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.”

Read 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

I’ve signed up for Creative Camp 08 in Kilkenny this year, just to top off Blog Week (because, you know, I won’t be busy enough for those nine days.)

I’m presenting with a brilliant group of women on a panel called Grabbing the Blogsphere by the Balls. Normally I am resistant to all-girl panels, but since this one is addressing issues like, well, all girl panels, I thought it would be worth a whirl.

We’re still hashing that one out, but I think it’s going to be a roundtable looking at things like poor female turnout at tech events, representation of female speakers, credibility and blogging, and women bloggers in general.

Which, obviously, got me thinking about gender and blogging, and since I’m going to be there anyway, I decided to offer up a talk called How To Blog Like a Boy. As it says in the description:

Women come to blogging from a different socialisation, communication and linguistic background than male bloggers, and enter a slightly different ecosystem with distinct advantages and disadvantages. “How to Blog Like a Boy” looks at how women can free their voices, raise their blog profiles, and position themselves as a bloggers of authority in Ireland.

There is actually a lot of interesting research around socialisation (women are raised with a disproportionately high emphasis on niceness) and lingusitics (we’re masters of the hedge statement) that I think are reflected in interesting ways in how we blog, and have consequences for how we’re perceived.

So no, it isn’t really how to blog like a boy. It’s a look at (among other things) the predominantly female characteristics of language and interaction that are not doing us any favours in the blogsphere (or the rest of our lives) and how to shake them out of our writing and communication.

And yes, kittens will be killed.

On the plus side, no tea will be served, so people of all genders are welcome to attend.

The last two days were a completely unexpected whirlwind. While it’s been a peculiar flavour of fun, it’s also been exhausting and more than a little weird. Not to mention more than a little drunk.

The exhausting part was entirely my fault. I sent out a press release on Wednesday at around 10 PM, figuring it would be a good thing to have in journalists’ Inboxes first thing in the morning. They started calling 5 minutes later. When Newstalk then rang and asked if I could go on air the next morning, I started to get half a clue that Two Tits and a Vote might catch more attention than I had anticipated. So as soon as I got off the last call at midnight, I hastily convened an emergency IM meeting with the fabulous Suzy, who helped me develop my talking points and message list for radio shows. We pow-wowed until 3 AM, though I have to say the time invested was completely worth it.

What Thursday brought was, first of all, a damn early wake-up call when a regional paper rang at 7 AM. From there the phone pretty much rang straight through until noon. It was so full on that when the Independent rang at 12 to ask if they could send a photographer down now, I told them I needed an hour because I had not yet had a chance to pee, shower or brush my teeth and was still in my pajamas.

I also wanted to *cry* because I’d had 4 hours of sleep, and as you may have seen in your paper du jour, looked like the back end of a bus that had been run over by another bus.

After an hour of having various hideous photos of me taken by a very nice man, I jumped in a cab to Cork Station, grabbed a cold noodle salad from the newsagent’s, and with sixty seconds to spare made the 2:30 Dublin train. Where my master plan of grabbing some sleep was promptly thwarted by a hen party from Mallow. A very large, very loud hen party that in a Patton-esque triumph of tactical resource planning, managed to distribute itself across every available carriage.

In Dublin, I was graciously rescued by Ellybabes, which may be cosmological proof that there is a God because at this point I was so exhausted I couldn’t move under my own steam without walking into a lamp post. We arrived at the Odessa Club just in time for me to do a radio interview at 6 PM, after which… I made a huge, moronic, critical error.

I had a glass of wine.

It wasn’t until about 10 minutes later that I noticed I could no longer properly form words. I pulled my empty lunch container out of my bag, read the back, and realised that my complete food intake for the day had consisted of a grand total of 180 calories. And I was now absolutely, irretrievably BOMBED OUT OF MY TREE.

There is a reason I never, ever, ever drink. The reason is that I am spectacularly bad at it, even under the most auspicious circumstances. And I think we can all agree that four hours of sleep, five cups of coffee, and 180 calories worth of food do not make for auspicious circumstances.

At this point we migrated upstairs to join the throngs at the the tremendously successful TechLudd event (Anton Mannering: Tech Crowd Hero!), where I had another glass of wine because whatever shards of judgment with which I am normally endowed were now firmly locked in a cask labeled Sauvignon Blanc. I then proceeded to play nicely with some people whilst being borderline abusive to a number of others - people to whom I would sincerely apologise if only I could remember who they were.

The only blessing was that I had to leave at 8:30 PM to catch the last train back to Cork, limiting both my alcohol intake and my exposure to other humans. When the train left the station and the announcement was made that there would be no food service, I think I actually wept before keeling over and finally, finally falling asleep. Or possibly just passing out.

Friday morning I was suitably punished for my sins by an incredibly early call from a radio station ringing to slot me into their morning show in a few hours. After that, my hangover (yes, from two glasses of wine) and I went out to get the morning papers from the newsagent over the road and with 9 hours of sleep in two days, started all over again.

The media attention for Two Tits and a Vote was of course completely worth it and utterly delightful. I was so, so glad for the press bump; the interest level was just amazing and very gratifying.

Almost as gratifying, though, was waking up this morning at 7 am not because the phone had rung at an ungodly hour for the third straight day, but because the dog had stepped on my face. Press coverage is great, but I’m no kind of media maven. And after the last 48 hours, being able to pee without three calls stacking up on my mobile is its own kind of thrill.

Very quickly from what has in the last 24 hours become an insane asylum:

TwoTitsandaVote.com is getting a lot of attention. I owe a serious pint to bloggers who helped get the word out online and to the people who shared their press contacts and who helped prep me for media interviews. It worked:

• Irish Independent - Page 10
• Irish Daily Mirror - Page 27
• The Star - Page 20

I have also had a landline and a mobile pinned to my ear since 4 am yesterday (more on that later!) and have done a bunch of taped interviews, now rolling out live interviews (updating this list as they are booked):

• 9.05 Radio Kerry (Dierdra Walsh was brilliant)
• 10:15 Cork 103 FM (David absolutely smashing)
• 10.45 LMFM Drogheda (Michael a little chilly)
• 11.05 TiperraryFM (Seamus Martin very engaged)
• 11:30 Midlands 103 (Shorter than I’d hoped given region)
• 1.00 Spin 103.8 FM Dublin (Team very clued in, rock)
• Monday at 9:05 Ocean FM in Sligo (note to self: DO NOT forget)
• Tuesday at 16:55 The Last Word on Today FM
• Thursday at 3 pm, Inside Out also via podcast!

Newstalk, who canceled yesterday, are also trying to confirm for Life with Orla Berry for today somewhere from 12 to 12:30 so hopefully that will work out as well! Bummer.

This is nuts. I’m exhausted. I’m also thrilled. Totally, totally thrilled.

So as numbers grew for the Blog Awards Ladies Tea Party event, I rang Market Bar to increase the table size. Apparently after 15 people, they prefer that you not just sit there and get pissed. In fact, they insist upon feeding you, probably to counteract massive amounts of booze.

So large parties are required to take on a very reasonably priced €15, two-course set menu. Which is sensible and in fact probably the cheapest meal you can find in Dublin, but Ina and I had not planned for this and of course announced the event as being free. While we are delighted to break bread and share a meal with our blogging sisters, we didn’t want to tack on a surprise cost or have people drop out because of money issues.

Martha Rotter at Microsoft Ireland came to the rescue: Microsoft is sponsoring the Tea Party and it would appear that Bill Gates is now buying us dinner even though he himself is not allowed to attend. Which is pretty fantastic, not least of all because I was very much beginning to wonder how I was going to squeeze my supper in between all these cocktails.

Many thanks to Elly Parker for making the approach, and to Martha for making it happen.

I will be circulating an email with details (yes, there are choices, yes there are vegetarian options, yes dinner is free, yes you still have to pay for your own drinks as planned) around February 1st to everyone attending, but I really just wanted to give the heads up on this slight change of plan and say thank you to Elly and Martha for making this headache go away in grand style.

We’re going to have a great time!

Conn over at Edgecast is organising a meetup of Irish language bloggers in the lobby of the Alexander at 4PM on Saturday March 1st. See here for info and Irish language banner.

The phototastic RedMum is organising a photoblogger meetup for the afternoon of March 1st. I’m unclear if this is a photo-taking tour or a pub crawl, but I’m sure all will be revealed.

The scrumptious yet Humble Housewife is organising a food bloggers and fans brunch for the morning after the night before at the equally scrumptious Ely CHQ.

The gracious Ina O’Murchu and myself are organising a Ladies Tea Party at Market Bar before the awards. Warning: may include small parts, martinis and olives.

I’ll update this list as more events are announced, and of course if you’d like someone to make you a promotional graphic for your event, you only need to ask!

Bock the Robber has very kindly invited me out for a pint. Unfortunately, I am otherwise engaged that afternoon.

A few men have sent me mails or Twitters to ask the same question Bock has, namely “If I hosted a blogging event and made it men-only, would a hailstorm of shit not come down on my head?” (So far, no such queries from anyone of the female persuasion.)

My basic position is that there is zero need for a men-only event because men, in their sheer numbers, tend to dominate most tech and blogging events in Ireland. Not, mind you, intentionally; I do not think that men in the sphere we’re talking about here have set out to disenfranchise women from these events. But for a wide variety of reasons, women simply do not engage in these kinds of valuable networking, learning and leadership gigs in the same proportions as their male counterparts.

I am completely used to walking into a meetup, a BarCamp, a conference or an event to find I am the only woman, or one of a very few women in attendance. I am routinely the only woman presenter or panelist at events where I am asked to speak. I am shocked and delighted that six of the 38 people currently registered for the upcoming TechLudd in Dublin are women. I owe Anton €20 because my guess was three. And that was optimistic.

So my personal point of view is that to have an event described as “Men Only” is intentionally exclusive, whereas given the current gender imbalance in technology, blogging and authority in Ireland, a woman only event is an effort to be inclusive. We may simply enjoy a moment of strength in numbers and several bottles of nicely decanted Chardonnay. Or we may plot to raise the profile of some of the best among us, find ways to encourage each other to step forward into more events, and devise nefarious ways take over the Irish blogsphere.

After all, studies do show that we’re more cooperative, you know.

That said, we’re not talking about a conference, BarCamp or other self-described “tech event” here. We’re talking about drinks at a bar. And I have zero problem with the boys gathering for a friendly pint while we paint each other’s nails and compare manicures.

Statistically, women are also better endowed with skills for compromise, conflict resolution and consensus, so on that note I’d like to add:

Bock, I am sincerely looking forward to meeting you at the Blog Awards, no matter how much we may disagree on this issue. And it would be my pleasure to buy you a pint.