Fine Gael has a Valentine’s app on their site that allows you to send a message to anyone’s email from anyone’s email without any kind of verification. You can then put some text into it which again is not checked. So RTÉ’s Newsdesk sent me an email. More genius from the social media muppets in there. See how it can be done with this email I got:
Using the Google Keyword Tool that shows you search trends it seems that when it comes to searching for party names in Ireland Fine Gael romps home with Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail joint second, Labour Party and Green Party joint third. This data is a few weeks out of sync so will change again right before the election.
Of course if we use the more general Labour and Greens searches, this changes the table but that brings in everything from child birth searches to labour court type searches:
Leader searches:
Enda Kenny, then Gerry Adams, John Gormley and Eamon Gilmore at same level, then Micheal Martin.
There’s been a rush of late for agencies and marketing people embedded in companies to get higher numbers on their Facebook Pages to justify their time/money spent being all amazing social media ninja-y for clients.
As long as systems are in place that reward people for numbers, gaming will happen. If you just look at numbers only as a company, you will get gamed by some agencies. It’s actually easy for a business or a model to get 100,000 fans on Facebook very quickly. Or 30,000 Twitter followers. Or even more traffic to your client’s website after you “worked” on it.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a computer to human being interface. You write a mini-program and it gets executed by human beings for a few pennies a go. The example of the 10,000 sheep a few years ago is great. In World of Worldcraft and other games you can hire people in net cafes in the developing world to gold farm for you: Play the game for hundreds of hours to build up you points in the game so you don’t have to.
And so now we have the same for Facebook Fans, Twitter followers and so on. There are probably 1000s or 10s of 1000s of people in developing countries sitting in net cafes who are paid to create GMail acccounts, Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts and then are tasked to Fan or Follow accounts. Automated scripts can create traffic surges to sites or manual refreshes are done. All in the name of numbers. The same people who run dump and run spam campaigns are also hiring out their Fan services.
It makes sense (if you are morally compromised), sad sense that agencies in Ireland are boosting their own numbers in order to tell prospective clients that they will use their huge followings to get them traffic and fans too. The trouble is as Facebook does their purges, all those zombie accounts are killed off and off you go and start again.
How to spot bullshit:
Look at the Facebook Page without logging into Facebook. Is the Irish or UK company big in Malaysia and India? Look at the comments left on the Page, if any.
Look at the Twitter account. Same number of followers and following? 40,000 of both. Software is used to follow any account that auto-follows back. Zombie Twitter accounts. Check their bit.ly type links. Generally they get about 14 clicks, bit lame for 30,000 “followers”
I’m not pointing out the services but there are a lot out there where you too can avail. But hurry, the gaming has already moved on to Quora.
Forget about numbers
No, really. Get real people. That should be the endgame. Find genuine fans, be genuine with them. That spreads faster than fakery.
Now, several years later, they live together, with their three children and a dog, in a house on a little hill near the sea on the Dingle Peninsula. Maja has opened The Little Cheese Shop and Olivier runs On the Wild Side
Nice debate for the Sligo/North Leitrim Constituency. The Big Ticket.
Years back when I did work with IrelandOffline I talked to a journalist about some telco gossip I heard. Something about the Govt not being happy with some new offering from eircom or something. I asked not to be attributed and to check with others about it. Watching Yes, Minister the other night reminded me of this. The next Sunday the story was printed gave me attribution as “sources close to the Government”. When I read some stories in papers nowadays when they have a “sources” anon quotation and then an on-record quote from someone else, I know that it’s the same person being quoted. I stress, for some. Anyway, enjoy this scene from Yes, Minister series 2 “The Death List”.
Here Jim Hacker leaks a story to the press in the usual way:
Jim Hacker: Where will they run it?
Journo: High up on the home news page.
Jim Hacker: – Not on page one?
Journo: Can I attribute it?
Journo: “Minister speaks out”?
Jim Hacker: – No, no, no.
Journo: Then, where did I get the story? I can’t say, “Officially announced.”
Jim Hacker: “Government spokesman”?
Journo: “Sources close to Minister”?
Jim Hacker: Hold on, I don’t want everybody to know I told you! Couldn’t you do, “Speculation is growing in Westminster”?
Journo: A bit weak.
Jim Hacker: “Unofficial spokesman”?
Journo: Used that twice this week already!
Jim Hacker: The Cabinet’s leaking like a sieve, isn’t it?
Journo: Couldn’t we attribute it to a leading member of the sieve… Cabinet?
Jim Hacker: No…
Journo: How would you like to be “an informed source”?
Jim Hacker: OK. “Informed source.”
Journo: Quite a joke, isn’t it, describing someone as “informed”when his Permanent Secretaryis Sir Humphrey Appleby?
Dave Winer gives advice to Keith Olbermann. Going to the Internet, I dunno. Conan needed very traditional media to get nice leg up online which he then channeled back into traditional media too. I do like the idea of using all channels/platforms though. Mutually exclusive are both oldskool ways of doing things.
It’s going to be an Internet election in Ireland? Bollox it is.
There are two million people in Ireland on Facebook.
Fine Gael has 2776 fans on Facebook. Fianna Fail has 1770 fans on Facebook. Labour has 1421 fans on Facebook. It also has 1960 “Friends” on a personal profile which is against the Facebook terms and conditions and is still interacting with people as of today.
0.13% are fans of Fine Gael
0.0885% are fans of Fianna Fail
0.07105% are fans of Labour
17,000 Irish people are fans of Barcardi. Why like? That’s 0.85% of Irish Facebook users.
Spin SouthWest meanwhile has 58,000 fans. That’s 2.9% of Facebook, for a regional station?
If the excuse is Facebook has the wrong demographics then it shows the total ignorance involved in this. Every demographic are on Facebook and in very large numbers. The election in March is still going to be done the old way by the old faces with a few appointed kids fake tweeting and Facebooking for the parties. And they’ll pat themselves on the back for it afterwards too in their special advisor or quango roles.
More five second analysis of everything the parties are doing wrong will probably follow. Love Damien, who apparently consults for a political party.