'Probably the most powerful site on the Net right now' blog discussion

Former_MSE_Lawrence

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "Probably the most powerful site on the Net right now" Blog.

Click reply to discuss below.

rjm67

Very interesting. Mind you, it does now make me wonder how many 'so called' consumers on here are actually company employees protecting their brands.

vivatifosi

rjm67 wrote: »

Very interesting. Mind you, it does now make me wonder how many 'so called' consumers on here are actually company employees protecting their brands.

If I was in consumer marketing research rather than B2B, for sure I would be monitoring all such sites to see what was being said about my products/brands/companies. However as a regular user of the site what strikes me is how savvy the majority of people using it are and how easy it is to get a fair and unbiased opinion. Anyone who tries to plug anything will generally get a tin of spam metaphorically chucked at them in no time because we users are so protective of "our" forums.

Loster

I have always thought marketing was like a virus, polluting the waters of honest good/service exchange. That it is thoroughly amoral and deals in lies and half truthes mostly, but this comment from the quote in this blog entry is quite encouraging:

the first rule of marketing - identify and meet your customer’s needs

Perhaps marketing itself is not a pollutant, only the output of those who abuse it. But it seems like so many companies do. All positivity and rhetoric in adverts no matter the quality of the product. How can one differentiate? With the help of MSE I suppose! But then it's success does worry me now, and this does invite abuse on the forums by those unscrupulous ones. I wonder if Martin could bring in a method to expose users of the forum who seem to be company shills??? Is that possible? 3 strikes and your out type thing? Perhaps the forums are now just too big for such a thing.

Loster

Then again, I hope vivatifosi is right

vivatifosi

I was hoping I was right too, I like to think the best of people, then I saw a post saying that spammers were getting such short shrift on the boards they had resorted to pm'ing people. Cheeky b***ers! Hope they get their accounts taken off them straight away!

MSE_Martin

We're currently looking at measures to stop the spam PMs without stopping everyone PMing!