With the bru-ha-ha over Lyndons now infamous link bait raging in this weeks edition of the band - wagon - effect, one has to give pause. What if it all went horribly wrong and those in the media that may have felt theyd been duped began to create a brand management nightmare? What of a Digger revolt? There is every potential for short and long term damage that could land in the client's lap.
Since Lyndon has decided to remove the post on his site, here's a taste to understand the background;
"This is reference to a story on a credit card site, money.co.uk - You may have read the story, you may not. As you can see from above it was talked about on Fox News..... it was mentioned in the Sun newspaper, a UK tabloid with 20 circulation of 3 million. It also ran on Radio 1, the UK popular music station with listeners of 20 millions.
It has appeared on over 2,000 websites from Topeka, Kansas to Adelaide, Australia, so far over 450,000 people have visited the money.co.uk site to read the article.
The only problem is, none of it is true, it's a completely made up yarn. How do I know? I wrote it. It's what I do for a living. I write content for websites which creates a buzz and hopefully gets links and people to the intended target." - Lyndon Antcliff
I think there is a cautionary lesson here in how some humour, with a hook (or 2) and the best of intentions could land you and your client with some less than desirable conditions. The thing about links is that they can be both beneficial and equally troubling; in the form of reputation management. Running a fake story, as was the case in this scenario, could even call into the light a publication's editorial integrity or worse.. lose advertisers. There are more than a few ramifications and potential TARFUs worth sweating here.
The fun, frustration and entertainment that is Sphinn
A while back I crossed over 300 submissions and now standing on the cusp of the century mark for Hot submissions. And what does that mean? It means I have officially Sphunn out of control lost into the depths of obsession that only comes with an addiction to all things search and web marketing. As such I decided to capture some musings from mount madness;
How do we know I have an unhealthy obsession?
I am friggen there reading at 8am after the kids go to school and read it as I once did the morning paper.
When others reach for the Stumble button I head to Sphinn (wheres my tool bar Danny?) and then, if I remember it I Stumble Digg? Never heard of it.
I muse over data from topical percentages to up and coming Sphinners thats nothing new though.
Thought my kids names were Danny and Donna for a spell
I am less concerned with Going Hot if one person finds the info useful, great! My work is done if I find something interesting, I post not looking to hit home runs .
Almost all of my Stumble/Twitter friends are Sphinners a sheltered existence
Sphinn is mentioned in 31 blog posts here on the trail since last fall
My wife is ready to throw my laptop out of the window when she spots the Sphinn logo
Seen many folks come and go, experience social media burn-out, many a drama unfold in the comments to the point of musing over a weekly gossip column for Sphinn ('til I realized I had a life)
Seems Yahoo is beta testing its new search concept, GluePages, which combines text, images, video, jobs and more in the search results. It seems kinda fresh, but I have only been playing around with it briefly. Heres a screen of a search for Google (yea cheeky, I know);
Apparently they chose India because that market has, a growing number of new users, plentiful local content, and a large number of developers who can develop applications around Yahoo's technologies. according to Tapan Bhat, a senior vice president at Yahoo.
The search terms for it are limited and targeted to the Indian market, but you can still get afeel for this type of hybrid navigational searching. Give it a go; Yahoo GluePages (use a common search query)
Well, since my busted friggen hand is making posting next to impossible, I thought some entertainment might be in order. This video I came across last month and is scary, educational and real funny; all in one shot. Johnny Long gives a great performance from last year's DefCon... do check it out; I guarantee you'll learn and laugh (OMG an SEO making guarantees..eek!!)
If you have some time this weekend, settle in and watch this 'made for the web' movie from Jim Killeen who decided to meet other Jim Killeen's from around the world. A Google vanity search gone mad! Fun stuff....
With the bru-ha-ha over Lyndons now infamous link bait raging in this weeks edition of the 
