Viral Marketing Using Viral Videos (Did I Mention Viral?)

Definition of “Viral Video” from Wikipedia:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.

Definition of “Viral Marketing” from Wikipedia:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.

Definition of a popular alternative rock/geek rock/power pop band using viral internet videos and Internet memes in their latest radio single:

Weezer and their song “Pork and Beans”

Definition of a Internet-based company making cash, hand-over-fist from other’s content (from Wikipedia):

Google, Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from online and mobile advertising related to its Internet search, web-based e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies.

Splogs Suck

This site has only been up for about a week and already a splog, or spam blog, had gotten a hold of it.

Splogs are “fake” blogs whose content is usually entirely stolen from legitimate blogs. In this case, I wrote a post last week that cited Wikipedia and contained a tag for Wikipedia. I believe this is how the splog in question ripped off my content. Splogs I’ve had experience with will re-post information from any blog that shows up in a Technorati or Google Blog Search feed with a particular tag or keyword.

The splog will attempt to get my content indexed in search engines to generate traffic to the splog’s site which is usually inundated with paid advertising links (read: pr0n).

Often, too, the splog will send a pingback to the original blog. Pingbacks (also known as trackbacks) are used to notify a blog that another blog has cited information from a particular post. The pingback will appear as a snippet of the new post in the comments section of the cited post. This a great feature because it allows easy link trading between bloggers with similar interests, and it gives credit to the original author.

The problem with splogs sending pingbacks are now the sucker gets a link in my comments to his/her rip-off of my post. Fortunately, Akismet is catching on to these and will file it as spam before it hits my blog.

There’s nothing I can do about the bastard stealing my content (except to change the content, or play the sucker), really, but the silver lining in spam blog is that I know my site is being searched and indexed!

Splog in question: http://wikipedia.doorwayblogging.info/ (NSFW)

The Meaning of Serendipity [And Discovery]

The best thing about my discovery of the meaning of the word “Serendipity” is that is was serendipitous in nature. While looking for the full dictionary / encyclopedic meaning of “discovery” to provide more description for this site, I found that discovery is very similar to serendipity but their meanings differ in how the thing is found. Discovery is detecting and learning something willfully while serendipity is accidental discovery that turns out to be fortunate.

Previously, I thought serendipity had something to do fate… well, I guess it does depending on what you believe. But, I’m glad I found the full meaning of the word because it’ll help describe some of the discoveries I’ve made that you’ll find here. Instead of you thinking I’m a blundering idiot by saying it was “accidental,” I can elegantly say it was “serendipity.” Doesn’t that sound so much better?