Comments on: WideCircles – Takes Spam Seriously? LMAO

By: Jaseem Umer

Jaseem Umer — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:36:13 +0000

You are good at finding spamming. I think dofollowing your comment links haven’t caused people to spam your blog. Cheers.

By: Greenwisp

Greenwisp — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:59:26 +0000

ugh! I hate them! They regular pepper our wiki with comments, or go as far as setting themselves up users so they can author wiki pages, with just utter rubbish in them! They even deleted some existing pages and plastered their web address all over it. As the wiki moderator I get very irate at having to clear up after their graffiti.

It’s just flagrant vandalism, I wish someone would shut them down or at least legally ban them from practices like this. It wouldn’t be tolerated in the real world, why are they allowed to get away with it in the cyber-world?

Perhaps they need a taste of their own medicine, get a deluge of people spamming them, see how they’d like it then.

By: REBlogGirl

REBlogGirl — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:05:02 +0000

Our blogs were hit by them earlier in the month too. Xrummer and their ilk are a problem for the industry as a whole- our forums and blogs are often hit by spam. For particular products I understand that there is already stigma associated and they target a fringe market, so using Xrummer and spamming doesn’t damage the credibility of the product or the company. But for a supposedly legit product- link spamming is nothing but a PR nightmare. It amazes me the complete lack of marketing savvy some companies have. If you want to hit the mainstream consumer market through mainstream sites like the Washington Post – you have to have credibility- hocking your wares- never cool. And to hit tech blogs- that’s just dumb.

That being said- I think commenting can be used wisely and strategically with the purpose of link building, but following the RULES is critical. Humans should do it- preferably the site owner or an employee and they should do it with a second objective of learning something from the blog they visited. Traffic isn’t necessary- I think that is one of the many areas where WC missed the boat- they seem to be focusing their services on the traffic rather than site authority and Rank.

On another note: The WP and Blogger Nerito posts were hilarious. For someone that doesn’t work for WC- he sure takes one heck of a vested interest in their business and knows an awful lot about their marketing practices. If it makes you feel better, Andy, you’re an expert in my book, no matter who calls you a spammer.

By: Augie Ray

Augie Ray — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:02:26 +0000

My blog just got spammed by someone named Jack Steven of WideCircles. It pisses me off. Here this person is trying to “market” their social media service by doing the antithesis of social media–spam!

http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2008/04/social-media-are-you-marketing-or.html

By: Jaan Kanellis

Jaan Kanellis — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:35:02 +0000

Thanks for the heads up Andy. I removed the crap posts from the spammers. WPW has been lots of crappy spammer link/post drops over the past few months. They have gotten better and better at disguising the link drops as a “real” post. The ones you pointed out were pretty obvious, but it is tough to police all posts and have to rely on other moderators and Admin’s to help out.

By: Trophaeum

Trophaeum — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:16:42 +0000

You're not the only one that they gotten in the way of, examples Wide Circles Wide Circles Sucks We have been running our own anti wide circles crusade for a little while, partly for amusement, partly because noone should be paying for something like this unless they don't care about long term goals of their site (and if they don't they probably just want to buy xrumer already anyway) Feel free to nofollow/remove the links as you please

By: A. Stadtke

A. Stadtke — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:50:11 +0000

We run a couple of forums, and I admit this is pretty normal. If you never watch the forums, you will have hundreds of posts like this. Especially phpBB is spammed automatically.

By: Damien

Damien — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:56:04 +0000

Thanks for that great and illustrous post Andy. That’s one service I will walk a “WIDE CIRCLE” around.

By: Scott McAndrew

Scott McAndrew — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:14:18 +0000

Based on Andy’s post, I no-follow’d the link in the original post and marked the comments that Widecircles left that linked to their site as spam. Thanks for the catch.