SixApart Spamming Bloggers to Promote Blogs.com
by
on September 09, 2008,
First of all, let me state some things clear right in the very beginning: I believe SixApart develops one of the best blogging platforms on Earth and I also think reviving Blogs.com as a blogs directory less than a month ago was not a bad idea - the site looks pretty good and I definitely see people spending some time to discover new blogs suggested by Blogs.com editors here. And now I will have to say that I object to the latest marketing technique SixApart uses to promote Blogs.com because it really looks like spamming the entire blogosphere - and SixApart is not the company I’d expect to be involved in this type of marketing.
Today I have found an email in my inbox (sent to “undisclosed recipients, by the way, so I can only guess what email they used and if it is a mass mailing actually) with the subject reading “You’re a featured blogger on Blogs.com!”.
Generally I simply ignore such messages because they invariably offer either to link back to their directory from a post stating how honored I am or give them some free real estate on Profy for a widget announcing that I earned some 9.9 out of 10 points for the blog quality. Well, thank you, I am honored and all - but not enough to actually sacrifice some screen space here.
But this one I felt I actually had to read because, after all:
- It was from SixApart
- It was about a recently hyped Blogs.com
- My LinkedIn toolbar showed the sender’s position with the company as a “Marketing Manager”
So it all looked trustworthy enough to read - and this is probably why my disappointment after reading is so deep. So here is the actual text (without the signature):
Dear Blogger,
We wanted to let you know that your blog is featured as one of the best blogs on Blogs.com.
Blogs.com is a new site from Six Apart that collects the best blogs and posts from around the web. The blogs featured on Blogs.com are chosen by our editors and the community for their quality, popularity, and the relevancy of posts. Our goal is to simply help bloggers find more readers - and to help readers find great blogs.
You can let people know you’re featured on Blogs.com with a customized Featured Blogger badge. Just follow these steps to add the badge to your site:
To find your blog on the site, use the search box to search for words from your most recent posts. We update hourly so new posts are always being added to the overall homepage and category homepages.
Need help? Just ask: editor@blogs.com
For more information on Blogs.com or to see other featured blogs, go to http://www.blogs.com/.
We also welcome your feedback. If you have any comments or questions (or would like your site removed) please let us know at editor@blogs.com.
So you can see basically all the worst expectations are here: I am offered to install a widget on Profy to tell the world Profy is featured on Blogs.com (tell me if you are interested and I will reconsider) and I am even offered to search for some words from my recent posts to find where exactly Profy is featured (I have done a search for “profy” and for my name and only found other blogs quoting me so I still have no idea where exactly Profy is featured and have no intention of searching for all the recent keywords). I’m afraid that the featured position in yet another blogs directory (even if it is one from SixApart) is hardly a reason enough for me to spend an hour over there looking for possible links back to Profy, really.
I have been offered to install various widgets on Profy numerous times - for people to easier subscribe to our feed with someone’s RSS reader (one of them I was particularly flattered about had a subject line that read “Partnership between Profy and XYZ”, where XYZ is a very well-known name in the feed reading niche, by the way) or for people to see the high quality of our posts as assessed by some experts over there. Once I even received an invitation to register with some social bookmarking site (sorry, I don’t remember the name now) and add their button under our posts because someone (presumably the site owner) bookmarked one of our posts on their site (that one was also accompanied by a long lecture on social bookmarking as a concept and how useful it may be in driving traffic to our blog) so I was supposed to help the site get visibility to send traffic my way.
Well, yes, I do have all types of experiences with people pitching their widgets to me for them to get some Google juice. I am sure other bloggers receive tons of such emails as well and we may have gotten too accustomed to them to even notice. But I don’t want a respected company like SixApart to engage in such questionable activities that probably involve mass mailing since I don’t see my email or name anywhere and have no idea what database they used to extract my email.
I know that after this post I will hardly ever have Profy appear on the Blogs.com as a featured blog or as anything else again in the future. But for now I feel that I will survive without it (at least I have not noticed any hits to Profy from Blogs.com because of the mentioned “featured” position) and maybe it will make some companies think again before choosing some new peculiar promotion method - after all, bloggers are known to publish everything that aggravates them right to their blogs.
UPDATE: Mass mailing confirmed by some bloggers reporting receipt of the same email repeatedly (see the comments below).
Fill disclosure: Profy also offers a blogging platform to participants of private beta testing.
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Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
He he, Lana. Negative publicity is still publicity. You just gave them what they wanted: a free entry at profy.com
I think they are not worse than others, btw. What amazes me is the language they use (Dear blogger? - they don’t even have the courtesy to address to look for your name?) I understand the need for PR (obviously) but bad PR always makes me wonder… A “respected” company like SixApart cannot afford to hire a consultant? They should hire you, Lana. Your observations are more than common sense.
@Mihaela: LOL, I do realize that this is also publicity but definitely not the one they are looking for - I am not installing the widget and probably it will make other bloggers rethink their own opinion about the widget as well.
And of course I never meant to put it as if they are worst than others, I just think they are not in the position to use such dubious methods. I’ll see if I get a consulting request in my inbox this time - though I doubt that as well
Hey Svetlana, I’m the Product Manager for Blogs.com that emailed you. The badging that we have for the blogs featured on Blogs.com is completely optional and was sent out to only the blogs that are featured on the site. Of course we’d love for everyone to put the badge on their blogs but that doesn’t affect if a blog is featured in the site or not. Your blog was chosen by our editors for excellence in coverage of technology, particularly Web 2.0. Also, if you would like your blog removed from the site, please let me know. I’m troubleshooting now why your posts aren’t findable via search and will check back later on today.
Andy, that’s a swift reaction. I have recognized your name, just did not want to use it in the post not to make the attack personal.
I fully realize the badges are optional but I still don’t understand how comes I received the email looking so impersonal if it is only sent to those select few featured bloggers (thank you for complimenting Profy, by the way) - it does not have any name and hides email the letter was sent to with both factors making the email very questionable.
And no, of course I do not mind being in Blogs.com directory at all - who in their right mind ever refused some extra incoming links in this business?
Aha! There was a typo in the URL we had for your feed. The admins re-fired the aggregator and your posts are now showing up in the Technology > Web 2.0 category: http://www.blogs.com/technology/web-20/ . Here’s an example of your posts appearing on our site through search: http://www.blogs.com/search/profy
As I said above, we’re not going to remove blogs from the system just because they don’t add the badge. That won’t stand in the way of our mission to introduce readers to the best blogs (and bloggers) on their favorite topics.
Thanks for helping us troubleshoot and have a great week!
Andy, thanks for taking a look at the problem with Profy posts, good to know I at least got the email because I was actually featured.
As for making blogs add your badges, take a look at what BlogRovr does - they offer incredible value, thus they get our real estate on all the blogs they partner with.
Enjoy your week
I have received this e-mail no fewer than 5 separate times. I responded back and copied the editor as well. It’s ridiculous.
Since posting, I got it two more times, so we are up to seven.
Looks like Louis’s email is re-firing from our webhost’s mail server - a couple other bloggers are reporting this problem. Our email admins are working on this right now.
Louis: I think I’m still more lucky than you are - I got 16 identical emails about this. It really looks like a poorly-prepared campaign to me now.
Poor Andy! I can only imagine the nightmare he’s going through. I feel so blessed for not being selected - he he! No spam in my mailbox (other than the usual). But see, Lana… the man does need help! I was somehow expecting to hear they made the offer already.
Mihaela, I can imagine the nightmare Andy must be going through - after all, this one was certainly intended as a good PR opportunity. But if you take a look at his comments above, you’ll see at least that they are trying to act as if everything is normal with minor technical glitches - after all, they are not making us install the widgets for being among the select few
Just checking back - I’m sending out a formal apology for the rather impersonal tone of our initial email and the multiple copies being sent. You should see it in a few minutes. Thanks again for helping me troubleshoot this problem and thanks also for your patience.
Andy, thank you, I have received the letter of apology, appreciate it. Hope this experience will show you how clever any single marketing attempt should be for you when dealing with bloggers. After talking to you here I’d also love to say that now I feel much better about having Profy featured on Blogs.com myself.