reason to like you. If they don't like you, they're not going to buy from you. And there's nothing that makes people like you less than spam. Call it social media advertising, call it gods gift to god knows what. It's still an attempt to trick people into buying something they would otherwise have no interest in. And unless it's significantly cheaper than Facebook ads, there's no reason for it to even exist. Or maybe that's the point? In any case, it's dumb, because I said so. And since I'm awesome, you should listen to me. So there.

Block It

[LordLucless]

I don't know about Twitter at least, but on Facebook, all the posts came from the Social Loot application. It took all of 5 seconds to "block all posts from Social Loot" to my wall, and now I need never know of its existence (except for Slashdot - thanks guys).

Re:Block It

[Naso540]

Very nice pull - love that idea.

Re:Block It

[csumpi]

#
# /etc/hosts
#

127.0.0.1 localhost twitter.com fb.com facebook.com ... ...

No more trust.

[ZorinLynx]

Great. So now when a friend or acquaintance says something nice about a product or service, I won't be able to trust their opinion because I won't know if they were paid to say it or not.

Nice job polluting Twitter and other sites with stupid marketing and more distrust in what people say. It's freaking bad enough already.

Re:No more trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: if they provide you with a long-ass referrer link, that should be a red flag.

Re:No more trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice job polluting Twitter and other sites with stupid marketing and more distrust in what people say. It's freaking bad enough already.

You must be new here.

Re:No more trust.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Protip: If they rap it up with Bitly.com how will you know???

DOH!

Re:No more trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

They will provide bit.ly link of course ;-) long-ass link won't fit into tweet together with ad blurbs.

Re:No more trust.

[MrAngryForNoReason]

If they are the kind of friend who would push products on you just because they are getting paid then you probably couldn't trust their opinion anyway. Now at least you know. The friends who give you a well reasoned recommendation or information about their personal experience with a product / service can probably be trusted. The 'friends' who send you a referrer link out of the blue probably can't.

Re:No more trust.

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Protip: If they rap it up with Bitly.com how will you know???

You will be able to tell by looking at the address in the address bar after you have followed the link. If it is a standard product page link then great, if it has a load of referrer cruft tagged on to the end of it then you may want to take the recommendation with a pinch of salt.

At the end of the day you can either trust your friends and therefore be safe in the assumption that they have your best interests at heart, or you can't.

Re:No more trust.

[msobkow]

I find it interesting that you would call someone you don't trust and know "friend."

The people I call "friend" (as opposed to what Facebook says) are trustworthy. I wouldn't hang around them if they weren't.

Re:No more trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you ever trust a random twitter link anyhow? Do you run around shilling shit in real life ? no.. the problem these companies have is that they are trying desperately to model real world behavior such as "3 of your circle of friends are early X brand phone adopters, if they have a good experience its signifcantly more likely you will buy X brand or at least shop and give that brand slightly more weight than you would the other 500 companies..

The reason this falls apart online is that the relationships are at best arms length (speaking specifically to social media portion of the relationship, not the out of social media part) and unless you are known to me already as an expert in a field.. I am not gonna suddenly start trusting your spammed suggestions to buy/look at a product..

you see because even if I *am* looking to buy a new whatever, i am far more likely to use our real relationship to get your information and thoughts on the subject than to trust random spam from you as gospel..

This is why "microblogging for profit" never works, and why the only apps on any social media to have any traction/profit are games.. which exploit addictive behavior to make $$$

Re:No more trust.

[V for Vendetta]

As mentioned earlier in this thread, there's an app ... erhm ... addon for that: Long URL Please Firefox Addon

Good for them!

[Guppy06]

If social media websites are making a mint off of harvesting personal information, it's high time their users started seeing some money as well.

It's up to the service providers to police their own services, and I feel no pity for them.

Cash for twits.

[gstrickler]

...are assigned companies to promote to their circle of online friends.

What a load of crap. "Go promote this crap you may or may not have used or like, and we'll pay you".

I know not everyone shares my belief on this, but the only way I'll endorse or promote your product is if I believe it's a good product and a good value. Mostly, that means I personally use your product and like it, but there are some cases where I know a product is good and popular, but doesn't serve my needs. In that case, I'll still recommend it to people I think will benefit from it. If I don't know your product, or I don't think it's a good product, or I don't think it's a good value, then I won't promote it, period.

Re:Cash for twits.

[hackula]

Everyone has a price.

Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[grantspassalan]

After politely warning them to cease such activity. I cannot understand why there are so many people that want to involve the government in everything, which is what happens when you advocate something you don't like should be made illegal.

Re:Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[thereitis]

Agreed. I could see this being detrimental to Facebook if enough people started doing it, unless the average person's tolerance for sellout shills is higher than I imagine.

Re:Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[Anonymous Coward]

Phew, half of facebook accounts are already puppet accounts of various astroturfing enterprises/agencies, what's a few more?

Re:Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that when Pizza Hut or Dominos or what ever moron business is doing it has a current advertising campaign that is based entirely on your inability to customize the pizza you are paying for? You think people might have a higher tolerance for sellouts than you expect?

It is almost certain.

Re:Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[marxmarv]

A government that doesn't protect the 99% from the 1%, who have consistently shown themselves to embody the most pernicious, sociopathic forms of Randism (which is all of them), is no government worth having.

Re:Just unfriend such so called "friends"

[El Torico]

You don't understand the purpose of government - It's to protect the 1% from the 99%.

I'd be willing to do this

[Xtifr]

I'd be willing to do this just as soon as I develop a new set of friends that I don't care about, so I don't have to lose the friends I actually like! :)

Re:I'd be willing to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

You say: "...as soon as I develop a new set of friends that I don't care about..." but that's weird. By definition a friend is someone you care about. They are not really your friend if you don't care about them.

The word "friend" has been co-opted by faceplant and similar websites. It has no meaning at all now. If it has no meaning, does that mean we no longer have friends? Or just people we deal with on the 'net are not our friends?

Re:I'd be willing to do this

[hackula]

Yeah, it is totally evil, but I could spam people I don't know. I am sure they will be paying 12 cents an hour, however, so no thanks.

Nothing new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

This was happening albeit on a smaller scale way before the interwebs. How many are old enough to know a friend who joined some scheme such as Avon, Bessemer and a multitude of other sales pyramids?

This is no different. Pretty soon the web sellers will be marked as annoying salesmen by their friends and then ignored. Simple.

Re:Nothing new here...

[TapeCutter]

Heh, I remeber a boss of mine at a small bussiness who caught the Amway bug from a famous cricket player. He came in on Monday and started yammering about it and my first thought was "I'm goinfg to need a new job when is garage is full of the finest stainless steel pots and pans money can buy". Fortunately his wife had more than his ounce of common sense.

Cash in no matter what?

[zAPPzAPP]

Anything I write must tickle at least someone's fancy.

Either I like a product, it makes the company happy, or I don't like it, it makes their competition happy.

So either way, I should get my money right? No need to get influenced by money.

Can I cash in retrospectively for all the things I ever wrote? There must be a lot of money in there. Just need to pitch it to the right 'clients'. $_$

Why pay when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft astroturfers will do it for free.

Re:Why pay when...

[TapeCutter]

If they are doing it for free then it's not astroturf, it's a socially acceptable delusion, it's in the same mold as god, santa, the american dream, the founding fathers, unix for dummies, flying reindeer, and a bottomless sack of loot.

Financially desperate and/or greedy people who cling to the last delusion will always be attracted to the accountanting equivalent of perpetual motion.

Quickly Squelched

[silverhalide]

People have a very low tolerance personal space intrusions. People on the whole have a pretty decent intuition on whether someone genuinely is recommending something vs. is being paid to do so. People also have a pretty good intuition on figuring out who is a paid shill. Anyone who seriously tries to make money from this will quickly find themselves without friends. I can't think of a single friend of mine that would tolerate this shit on their feeds. I hope this gains traction as it will be a quick and easy way to thin out the online social circle.

If this catches on (it won't), you'll just end up with a circle of technically ignorant folks circle-jerking each other for ad revenue while the rest of us get on with our lives.

Re:Quickly Squelched

[Anonymous Coward]

...have a pretty decent intuition on whether someone genuinely is recommending something ...

That's why Nigerian scams ('I am a rich prince' ...) are so rare? No. People are blinded by greed and their prior involvement in what-ever is going on. That and actually needing a plumber at 2 AM is why advertising works. This 'shilling for cents' suggest advertisers aren't satisfied with viral marketing (using genuine customers as advertising).

Adverts for free service has been a part of modern society through radio and TV for decades. It is also how the internet worked before the concept of monetizing consumer data appeared. So the sheeple will suffer a certain amount of harassment, they're used to it. Obviously, there will be a saturation point where the shills are circle-jerking one another and sales of a product are not increasing. So it is in the advertisers interest to avoid saturation. It also behooves FaceBook/Twitter to eliminate users who are not reading posts/adverts. These are worthless mouthpieces, not consumers that can be monetized.

Please wreck facebook.

[Anonymous Coward]

We need something new, seriously. Once the signal to noise ratio gets good enough it won't function as a spy network anymore either.

Let the advertisers know what you think

[mb.72]

I just emailed Minidisc Australia and Social Loot sales this email:
---
Hi guys

I'm a previous customer of yours (I purchased a Cowon J3 a couple of years ago, order no 40580), and previously I've recommended other people buy stuff from you.

I note that you are now using Social Loot advertising (having come across this company via slashdot post):
http://www.socialloot.com/minidisc_australia

My opinion is that the kind of 'shill advertising' promoted by Social Loot is about as low as it gets. As a result, I will:
a) no longer be recommending you, in fact I will be recommending against purchasing from you (and will explain my reasoning regarding the use of Social Loot)
b) no longer consider you for future purchases for myself

I realise I'm just one person. However, I am the 'go to guy' for a number of relatives and friends for technology matters, and based on past experience I am pretty sure that this will cost you a sale every three months or so. Over the course of one year I would estimate lost revenue at AUS$500 - AUS$1000.

If you stop using Social Loot advertising I will be happy to reverse my decision on this matter. Please note I've also cced this email to the Social Loot sales email address - unlike them, and apparently you, I am fine with being honest about my opinions.

Regards

Mike Both
----
If enough people do this, it could make a difference.

Re:Let the advertisers know what you think

[TapeCutter]

GoodonyaMate! and I mean that with sincerity, otherwise I would have said "GoodonYa....Mate!". :)

However the old fart cynic in me says: Good luck competing with "A current affair" and "Today tonight" who have both been shilling these kind of "pocket money" schemes for at least a decade. Then there's "Australia's most read columnist", Andrew Bolt, a shill for God in an Akubra ....errr... I mean the minning industry. And who can forget "Australia's most popular talk show host" Alan Jones,[NSFW]*, a convicted shill with a small army of devoted thugs...errr...I mean dedicated listeners.

In a land where the people are famous for their bullshit detectors such shills should stick out like the proverbial "dog's balls", yet statistics strongly suggest we can't get enough of it.

* - The photo is real but cropped, I remeber it from the 80's when he stood for election under the count-ry party banner, we have some brilliant, yet under-appreciated political photo-journalists in this country.

Re:Let the advertisers know what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Terorist! You are depriving a Corporation of its Rightful Profit.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

[Anonymous Coward]

No one pays us to do this, its just very ingrained.

Transparency?

[DragonWriter]

You dont understand ho astroturfing works. The goal is transparency

Quit the opposite, actually.

time to move on

[Anonymous Coward]

u know when in the 2000`s everyone was talking about the internet...and how people would take it more serious if its used more by businesses? well 12 years later...seems businesses are the only thing that remains.
Freedom of speech X
Freedom of Information X

Those are kinda past time things. Nah...well time to move on.

No spam policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a no spam policy O.o

pft

[Anonymous Coward]

what a shitty idea

already there on many sites

[Anonymous Coward]

People post negative/positive reviews for money.

This is obviously spam-for-hire

[Arrogant-Bastard]

I recommend taking the following steps to defend your operations against spammer Gary Munitz:

1. Block all email to/from socialloot.com. (This might need updating if they register additional domains to avoid blocking. A very common spammer tactic is to use sequentially numbered domains, e.g., example01.com, example02.com, example03.com.)

2. Firewall out 122.252.6.0/24. Make the block is bidirectional so that nobody on your network can reach their allocation. (This will probably need updating if they receive an additional allocation.)

3. If you run a DNSBL or RHSBL, list the domain and the network allocation. If you maintain a list of spammer/phisher/abuser domains, add the domain.

4. If you run an ISP or similar operation, make it a policy that any user participating in this scam will be terminated immediately. Same for mailing lists, web forums, newsgroups, etc.

5. Do not hire anyone who has ever worked for socialloot.com. Make sure that words spread that working for spammer Gary Munitz is toxic.

If it's paid, it's not free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't have it both ways. Either free speech, paid or not, or, a form of censorship. Because someone will have to be enforcing the disclosure requirement. and that someone would _have_ to be given authority to investigate any twitterer. On the scale of the internet this is _insane_.

And, apart from that pithy statement, advertising is not free speech as speech. It's why you can't tell lies in an advert about some other competitor product. It's why you can't use the McD's icon on your product to "aid" your marketing campaign by sponging off an association with them. Etc.

Profit

[wjousts]

1. 1) Get a group of like-minded friends together
2. 2) Set up some junk (is there any other kind) Facebook / Twitter / whatever accounts purely for shilling to each other
3. 3) Use social loot to promote to each other in these junk accounts - just click the links so your buddies can get paid, this could probably be automated
4. 4) ???
5. 5) Profit

Mechanical Turk

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want an army of people to shill for you at various online communities, you can just head on to Mechanical Turk. There you literally pay pennies to people all around the world to do a manual task you specify, like shilling.

Why I left FB

[wcrowe]

This is one of the reasons I quit Facebook, and why I think FB will eventually tank. It won't be long before your wall ends up being nothing but dozens of "posts" from your friends breathlessly raving about cheese-stuffed-something-or-other, or toilet bowl cleaner. Because eventually, if you are on FB, everything you buy is going to be announced to all your FB friends in this way, whether you like it or not.

Re:Why I left FB

[Thuktun]

It won't be long before your wall ends up being nothing but dozens of "posts" from your friends breathlessly raving about cheese-stuffed-something-or-other, or toilet bowl cleaner.

If friends start barking ads, they'll soon find themselves friendless.

This means death

[Anonymous Coward]

There can only be one reason for creating something like this: To kill facebook, twitter and google+

Regional word: spruiker

[Thuktun]

I'd never heard of a "spruiker" before. Had to google it. Still have no idea how to say it.

biblie studies- estudios biblicos

[mvpombo7]

I share my bible studies in Spanish. I hope you can serve many mario pombo estudios biblicos

finally twitter users will be called what they are

[Anonymous Coward]

twits.