Wow… I’m really surprised that Forbes published what can only be called the official guide to harassing innocent bloggers. I always thought that this type of stuff was done by unscrupulous, shady companies. I thought that forbes was a decent, legit magazine… I guess not.
Come on, what kind of business advice is this? If someone speaks bad about your product, you want to go humiliate him? You want to threaten his ISP with a lawsuit? You have your splog drones churn out inflammatory posts on him day and night? Holy friken shit! This is crazy! If I don’t like your crap, I will talk shit about it using any medium I want. If my ranting cuts into your bottom line, you should probably look into fixing whatever causes these complains. I don’t care how good your product is – if you are in the business of harassing bloggers, you will loose me as a customer.
If your competitor is using splogers to spread lies about you, the correct response is not to turn around and do the same. What the hell? Do you want a total friken spamwar to break out? How do you distinguish between a private blogger who simply was disappointed with your product/service and a private blogger who just happens to take money under the table from your competitor? Are you going to investigate every single blogger that mentions you? This is not a solution – this is asking for trouble!
Sigh… The numbers in that article look kinda like RIAA sales loss figures. Where did you get them? How were they collected? Sigh…
Uh-oh… I hope Dawn dish detergent executives don’t read this, my crack about “unseen food residue” can be found via the first page of Google search results for “unseen food residue”.
I could see it now… “Epix Internet Services and Powweb Hosting blackball Watermelon Punch due to threats of a law suit over Chloe’s questioning of the importance of Unseen Food Residue and her thinly veiled allegation that they’re targeting germaphobes”.
I WISH someone would pay me to make cracks about unseen food residue, darn it!
Nothing would make me happier at this moment than to receive a year’s supply of the competitor’s berry or lime scented regular dish detergent for that post. hehe.
Hmmmm, Maybe I could pull a Jim Munroe stunt and contact Palmolive and Joy about that. heh-heh.