Comments on: Nick Denton is betting the future of advertising is conversational

By: Snertly

Snertly — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:02:13 +0000

As if an official spokesperson were somehow prevented from commenting in the previous site iterations.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:56:50 +0000

Exactly (I’m a little too angry to actually articulate my feelings). All I can manage is that Gawker better label clearly these “brand advocates” (e.g. sponsored content). This way we can all ignore them and go on our merry way.

By: observer

observer — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:07:51 +0000

This got unintentionally kicked off with a bang by trolls using Denton’s latest idea of untraceable Burner accounts to spam hundreds, if not thousands of links to the Nestlé “Hot Pockets” website. Once again Gawkers moderaters had to pull long hours of duty to manually remove the trolling posts.

Burner accounts were supposed to allow anonymous posts by celebrities and subject matter experts, but have instantly devolved into a easy access point by trolls.

One has to wonder how advertisers will feel about having their sponsored comment savaged by unblockable internet trolls whose hate and vitriol have to be tediously manually removed from the site?

By: buyer beware

buyer beware — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:50:56 +0000

If he’s becoming an affiliate publisher he’ll need to label it as such and not claim it is editorial. The OFT, equivalent to the FTC in the UK, has given affiliate publishers until September to have all their content clearly labelled advertorial http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2012/35-12

‘The CPRs are enforceable through the civil and criminal courts. In particular it is a banned practice to use editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer. It is also a banned practice to falsely claim or create the impression that a trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, call or profession, or falsely represent oneself as a consumer.’

By: Rdx

Rdx — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:45:09 +0000

basically what he is trying to do is make money by biased content. I can see how companies like Microsoft and Facebook which frequently pay PR people to trash competitors can use this. If you see the buzz around the internet over windows phone 7, there were lot of anonymous comments saying great things about it, this usually never happens on the internet commenting sections as hate rules. I suspect, MS would have employed some shady strategy as described in this article.

By: ronald

ronald — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:00:54 +0000

” But will companies actually want to do that? I’m not convinced. Why not just put up a statement or discussion on their own blog?”

Attention, Engagement, Trust.

I might be late to the party[1] compared to the The Cluetrain Manifesto, but from my point of view just by changing the layout/organization/display of a comment section one can get all three and avoid the pitfalls(just another statement/comment) you mention including banner ads.

If we look at the extreme, how much of those three did Steve Jobs accomplish by just answering a few email. How many banner ads would it take to accomplish the same , how many buried PR statements somewhere in an article comment?

1. http://gigaom.com/2012/05/02/facebook-and-advertising-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/#comment-838068