Resist The Tempation of Astroturfing
April 16, 2008
In Social Media, temptation is everywhere. The temptation to travel down wormholes that have nothing to do with your original intention of visiting a blog or doing research is commonplace.
As a social media agency, the biggest temptation is Astroturfing (definition form wikipedia):
Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous, grassroots behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass AstroTurf.
The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach", "awareness", etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing one's own personal agenda through to highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations.
So, even though I know for a fact that Astroturfing is wrong and despicable, I'll be honest every once is a blue moon, I'm tempted to be evil.
Then I watch this:
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