Hey, Non Prosequitor, mrgrimm wants me to ask you if you work for The Atlantic, as I accused your somewhat uninteresting post of being part of the marketing roll out for The Atlantic redesign. [more inside]
posted by nax on Oct 26, 2008 - 51 comments

Yeah, we fell for it. Here's to less viral videos in the future!
posted by Citizen Premier on Jul 9, 2008 - 5 comments

Perhaps this does not belong on the front page. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jun 3, 2008 - 50 comments

Cal OK, Cavemen not, huh? I call BS. [more inside]
posted by mwhybark on Sep 19, 2007 - 141 comments

Advertisments are not the best of the web.
posted by BeerFilter on Jun 8, 2007 - 83 comments

Viral marketing video as front page post, up long enough that it doesn't seem like it's going to be deleted. Slippery slope, blah blah. What say you?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on May 10, 2007 - 113 comments

55335 on the blue is a self-link (I'm deliberately not linking to it), anyone know how to contact a mod? Are they asleep? It's especially irritating because it's a self-link to a crap site about "marketing and making money on the web". Also, how about a feature that allows a user to self-revoke posts for a certain amount of time (like 10 minutes) if they realize or learn it was a bad idea.
posted by delmoi on Oct 7, 2006 - 78 comments

Could we get a clean-up in this thread? It was a perfectly valid MetaFilter post that had a phrasing that simply asked for discussion. It nonetheless met the guidelines and should be allowed to remain without all the noise of whether or not it belongs in the blue or green. Asking for discussion is only wrong in that it's redundant. Discussion will most likely occur whether or not the post is framed as a question. So the original poster's only mistake, IMHO, was mentioning the inevitable.
posted by SeizeTheDay on May 24, 2006 - 41 comments

Does the LA Times lose credibility when they change their entire site for a new movie?
posted by angrybeaver on Apr 19, 2006 - 25 comments

FYI, this msg was posted on the Penny Arcade blog today: (more inside)
posted by jonson on Jan 28, 2006 - 66 comments

Is this sort of thing just Pepsi Blue in a new bottle? Recently there was an AskMe post about men's shaving products that I know was a case of lazyweb market research (because the poster admitted as much on a certain orange-and-blue-themed site before he posted it), and I didn't say anything then, but I wonder if a) this is more of the same and b) whether the community at large cares if AskMe gets used this way.
posted by briank on Sep 12, 2005 - 12 comments

Pepsi Blue?

This is a single-link FPP to a new brand of cellphone. Is this really BOTW?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy on Mar 16, 2005 - 36 comments

double post.
posted by brevator on Jan 28, 2005 - 17 comments

Should there really be a FPP that's really a rather thinly veiled marketing attempt for some rather skeezy malware?
posted by LimePi on Dec 4, 2003 - 26 comments

Alongside the gay wedding and anti-homophobia ads lured into the seductive clutches of the Mark Foley story, there sits an ad for Texas Congressional candidate Randy Neugebauer, a "committed pro-family, pro-life conservative who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." God bless Google's ad targeting algorithm.
posted by rcade on May 10, 2003 - 112 comments

yesterday, on./ was reading an interesting discussion about a product when someone accused the poster of Viral Marketing, in effect really trying to grab publicity off of ./ while they're covertly under contract to the company they are posting about.
Today, in a very useful MeFi discussion, someone raised the Same Suspicion.

Whether Octavius is correct or not, I think there's no reason to doubt that firms are cropping up to harness communities and blogs to plant publicity on the net. On its face, it would likely be far more effective advertising than a pop up or TV commercial... Once the corporate heavyweights catch on, it could get quite excessive and sneaky.

But it could seriously undermine a community since to some extent, we'll all start scrutinizing the motives of any given post and poster.

Could well be the beginning of the end (or at least the end of the beginning) of the innocence for MeFi etal... Any ideas on how to contend with this?

posted by BentPenguin on Sep 6, 2002 - 39 comments

anybody else ever wonder if marketer's are secretly using mefi to create buzz about their products?
posted by nobody_knose on Nov 4, 2001 - 33 comments

This is turning into some shameless promoting. People are promoting their own web hosting companies and from the comments they seem to know what they are doing is wrong...
posted by geoff. on Aug 23, 2001 - 8 comments

Is that Matt and Jack on the Mitsubishi Eclipse [Start the commotion] commercial? Just maybe the glasses and the haircut. Who are the female models in that spot anyway?
[Links to photos and a .mov file]
posted by tamim on Jul 24, 2001 - 3 comments