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‘Facebookgate’: Fake Class of 2013 groups today; Annoying marketing tomorrow?
Between the Lines —
... We may be about to see the latest frontier of viral marketing–fake students starting groups for the incoming class of 2013 in the name of data collection. Brad Ward, a recruitment specialist at Butler University, outlined the details on his blog . He became suspicious after talking to a colleague at Winthrop University. Here are the common links: Class of 2013 groups are being started at a bunch of universities. The people that start the groups aren’t registered at those schools. Those same names–Patrick Kelly, Justin Gaither, James Gaither among others–pop up repeatedly. ...
Facebook Marketing: College Prowler Caught Using Fake Accounts and Facebook Groups to Build List
Inside Facebook —
... In his original post on Thursday, Butler’s Brad Ward discovered that over 500+ Facebook Groups for incoming freshmen next fall at college around the world, like ...
Facebook and the journalistic impulse
mathewingram.com/work —
... It started with a simple post about how it seemed odd that Facebook groups for new university classes — graduating in 2013 — had been set up so quickly for different schools, and how many of them included people with the same names. Blogger Brad Ward thought that smelled fishy, and he was right. It turned out that a marketing company with the creepy name College Prowler had set up some of the groups as a way of promoting its university guides, and a contractor hired by the company had set up the other ones. This came out in a comment on the blog post by the CEO of ...
Roundup: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft, Tweeting a plane crash, music video fighting and more
VentureBeat —
... Twitter to talk through the ordeal as it was happening. Needless to say, the press is all over him now.
Warner and YouTube are music video fighting — Warner Music Group is pulling its music videos from the video site after negotiations between the two sides broke down. Humorously, both sides are saying the decision to remove the content was their own, as MediaMemo points out.
Is Facebook being gamed? — Yes, according to a blog post on SquaredPeg. The whole web debates here.
Digg ...
Black Hat Facebook Marketing
Mashable! —
... Squaredpeg does a lengthy analysis of something we could call Facebook squatting: someone is setting up Facebook groups for incoming students of 2013 on various universities across the USA. The idea, of course, is to get real students to join these groups, which means whoever owns the groups can send them messages and updates. A lot of Facebook users actually do pay attention to these, which makes it a great marketing vehicle. ...
College Marketer Exposed in Facebook Scam
Tech Observer —
... The kerfuffle started when Brad Ward, electronic communications coordinator at Butler University's admissions department, noticed a weird trend. Over 300 "Class of 2013" Facebook groups were popping up for various colleges, but many of the admins for the groups shared the same name, and weren't affiliated with the schools. ...
Does Name Squatting Pay on Facebook?
All Facebook —
... When Facebook fan pages launched last year, people rushed to lock up the names of large brands in the hopes that they could make a quick buck or get some free promotion. For most people the strategy hasn’t paid off. Fan page squatters are not the only people trying to profit from squatting on Facebook. Yesterday Brad Ward posted that he had found numerous incoming freshman groups were being squatted on as well and the company behind the squatting has the ironic name of “College Prowler”. ...
College Marketer Exposed in Facebook Scam
Wired: Epicenter —
... The kerfuffle started when Brad Ward, electronic communications
coordinator at Butler University's admissions department, noticed a
weird trend. Over 300 "Class of 2013" Facebook groups
were popping up for various colleges, but many of the admins for the
groups shared the same name, and weren't affiliated with the schools. ...
Separating Real From Fake on the Internet
Bits —
... , a publishing company that distributes unofficial college guidebooks, sparked controversy after a Butler University employee, Brad Ward, discovered that company staffers were masquerading as high school seniors on Facebook and forming “Class of 2013″ groups for various colleges. After Mr. Ward, a communications coordinator at Butler, outlined his findings in a blog post titled “ There’s Something Going Down on Facebook ,” responses ranging from outrage to indifference poured into the comments section. Commenter NYC Ed PhD wrote: “I don’t understand how someone could NOT see a ...
