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walkitouthttp://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/16/us-amazon-kindle-spam-idUSTRE75F68620110616
This Reuters piece by Alistair Barr (who, unless there's more than one of them, seems to write for MarketWatch fairly often) has gotten heavy secondary coverage. I've poked fun at the Amazon (Will) Suffer(s) From Spam!!!! meme before; this is probably the most legitimate attention the meme has thus far collected.
Here is the subhead:
"Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging the online bookstore of the top-selling eReader with material that is far from being book worthy and threatening to undermine Amazon.com Inc's publishing foray."
Does the kindle store feel "clogged" to you? With spam? How about the bookstore in general? Does _anyone_ seriously think that the spam issue poses a "threat" to Amazon? Amazon's publishing arm? The kindle platform?
The next few short paragraphs describe how to engage in spammage on the kindle platform, helpfully supplying a product suggestion: "Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word." Not unlike writing an article about vandalism and then telling you the brand of the best spray paint; you sort of have to wonder who this article is really aimed at.
[ETA: Ooooh. Apparently an error ridden description of where to buy spray paint.
http://bozonessinc.ca/2011/06/dear-reuters-re-autopilot-kindle-cash/
So if you were thinking this was a really clever case of guerrilla marketing, it's not.]
There is a brief foray into intellectual property theft (specifically, someone republished a novel under a different name, it was detected and a stop was put to it), which strikes me as largely unrelated to the spam issue -- _and_ a much more serious issue, altho trivially addressable in more or less the same ways we put a stop to people taking manhole covers and selling them for scrap when commodity prices are high.
""It's getting to be a more widespread problem," said Susan Daffron, president of Logical Expressions, a book and software publishing company. "Once a few spammers find a new outlet like this, hoards of them follow.""
http://www.logicalexpressions.com/lebooks.htm
Yes, that seems to be a picture of her up in the corner. There's probably a line between the business Susan Daffron engages in and the spamming that the article (and Ms. Daffron) deplore(s). Probably.
More how-to-do-it follows, this time credited to Paul Wolfe, an "internet marketing specialist".
I'm pretty sure this is Paul Wolfe:
http://www.onespoonatatime.com/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos-please-stop-the-kindle-spam
Are you noticing a trend here? I'm feeling like these quotes about spam are coming from people with a really solid interest in protecting their Spam Space from New Spam.
Perhaps the most fascinating (hey, it's a looooowwww bar in this article) bits are about Nook and Smashwords not experiencing spam on the same scale as Amazon. Wonder why that is? "but it might just be that the Kindle's huge audience is more attractive to spammers, Forrester's McQuivey said."
Daffron wants Amazon to charge to upload onto DTP. Otherwise, spammers win and Amazon loses. I can't speak to the spammers, altho it seems real clear that Daffron is losing as long as it's that cheap to publish via Amazon.
It's hard to imagine that Barr is silly enough to not realize that his sourcing on this article has such a profoundly self-serving slant. Hard to imagine, but not impossible. Perhaps he's already on vacation.
This Reuters piece by Alistair Barr (who, unless there's more than one of them, seems to write for MarketWatch fairly often) has gotten heavy secondary coverage. I've poked fun at the Amazon (Will) Suffer(s) From Spam!!!! meme before; this is probably the most legitimate attention the meme has thus far collected.
Here is the subhead:
"Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging the online bookstore of the top-selling eReader with material that is far from being book worthy and threatening to undermine Amazon.com Inc's publishing foray."
Does the kindle store feel "clogged" to you? With spam? How about the bookstore in general? Does _anyone_ seriously think that the spam issue poses a "threat" to Amazon? Amazon's publishing arm? The kindle platform?
The next few short paragraphs describe how to engage in spammage on the kindle platform, helpfully supplying a product suggestion: "Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word." Not unlike writing an article about vandalism and then telling you the brand of the best spray paint; you sort of have to wonder who this article is really aimed at.
[ETA: Ooooh. Apparently an error ridden description of where to buy spray paint.
http://bozonessinc.ca/2011/06/dear-reuters-re-autopilot-kindle-cash/
So if you were thinking this was a really clever case of guerrilla marketing, it's not.]
There is a brief foray into intellectual property theft (specifically, someone republished a novel under a different name, it was detected and a stop was put to it), which strikes me as largely unrelated to the spam issue -- _and_ a much more serious issue, altho trivially addressable in more or less the same ways we put a stop to people taking manhole covers and selling them for scrap when commodity prices are high.
""It's getting to be a more widespread problem," said Susan Daffron, president of Logical Expressions, a book and software publishing company. "Once a few spammers find a new outlet like this, hoards of them follow.""
http://www.logicalexpressions.com/lebooks.htm
Yes, that seems to be a picture of her up in the corner. There's probably a line between the business Susan Daffron engages in and the spamming that the article (and Ms. Daffron) deplore(s). Probably.
More how-to-do-it follows, this time credited to Paul Wolfe, an "internet marketing specialist".
I'm pretty sure this is Paul Wolfe:
http://www.onespoonatatime.com/an-open-letter-to-jeff-bezos-please-stop-the-kindle-spam
Are you noticing a trend here? I'm feeling like these quotes about spam are coming from people with a really solid interest in protecting their Spam Space from New Spam.
Perhaps the most fascinating (hey, it's a looooowwww bar in this article) bits are about Nook and Smashwords not experiencing spam on the same scale as Amazon. Wonder why that is? "but it might just be that the Kindle's huge audience is more attractive to spammers, Forrester's McQuivey said."
Daffron wants Amazon to charge to upload onto DTP. Otherwise, spammers win and Amazon loses. I can't speak to the spammers, altho it seems real clear that Daffron is losing as long as it's that cheap to publish via Amazon.
It's hard to imagine that Barr is silly enough to not realize that his sourcing on this article has such a profoundly self-serving slant. Hard to imagine, but not impossible. Perhaps he's already on vacation.