Back from today’s Creative Camp and staying with my friend Katherine, who has very kindly let me hijack her cable internet. (Open wifi in Kilkenny: not so much.)

I was a bad, bad camper in that I turned up for lunch, did my two gigs and then turned around and went home to relieve the dog sitter. We travel everywhere with Eimear, but I’m just going to start taking her with me to these things so I can, you know, actually attend them.

Anyway, the panel went really well, and I panelled with brilliant women (Ina, Matha, Elly, Krishna moderating) although I’m a glutton for punishment and I like the hardball questions

I really had a great individual session on How to Blog Like a Boy, with a super responsive audience who laughed a lot and seemed engaged. If you’d like to see the presentation, its on Pix.ie. All of the text is in the first comment for each image, so you just need to click through them sequentially to get the actually content.

It was well attended by both men and women and afterwards, when I had adjoined to the smoking room (the great outdoors) a few of the men attending came up to me to say they were not, in fact, currently blogging like boys but felt suitably kicked up the arse now. That was interesting and oddly gratifying.

And for the record: yes, I speak like I blog and my language is just as salty, if not saltier, in person. Ireland has done bad, bad things for my potty mouth.

Last night was really quite the night. If you want the very abbreviated version: Twenty Major is the hot. And I won an award!

Everyone seems to be doing the rounds and shouting out to everyone they talked to at the jam-packed Irish Blog Awards last night. I have no idea how they can do that; I feel like I met absolutely everyone who blogs in Ireland, everyone who’s ever read a blog in Ireland, and everyone who’s ever shagged someone who’s read a blog in Ireland. There were a phenomenal number of people there, and one of the great surprises of the night was that every one of them, with a single exception, was incredibly nice.

The exception is the drunken bastard who kneecapped me with his shitkickers whilst staggering by the bar and didn’t offer so much as a passing “sorry.” Fucker.

I am absolutely chuffed to pieces and so grateful and full of so many things to say, but also so tired. I had four entire hours of sleep last night, and I’m shattered and incomprehensible. I have to go to sleep with my award under my pillow, but I’ll come back tomorrow to dish the dirt!

I sent out an email this morning at about 4:30 AM to 25 of the 27 people I think are signed up for this weekend’s Tea Party. It was a little harder than I thought to fish email addresses from a thread with 65 comments, so I’m completely frantic that I’ve got the numbers wrong and have missed someone. If that’s so, you’re still invited and I am just a moron.

So, after the break, there’s a (not spammable) list of the email addresses I sent reminders to. If you signed up for the Tea Party but did not get a reminder and can’t find your email here, please let me know by adding a comment to this thread because I need to add you to the list! Similarly, if you signed up but can’t come, or you said you couldn’t come and I signed you up anyway, let me know so I can un-twist my knickers.

And if your name is Sheena or Anne-Lousie, I have you down but have no email for you, so please do comment here so I can send you the reminder email and complete your details.

(more…)

Conn from Edgecast is organising a last-minute meetup of Irish language bloggers on Saturday, 1 March in advance of the Irish Blog Awards. Get the details here (in Irish, naturally!)

It’s an informal get-together, so just meet up in the lobby of the Alexander Hotel at 4 PM and get your Irish on. Feel free to grab banners in English or Irish – Irish one should now be correct:

Remember, there’s loads going on that weekend. Should be a great time!

Photo Credit: Ronnie44052 [cc]

The internet takes a lot of crap for being all about pornography. My general response to this is that the market gets what the market wants, and it should come as no surprise that naked people like other naked people. I have zero problem with online pornography as an industry, and the proliferation of everything from college call girls to phone sex workers doesn’t bother me in the least. You work it, honey.

What does bother me is whoring by people who are not, in fact, paid sex workers.

You may be surprised to learn that the most recent example of this is near Bantry, not generally known for being a red light district. A local hostelry is running an online contest which you enter by linking to them in your blog with a particular Google keyword phrase. They are, in short, gaming Google. They don’t want your opinion or your love; they want your inbound links to improve their search engine rankings.

I don’t have a problem with the suckers people who “entered” the contest by writing about Glengarriff Lodge. I have a problem with Glengarriff running a competition that is transparent, blatant link whoring:

You write a blog post which links to our homepage using the term Luxury Self Catering. In the same blog post you link to one friend who you think might be interested in the competition.

The thing is, it looks like a neat place and is touting itself as eco-friendly and sustainable. They could get legitimate links and an authentic viral buzz off of that. I can think of at least ten places with high Google rankings that would cover this joint if told about it, deliver better Google results for a very competitive keyword phrase, and not piss off half the blogsphere in the process. Or – hey! – they could actually optimise their site for search engines, with, say, page titles and stuff.

So, I’m with CrankyPants on this one.

The only good thing I can say about the Glengarriff campaign is that while they are prescribing the single phrase you need to link with, they are not telling you what to say. So, I can tell you that I think this Luxury Self Catering campaign at Glengarriff Lodge sucks, and according to the contest rules, that’s okay. Since I’m interested in what Eoghan McCabe thinks about this campaign, I guess I’m officially entered. Fair enough.

The same good thing cannot be said about ebuzzing, who spammed emailed me this morning to let me know they’ve setup shop on the corner of Hollywood and Vine:

ebuzzing allows bloggers to earn good money by writing about things they actually like, and even to define their own price for doing so. They browse ad campaigns posted by advertisers, create content for their blog discussing things that they genuinely wish to highlight and are paid for each article.

This kind of pay-per-post scheme is not new, and as long as the company running the service has a policy in place that requires the paid posts to be flagged as such, which ebuzzing does, I generally don’t have an issue with it. In this particular case, however, there’s one little catch: they have to approve your blog entry before you post it.

We will not censor content nor pass judgement on the quality of an article you’re publishing on your blog. But we have a duty to guarantee our advertisers the consistency and integrity of their campaigns and to see to it that the briefs they issue on ebuzzing are interpreted correctly. So it is incumbent on us to evaluate whether a post is within the framework laid down for the campaign, includes the necessary elements (eg links to advertisers’ site) and conforms to ebuzzing’s general editorial policy.

Call me cynical, but I’m reading that as “we can’t censor what you write on your own blog, but we’re probably only going to pre-approve and pay you for things that our client has asked for, namely positive blog entries.”

I’m not sure which of these two practices is more odious. The only thing I do know is that I have a lot more respect for the people whoring themselves to the almighty dollar than I do for the one’s whoring themselves to the almighty Google.

Just a quick reminder: last call to sign up for the Ladies Tea Party. This is a free, informal get together before the Irish Blog Awards, and dinner is very kindly sponsored by Microsoft Ireland. Signups close on the 22nd, and an email will be circulated with a reminder and details on the 23rd or 24th, one week before the Awards.

So if you’ve been thinking about attending but are feeling shy, get your tea while the pot is hot.

Please join me in a BINGO adventure as we score MOLI.com on their PR ability, commitment to transparency, crisis management rating, and customer service skills.

Believe me, even I am getting a bit bored with how shit they are at all of this, and I regret that this post will only be of interest to venture capitalists, DEMO attendees, TechCrunch readers, Valleywag whores, users of Wikipedia, members of social networks, people in PR, people in marketing, people in communications, and those who want to see how MOLI.com finally responded to being caught astroturfing. A small audience, in other words.

Due to the fact that MOLI has racked up quite a few chits on their Bingo card, it’s a bit long. So in honor of Valleywag, who covered this story last night, “more after the jump.”

(more…)

It seems our Moli.com friend Hawk5721 is a true Moli enthusiast. He’s been running all over the internet telling people about it:

• Hawk5721 astroturfs on Digg, telling us all about Ron Paul’s new social networking site on… Moli.com
• Hawk5721 astroturfs on Techcrunch, telling us “If you are frustrated with Facebook yuo should try this site ww.moli.com. It rocks.”
• Hawk5721 astroturfs on GetSatisfaction, telling us that “they actually have customer service and help.”

They certainly do have customer service and help. Moli.com was very helpful indeed in tracking down the fact that Hawk5721 is actually Daniel DiFiore, Moli.com’s Director of Customer Service. This was ridiculously easy to Google up, given that he’s blogging at danieldifiore.blogspot.com with the username Hawk5721.

On his Moli profile, Dan is generous enough to offer his services as a consultant. It seems he’s worked with fairly notable clients like, err, the Rhode Island Film Collaborative.

On whose website he’s also astroturfed for Moli.com. Natch.

The guy’s got stamina, I’ll give him that. Unfortunately, since he hasn’t quite come to grips with that Moli.com “split channels between personal and business personae” Unique $30m Selling Point, we get to see just how much stamina he has, especially when it comes to doing Jello shots.*

Still, it was great to be able to track him down so easily on Moli.com. This whole social networking thing is awesome!

*Update: That image seems to have been removed from Dan’s photo album. No worries; I have a copy.

Previously | Moli.com Not Only Lies But Whores
Next Up | MOLI  fails at Internet Bingo

Shortly after posting my previous, less than flattering report on DEMO star and newly funded social network start-up Moli.com, a visitor named Hawk5721 made the following, contrary comment:

MOLI is awesome. Exactly what grown ups and business have been waiting for. No kids spamming. The only thing i got when i signed up was a few friend request which is a good thing.

This was suspicious for a few reasons:

• The comment was from a new commenter, and appeared very soon after posting.
• I’m not that widely read on RSS, and such a prompt reply screams “Google alert for MOLI.com” way louder than “dedicated Sabrina fan.”
• I don’t know, write for or cross paths with people with user names like Hawk5721. That is because this is not 1998 and I am not on AOL.

WordPress, my blog software, records the IP address of every poster. So I asked my other half to look up Hawk5721′s PI address of 65.207.161.149.

You’ll never guess who 65.207.161.149 is. Oh gwan. Guess.

Why, it’s our friends at nat0.hq.moli.com! Yes, our friend Hawk works for Moli.com. Apparently that “signing up” thing he referenced was, in fact, signing his employment contract.

You know what blows my mind about this? You get $30M in funding, you get to be a DEMO wunderkind, you’re a start-up with great buzz, awesome momentum and a huge PR rush…

And the energies of one of your 55 employees is directed at fucking astroturfing?

Shouldn’t these people be out doing blow and drinking champagne off the breasts of nubile young lapdancers?

This is corporate suicide. It’s a PR nightmare when you get caught with your hand in this cookie jar. Astroturfing kills companies. It kills funding. Most importantly, it kills trust with your userbase. (You know, those people giving you their names, email address, postal addresses, and in the case of Moli, credit card details.)

Consequences for companies that engage in this kind of deciet are so dire that there’s an internet phrase for it:

“This will not end well givewell.”

That’s because founder Holden Karnofsky was removed from his position as Executive Director of GiveWell for doing the same thing after he got caught red-handed astroturfing at MetaFilter.

I hereby predict that Moli.com will not givewell.

Enjoy the rest of DEMO, Moli.

Update | Hawk5721 is Moli.com’s Director of Customer Service

I was greatly cheered today by the news that Dublin based Irish start-up MOLI has received $30M in funding. I was also to no small degree baffled, as neither I nor several other Irelandias on Twitter had ever heard of them when the news came through via Walter.

I hopped over to check it out, and lo my joy was unbridled. Because this – this, my friends – this is the social networking model I have been talking about for months. This is social networking for grownups.

Moli pins its colours to the mast with the post-Facebook slogan “Control your privacy.” As previously mentioned, I’m all for that. But more than that, Moli convincingly delivers what nobody else does: controlled personal networks. Moli lets you build several network channels (for example, work, friends and family) so you can present several faces to the outside world. And then Moli lets you approve new contacts to one or many of your self-defined channels.

This is marvellous. While I may be happy for my friends to see photos of me from my Saturday night at a hen party, I may be less keen for my mum to see them, and I certainly do not want my business partners and clients to see them. Moli lets me push my self-published content – photos, music, audio and blog entries – to whichever channels I select on a per item basis.

As a concept, this is every bit as fantastic as my string of instant fangirl tweets implied. In practice, it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. For a start, I was a little disappointed that Moli couldn’t check my Gmail to tell me who I know that is already a member. Looking around and trying to find anyone I might know, I also realised that there is a heavy emphasis on art, music and creative types ala VIRB. There is an outstanding range of tools for music and visuals for this crowd, but that’s less than useful to me if my business face is not the arts.

Potentially very useful for businesses, however, is the fact that Moli enables online sales and transactions for the low monthly cost of $3.99. For microbusinesses, this could be a fantastic tool ala Etsy, allowing them to get online, setup shop, and conduct sales at a nominal cost in a visually controlled environment with Paypal or Google Checkout.

And then, while I was sitting there trying to decide if sinking time into MOLI was worth it, given that I’m not an artist or a small business crafter and I have no idea how to find the people I know there, MOLI broke my heart.

For all the positioning and talk of “protecting your privacy” MOLI fails at the most basic hurdle. Because it doesn’t cloak new joins; in fact, it has to be displaying them somewhere, because within 15 minutes of joining, the spam started.

MOLI’s most “active” member, DrTom, would like me to check out his environmental webTV station and products. Lynn would like to hook me into her self-proclained “EZmoney” scheme. (I can only guess how many multitudinous levels it has.) I’m waiting for the bank transfer solicitation from Nigeria, which will surely arrive any moment now.

I am, to put it mildly, devastated. I’m about to set up a channel called Spammers and admit these new “friends” of mine while we await the next flight from the African subcontinent, but really, I’m pissed. This is a great idea, a spanking design, a pretty good UI with a few small issues, and a bastion of everything that is wrong with the internet.

Moli, you wooed me, you hooked me, and then you broke my heart.

By email.

Bitch.

Update 1 | Commenter Hawk5721 comes from a Moli IP
Update 2 | Hawk5721 is Moli.com’s Director of Customer Service