Brandjacking in Practice

September 25, 2009 · Filed Under SEO Advice, squidoo · 1 Comment 

First off, my apologies for not being around as much as usual.  I’ve just finished up a complete SEO Video course and am in the process of getting everything linked up so that everyone has access to it.

I’ve also been busy giving presentations and creating more free videos for you too.  Doesn’t leave much time for blogging…

That said, today’s Friday so I decided to give myself a short break and pass on some news to you that you might find just a little interesting…to say the least.

Brandjacking

First, let me put a scenario to you.

Let’s say that you owned Home Depot.

All over the internet on places like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg and the like, there are comments about your business…both good and bad.

Now, let’s say that there was a big famous website that everyone knew about that aggregated all of this data in one easy to find spot.  All of the good comments, bad comments and the in-betweens.

By the way “aggregated” is a nice way of saying “scraped or stolen content”.

And let’s say that you found this website and wanted a way to manage those comments or at the very least respond to them.

But to do so, you’d have to pay $400 a month.

Sound unethical?  Illegal?  Preposterous?

Well, ladies and gentleman, think again.

That is exactly what’s happening at Squidoo.

Seth Godin, author of such books as Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable and All Marketers are Liars as well as the founder of Squidoo, announced recently that they have a new product called “Brands in Public“.

“Brands in Public” takes content already existent on the web and places it in one easy to find spot within Squidoo on each company’s own special page.

This page is meant to be a resource for potential customers to read reviews and such (good or bad) about the company.

All right, now first of all, they’re using scraped content…that is taking content from the internet and putting it all on one of their own pages for instant content.  A big no-no for little guys online…but evidently quite alright for someone with notoriety to do.

If you don’t like some of the things that are published there (remember the good and the bad are published), and you want to edit the page that:

A) You didn’t request in the first place.

B) Most likely didn’t give permission to use.

Well, guess what?  You have to pay Squidoo $400 a month (yes, you read that right) $400 a month to edit the page yourself.

If you think this sounds just a tiny little bit…ok, a BIG bit like blackmail then you are not alone…you and countless others are screaming FOUL! at the top of their lungs.

Personally, I’m shocked.  To me, it nearly screams “Help!  We’re Desperate!” and all of that respect that Seth had is starting to dwindle as more and more people actually realize what’s happening here.

You can read Seth’s original announcement here.

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