Comments on: Ethics In Technology: Web2Rule

By: Bobby Travis

Bobby Travis — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:10:11 +0000

Thanks for the weigh-in Jess! Glad to hear about both your personal inclinations and your prominent use of the “Decline” button. I am sure both will go a long way to putting some folks’ minds at ease. The concept still brings up a questionmark for the average person on first visit (I’ve sent you out to my network, curious of their take) — but the service is not meant to service the average person, though it does -affect- the average person, so there is obvious disconnect there. I am curious as to what sort of stats in search and social media results the average user of your service tends to bring in for the average “job”.

And yes, as you say, good quality content does have a tendency to distinguish itself regardless, once it’s known — though it still has to wade through the… other stuff… that also tends to float to the top.

By: Jessie Jackson

Jessie Jackson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:07:54 +0000

Hi, I am the owner of Web2rule.com, and just had to chime in. First of all, great post that provokes a debate on a touchy subject. First of all, surprisingly I am on the side of most of the other comments here. The manipulation of social sites is not really in the best interest of quality content. Only an idiot can argue that.

But as some of the more balanced comments mentioned that if you are trying to earn a living online, you might think otherwise. The fact is that every seo service, back link outsourcing, paid content creation.. …all of it is about manipulating the appearance of popularity for one desired outcome or another. Small time marketers spend half their time trying to figure out how to tweak their site just to get a little love from the big G

One feature that I built into web2rule was a decline job button, If they see something that is absolutely garbage, they can opt out of promoting that site. What I have found is that the people, who join the site, have a strong tendency to Not promote totally worthless crap. Which I have to admit has been a big relief to me personally and it keeps policing the promoted sites down to a minimum. In the end a sites content and the handling of that content is everything. When somebody signs up to web2rule, they are sent to a video I produced that clearly states what I believe to be true almost without exception

You only need two things to make money online, quality original content and good rankings from Google. If you have good content, we bring in the results.

At the end of the day and we are just a powerful tool and short cut to help new/smaller marketers get a foot hold in their keywords. Quality always floats to the top regardless of the platform.

Thanks for the great post….Jess

By: Bobby Travis

Bobby Travis — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:02:14 +0000

I can’t say I disagree, Kosmo. I figure most marketing types may not have your moral standpoint, however, and will see it more as a means to an end.

By: Kosmo @ The Casual Observer

Kosmo @ The Casual Observer — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:08:12 +0000

Let’s say you’re browsing in a book store. You grab a book that has great blurbs from two of your favorite authors on the dust jacket. Awesome – this book (by an unknown author) must be solid gold. You hand over your plastic and buy $27.95 worth of hardcover glory.

You get home and find out that the book sucks.

Later, you find out that your authors never actually read the book. They were paid a hefty fee and the words were completely put into their mouth.

I prefer the reviews and recommendations be based on the reviewer actually liking the product.

On a tanent, I’ve received a few link request from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with my site (which is rather difficult, considering how electic The Casual Observer is). Huh? I would want to link to your site on day trading (and receive a reciprocal link) why, exactly? Sure, maybe it would help with search engine traffic, but our audiences have minimal overlap. I link to 16 blogs. I enjoy reading all of them, and only two of them suggested a link exchange (which I accepted after enjoying their content)
Kosmo @ The Casual Observer´s last blog ..The Best Comics Ever

By: Bobby Travis

Bobby Travis — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:19:10 +0000

You know, I am trying to play devil’s advocate and all that — and the marketer in me says people may have to embrace it, and things like it, if only to get noticed. I do agree though, that in principle it feels wrong. I mean, just the fact that the people sharing the content don’t actually care about it seems to be a fundamental disconnect for me. When you are trying to make a living with your content though…. I could see how people would sing a different tune.

By: Evan Kline

Evan Kline — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:18:24 +0000

As you could probably guess, I don’t like this idea at all. For one, it doesn’t pass the “smell test.” It just feels fake from a content creator’s perspective. From a user perspective, it makes me wonder how much we can trust data/rankings from other sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, if there are mass attempts to manipulate results. Even if somebody else was OK with it, I hope they’d realize that they’d lose all credibility with their readers/users if it were revealed that they were doing something like this.