Welcome to the “fakeosphere.” Internet marketing veteran and analyst Jay Weintraub says fake blogs – or flogs – fake news sites and manufactured testimonials are the fastest-growing segment of Internet advertising. He thinks it’s a $500 million-a-year industry – and he compares it to the explosive growth of spam a decade ago.
“I don’t think people realize how big this has become, and how quickly,” said Weintraub, adding that a popular top flog campaign can generate 10,000 daily sales. —MSNBC
I certainly realize it. Now that a lot of the conversations that used to take place on blogs are taking place on Twitter, I’m getting far more comments from spammers than from visitors. I’m glad to see someone’s writing about this advertising trend.
Similar:
A surprising detail in bank records helped a historian bust a longstanding myth about Iris...
Microsoft is once again asking Chrome users to try Bing through unblockable pop-ups
Interesting use of A.I. in a radiology journal
NASA Communicates with Ailing Voyager 1 Spacecraft
Looks like somebody’s webmaster accidentally preloaded a headline that would be easy to ed...
Princess of Wales photo furore underlines sensitivity around image doctoring
Glad to see this, Dennis–it explains a lot of the sites I’ve seen springing up to exploit the H1N1 pandemic. I’ve just mentioned your post on Writing for the Web.
Cheers,
Crawford