The Folly of Faking Fan Sites

GFD writes "Salon has an article on what the media moguls call "internet marketing" where the film makers or the studio creates a bunch of fake amature fan sites, etc. to create buzz. " Wierd, huh? I'm equally annoyed by websites with fake personalities that run them. Like Hemos- he's really written by a team of marketroids ;) I'd like to state for the record that Rob is not Bill Gates. Honest.

Comments

No explosions?

[Skyshadow]

Did we see the same movie? Or are you just forgetting the scene where the first Machine rips itself apart?

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It's been "in release" for a while...

[cirby]

They've been playing "Blair Witch" in ten theaters in major markets for the last few weeks. It's also been at a number of film festivals over the last few months.

Re:Astroturf, anyone?

[dattaway]

Here's a legendary astroturf campain...

Re:Slashdot

[dattaway]

The clues might be who's surfing your home web pages. Are they just employees of the company? I have seen many HTTP GETs for robots.txt from microsoft.com. I'm not sure if they watch me or have their own search site (I am a boring person and have nothing:)

tide76.microsoft.com - - [20/Jun/1999:05:26:59 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
tide73.microsoft.com - - [21/Jun/1999:20:56:10 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
tide77.microsoft.com - - [21/Jun/1999:23:59:47 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 304 -
tide72.microsoft.com - - [23/Jun/1999:14:56:47 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
tide76.microsoft.com - - [23/Jun/1999:20:50:39 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 304 -
tide77.microsoft.com - - [24/Jun/1999:04:00:11 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317

Re:HemoS plural

[cpt kangarooski]

Does this mean that the metric unit for marketdroids is the Hemo?

Good Point, bad example.

[iago]

The Blair Witch Project was produced by a bunch of film students at the University of Central Florida on virtually no budget. The film has been showing around for a couple of months. For example, the film was shown at the Florida Film Festival a few months ago (Where I was fortunate enough to see it.) And it lives almost up to expectations. The official release of this film was today. What you people have to realize is that this film was an art movie and the kids who made it never really expected it go this far.

I know several people who have made websites about this movie. They are all UCF students who have also seen the movie. They are not iflm studios or the makers of the film. If you want an example of 'astroturfing' look at DIVX, Microsoft, or Disney.

I believe in this case, the author of the article at Salon was waiting to use this particular topic in context. Unfortunately, he picked a very, very poor example.

iago,

Re:Same here but not from MS

[pal]

/robots.txt contains instructions that spiders ought to heed about what to index and what not to. it's polite of them to check it before they index you. if you don't want anyone spidering your site, try

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Hemos is a team of marketdroids?

[kijiki]

I always thought he was an AI, running on a old C64 in rob's basement, bent on world domination!

Same here (from MS too)

[Straker Skunk]

Yeah, I've got those too, and a pretty few of them from tide??.microsoft.com. Aren't those supposed to be company ISP lines? Kinda makes you wonder what Microsoft employees are doing playing around with crawler bots . . .

Anyway, what you might want to do is disallow by user-agent-- e.g. my site has MSIECrawler locked out, because it is brain-dead and it pounded my machine with 57,000+ hits in a single hour due to some error URL funkiness. (How's that to throw off yer Webalizer stats?)

P.S.: Use logresolve! IP numbers no pretty :-)

Sensationalism really annoys me

[extrasolar]

This kind of thing doesn't surpise me. It is all about marketing. It doesn't matter if it is a good movie or not, as long as it generates the hype. I do not need Star Wars on my chip bags, my Pepsi, my delivered Pizza. I cringe when the local News starts out with "The hottest thing this summer...".

Celebrities? We are suppose to worship people because they make a lot of money??!! I truly think my Dad is a more dedicated and hard working man than Arnold Swartzenager, Will Smith, or any other "Stars" (I quote "Stars" because it is a really dumb word in this context.) But my dad, unfortunately, is a little person compared to these people because they generate all the hype.

And why are these actors inspirational to so many people, anyway. I like movies for their story, the plot, and how good was the directing. Actors are like puppets, I a good movie depends mostly on who pulls the strings. I guess acting is a talent I should dismiss so easily, but talk about makeing a mountain out of an ant hill!

Story and script writers make very little money for what they do. Yet they are what can define the difference between a movie worth watching, and one I have better use of my time.

Heck, one of the best movies I have seen is Contact. Nobody seems to have a very good opinion of it though. I hear a lot of "I didn't understand it." Bah! No big name actors. No explosions. I wouldn't be suprised if a movie with just explosions, big name actors and *no* content would make lots of money in the box office.

It is about marketing and is the reason so many people go to see bad movies. It is also the reason so many people use bad software.

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Re:Sensationalism really annoys me

[j a w a d]

I prefer the term "black-holes" rather than "stars". Stars make the world brighter for everyone...


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Is astroturf more effective than just marketing?

[hanway]

It seems to me that, with current Internet culture, if you took an astroturf campaign and simply acknowledged that you had a financial interest in whay you're hyping instead of trying to keep it a secret, you'd still generate positive buzz. (Assuming that there are any redeeming qualities in what you're hyping. In the end, all the commercials and astroturf in the world would never have helped something as poorly conceived as DIVX.)

Look at how people still get excited whenever whoever currently owns the ashes of the Amiga announces this year's flavor of vaporware. (Hmm. I think my opinion on that issue is showing.) Or the following that Babylon 5 got before it was ever in production because J. Michael Strwhatshisname (the producer) took the time to post to Usenet.

On the net, there's the illusion that everyone is on equal footing, and just the fact that an insider dealing with a movie or new computer is participating in the same forums as you generates positive buzz in itself. That is, as long as people don't feel like they're being talked down to, and that's exactly what fake hype does by being deceptive about its origins, so it's actually riskier than being honest.

Early != Fake

[Garpenlov]

Huh? I saw it last night. I could have seen it two weeks ago, if I'd known what it was. I hadn't even heard of it until a few days ago, and I didn't read any reviews, just heard the basic premise from a friend. And, were I to write a review, I'm sure it would be inanely glowing and positive.

People who see it before everyone else are always eager to point that fact out by saying how great it was. (And it was damn good).

Point is, whether or not any of the fan sites are fake, I didn't see them, I saw the movie, and I liked it. And I'm not fake (I hope).

Slashdot

[DzugZug]

I wonder how many /. postings had similar motivation. I wonder if any companies have people monitoring the coments and trying to shape the way conversation goes.

It's probably more likely on sites like deja but just a thought

Who planted the Salon story?

[Jim Winstead]

You have to wonder who it was from which studio that started this rumor about Blair Witch Project's marketing. (Well, okay, it was obviously Gordon Paddison at New Line Cinema, based on the quote in the second paragraph.)

But it wouldn't be at all surprising if it was sparked by Artisan Entertainment (distributors of Blair Witch Project).

It's hardly negative PR.

Hollywood people are silly.

I can relate -- sort of

[wub]

Back in March I started a website that hosts user reviews/linux info/general info, etc for Transmonde laptops. http://transmonde.geek.net/ A small company in CA, good product, known for supporting Linux, etc. I started it so that people like me could have more independant information about their laptops instead of reading reviews in big magazines and only relying on their website. You might call it a user-group.

Anyway, a few months ago, some people started getting suspicious of me. I would get e-mail asking if I owned stock in the company, if I worked for them, etc. Transmonde just seems too good to be true. :( There was a thread on usenet about me -- questioning my position in the whole thing. I have not received a single review from anyone ever since that happened. I don't honestly know if it's because of what was said in the thread on comp.sys.laptops or not, but have suspicions.

Later on (in May/June), I was called a marketing ploy! I don't know what possessed me, but I put up my webcam and gave posted the URL for it, I directed them to a URL that they could look me up as a student of a university in MN (how could a company fake that?), I wrote up an "about me" page as well explaining who I was and why I bought a laptop from Transmonde. I don't know what people think of me anymore, maybe I shouldn't even care; I almost think my credability is damaged forever to the comp.sys.laptops people.

Just sharing my not-so-similar experience.

The moral: Your word is meaningless, get over it.

- Jess