Once again, the MeFi detective agency vanquishes viral marketers. Sadly, no ski resorts involved.
posted by punchdrunkhistory on Nov 24, 2009 - 38 comments

To follow up the intense mystery of this AskMe, a resolution at last. Well. Um, see for yourself [flash]. from here
posted by thirteenkiller on Nov 14, 2006 - 69 comments

A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a puzzle videogame preview wrapped in a shameless plug wrapped in a viral marketing blurb...
posted by Smart Dalek on Jun 6, 2005 - 18 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