Cashing In On Swine Flu: How Ethical Is That?

If you are a blogger, you must know a very simple principle of blogging when you do it for eyeballs (and ad impressions obviously): whatever your actual topic is, whenever there is something huge (positive or negative - does not matter) happening in the world that everyone wants more and more information about, think hard about how you could connect this event to the topic of your blog (even remotely) and you will get all the eyeballs you need - guaranteed. Some bloggers will probably want to argue they never do that, but I simply won’t believe it as if you want your content to be popular, you should cover things that are already popular - but from your own point of view.

In fact, I believe that even this particular post of mine can be considered as an example of exactly the same approach as I know quite well that the post will get a good number of visitors from search engines because of the hot topic covered. And while I don’t feel very good about posting it, I think I have the right to share my doubts about people shamelessly cashing in on the hysteria surrounding the latest threat to the human race - the swine flu.

I myself live in Russia where we have not had any swine flu cases for now (and I hope we won’t though it’s quite difficult to expect it is possible given how closely interrelated the entire world is these days). Yet it looks like whenever I turn the TV on in the kitchen to spend some time away from the computer and have a breakfast/lunch/dinner, everything anchors discuss on the news is the swine flu. And I have to admit - even here I feel somewhat scared of the epidemic though I am many miles away from the countries where at least some infected people are located.

Swine flu is a hot topic on Google now

So I can imagine how bad it must feel if you live somewhere closer to Mexico - in California or just about anywhere in the US, for example. So it is no wonder that swine flu is discussed everywhere being the trending topic on Twitter (of course) and people are looking for all the information on the subject everywhere they can find it - easily bringing swine flu and everything related to it to the list of the most searched for topic on Google as well (obviously).

So it is equally obvious that swine flu will be one of the most discussed things everywhere - on TV, in print media and online - until the situation is settled in this or that manner. Doing some research of my own today on Google on the subject, I have realized that the number of resources you can go to for your information on swine flu is already abundant enough to spend more time there getting more and more frightened of the virus than learning some reasonable preventive measures like taking vitamins and wearing a mask if you are in a dangerous place.

Yet my surprise was a very unpleasant one when I found that we already have a whole startup dedicated exclusively to - you guess it - swine flu. They have already advertised themselves on the DIY StartupNews blog where everyone can submit an announcement of a new startup launched. And these days we seem to be able to get a startup for just about everything so it is no wonder that we already have this SwineUpdates website.

With their logo somehow resembling that of the Swatch watches, the startup is nothing but an aggregator of news on the swine flu from various sources: it features a section for news, Twitter updates, videos and - where can you go without an interactive map these days? - a Google Maps mashup marking the places with flu cases. The worst part about the site is how they feature the number of deaths caused by the virus in a very prominent position in the upper right corner of the site so it is the first thing you see when arriving.

Of course there’s nothing really good you could expect from a startup that is cooked like this - hastily and with the only purpose of trying to be the first one in aggregating all the news in one place on the hottest topic of the day - but it looks like you can actually easily make things worse: the guys already have sponsors for their website so their financial motivation is quite obvious.

There’s no about or contacts section on the site and I won’t even dig into who the domain is registered for as I believe there are plenty of creative minds online who will want to get some quick money off the worldwide hysteria surrounding the swine flu. But honestly, how ethical is that?

I personally believe it is good that we have dedicated websites where we can get all the news we need - as abundant information will often help us realize we should not panic but should instead take some recommended actions and try to stay calm and reasonable. Yet I am quite uncomfortable about someone going and cooking a “startup” like this one - quickly and without any real purpose beyond getting some quick search traffic and monetizing it with some equally quick ads. You tell me if I’m paranoid but I will still be uncomfortable about people doing things like this one and capitalizing on something that is already a personal tragedy for many and potentially a death treat for the entire mankind.