The Dark Side of Social Media and SEM
What happened at Virginia Tech was genuinely shocking.
What has been happening online since the utterly horrific events of Monday is, in some cases, just creepy.
As reported in Advertising Age, a number of news organizations (including the New York Times, the UK's First Post online daily, and even conservative Christian site The Real Truth) have moved fast to purchase keywords on Google in hopes of driving traffic to their sites.
In the hours and days since the massacre, anyone searching Google for something like "Virginia shooting" or "student shooting" will have seen sponsored links popping up in an attempt to pull clicks through to the news and opinions being offered up by these sites.
Here's an example of a Google search from this morning, showing the sidebar ads (click the image to see it full size):
And another, showing the topbar sponsored link:
I can fully understand the desire on the part of these organizations to put themselves at the centre of the news, but this approach just feels wrong. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to react to this; I just know that my gut says it's not appropriate.
Meanwhile, various other media organizations have been trolling for interviews on Facebook and other similar social networking sites. Dateline NBC created a Facebook group with this message:
WE UNDERSTAND HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS, AND WANT TO HELP SHARE YOUR STORY.... DATELINE NBC URGENTLY LOOKING FOR ANYONE WHO KNEW SEUNG HUI CHO. WE HAVE PRODUCERS AND CAMERA CREWS NEARBY READY TO TALK TO ANYONE WHO CAN SUPPLY INFORMATION ABOUT HIM AND HIS MOVEMENTS LEADING UP TO THE TRAGEDY. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO PRODUCE A THOUGHTFUL AND INFORMATIVE REPORT THAT MIGHT SHED SOME LIGHT ON THE TRAGEDY AND POSSIBLY HELP PREVENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.
Earlier today, I saw similar group postings from Portuguese and Korean TV reporters too. Again, that all just feels ...creepy.
Some of the real creeps, however, are the ones who've been out there snapping up domain names with all kinds of word combinations relevant to this appalling episode. As Wired reports in the magazine's "Threat Level" blog, scumbag marketers have been registering domains such as:
virginiatechshooting.com
vatechmassacre.com
virginiatechrampage.com
...and hundreds of other, similar ones. Nasty. I'm sorry, but I fail to see any valid, decent reason why someone would choose to do something as disturbingly ghoulish as this.
But all of these tasteless moves pail into insignificance next to the utterly repellent actions of the individual who has set up a blog with the title "Rampages Are Fun!" on BlogSpot. I refuse to provide a link to this execrable site - if you really want to see it, you can Google for yourself.
The first post reads, in part:
A new high score!
It is my pleasure to inform you that a new American high-score has been reached for the sport of school shootings!
That's just flat out ill. I've reported it to friends at Google. With any luck, the blog will be gone by the time anyone reads this post.
I can't even begin to frame an articulate response to all this. Going to bed.
[UPDATE, next day...]:
Jim Morris, via email, poses an excellent and entirely fair question:
"Please can you explain why websites which buy google ad words -- a standard form of online promotion -- is any worse than a newspaper or magazine promoting itself with cover lines, billboards, advertisements and other forms of publicity based around content in an attempt "to drive people" to their publications?"
It's not simple, is it? Candidly - I don't know that purchasing adwords truly is any worse than all the other generally perturbing forms of promotion geared to cater to prurient and sensationalist tastes.
I'm having a really hard time figuring out why these particular examples of media companies snatching up the adwords troubles me more than regular ordinary shock 'n' gore promo behaviour.
If it bleeds; it leads. 'Twas ever thus. Shock headlines and attention-grabbing photos are just tools of the trade, I know, and we've all become somewhat desensitized to that.
Perhaps it's merely the surprise that shocks me: the surprise of seeing the shiny new tools of online marketing tarnished by the same old tabloid thinking.
Still noodling... still troubled.
In other news, feedback from the Google/Blogger team is that the appalling "Rampages Are Fun" blog I mentioned above, while truly distasteful, can not really be classed as hate speech directed at a protected group. Not the kind of thing that their T&C and general free speech provisions allows them to tear down or block, alas. Understandable. Best response, then, is simply to deny the troll the oxygen of further publicity. So that'll be me shutting up now then.
What has been happening online since the utterly horrific events of Monday is, in some cases, just creepy.
As reported in Advertising Age, a number of news organizations (including the New York Times, the UK's First Post online daily, and even conservative Christian site The Real Truth) have moved fast to purchase keywords on Google in hopes of driving traffic to their sites.
In the hours and days since the massacre, anyone searching Google for something like "Virginia shooting" or "student shooting" will have seen sponsored links popping up in an attempt to pull clicks through to the news and opinions being offered up by these sites.
Here's an example of a Google search from this morning, showing the sidebar ads (click the image to see it full size):
And another, showing the topbar sponsored link:
I can fully understand the desire on the part of these organizations to put themselves at the centre of the news, but this approach just feels wrong. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to react to this; I just know that my gut says it's not appropriate.Meanwhile, various other media organizations have been trolling for interviews on Facebook and other similar social networking sites. Dateline NBC created a Facebook group with this message:
WE UNDERSTAND HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS, AND WANT TO HELP SHARE YOUR STORY.... DATELINE NBC URGENTLY LOOKING FOR ANYONE WHO KNEW SEUNG HUI CHO. WE HAVE PRODUCERS AND CAMERA CREWS NEARBY READY TO TALK TO ANYONE WHO CAN SUPPLY INFORMATION ABOUT HIM AND HIS MOVEMENTS LEADING UP TO THE TRAGEDY. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO PRODUCE A THOUGHTFUL AND INFORMATIVE REPORT THAT MIGHT SHED SOME LIGHT ON THE TRAGEDY AND POSSIBLY HELP PREVENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.
Earlier today, I saw similar group postings from Portuguese and Korean TV reporters too. Again, that all just feels ...creepy.
Some of the real creeps, however, are the ones who've been out there snapping up domain names with all kinds of word combinations relevant to this appalling episode. As Wired reports in the magazine's "Threat Level" blog, scumbag marketers have been registering domains such as:
virginiatechshooting.com
vatechmassacre.com
virginiatechrampage.com
...and hundreds of other, similar ones. Nasty. I'm sorry, but I fail to see any valid, decent reason why someone would choose to do something as disturbingly ghoulish as this.
But all of these tasteless moves pail into insignificance next to the utterly repellent actions of the individual who has set up a blog with the title "Rampages Are Fun!" on BlogSpot. I refuse to provide a link to this execrable site - if you really want to see it, you can Google for yourself.
The first post reads, in part:
A new high score!
It is my pleasure to inform you that a new American high-score has been reached for the sport of school shootings!
That's just flat out ill. I've reported it to friends at Google. With any luck, the blog will be gone by the time anyone reads this post.
I can't even begin to frame an articulate response to all this. Going to bed.
[UPDATE, next day...]:
Jim Morris, via email, poses an excellent and entirely fair question:
"Please can you explain why websites which buy google ad words -- a standard form of online promotion -- is any worse than a newspaper or magazine promoting itself with cover lines, billboards, advertisements and other forms of publicity based around content in an attempt "to drive people" to their publications?"
It's not simple, is it? Candidly - I don't know that purchasing adwords truly is any worse than all the other generally perturbing forms of promotion geared to cater to prurient and sensationalist tastes.
I'm having a really hard time figuring out why these particular examples of media companies snatching up the adwords troubles me more than regular ordinary shock 'n' gore promo behaviour.
If it bleeds; it leads. 'Twas ever thus. Shock headlines and attention-grabbing photos are just tools of the trade, I know, and we've all become somewhat desensitized to that.
Perhaps it's merely the surprise that shocks me: the surprise of seeing the shiny new tools of online marketing tarnished by the same old tabloid thinking.
Still noodling... still troubled.
In other news, feedback from the Google/Blogger team is that the appalling "Rampages Are Fun" blog I mentioned above, while truly distasteful, can not really be classed as hate speech directed at a protected group. Not the kind of thing that their T&C and general free speech provisions allows them to tear down or block, alas. Understandable. Best response, then, is simply to deny the troll the oxygen of further publicity. So that'll be me shutting up now then.
