Paul Brislen: Some websites need a good blogging

COMMENT

Blogging is said to have changed modern journalism by challenging the cosy media monopoly with its grass-roots approach to issues. But blogs, more properly known as "web-logs", a form of online diary, are also having a huge impact on marketing campaigns, with interesting results.

Take, for example, the sorry tale of the events ticketing company Ticketek. Ticketek has a website. It's not the worst site in the world, but it does make life frustrating for anyone who wants to do anything out of the ordinary, like buy a ticket.

Rather than taking my money, the site insisted I sign up for an account first. I'm not about to give out my home address, phone number, email address, height, weight, shoe size and blood group to just anybody. All I want to do is buy a ticket to the rugby. I have a credit card, surely that's enough?

I'm not alone in my dislike of the site. One Alan Macdougall wrote about his experiences in his blog Half Pie and was pleased to see several people join in with their own tales of Ticketek woe.

And then something interesting happened. Macdougall saw several visits to the site from a particular IP address. In the internet world an IP address is similar to your phone number, and most blog software will allow the site owner to see the IP address of anyone posting a comment. If someone is unpleasant or distasteful, postings from that address can be blocked.

Macdougall looked up the address and discovered it belonged to Ticketek's Auckland office. He also looked at which site the visitors had come from and discovered they came from Google where they'd searched for "I hate Ticketek".

So Macdougall knew Ticketek knew he didn't like their website. And Ticketek knew that Macdougall's site was gathering a lot of interest from other people who didn't like Ticketek's website.

Someone called "Simone" posted a comment to Macdougall's blog saying she loved the Ticketek site.

"I cant belive all the rubbish im [sic] reading ticketek is a great site and service who have continued to give me great service over the years there is always somethinh [sic] for people like you to moan about so get a life!!!" wrote Simone with a cavalier disregard for punctuation and the website administrator's power.

Macdougall spotted straight away that Simone was connecting from the Ticketek address and called her bluff. Amusingly, several other blogs are now pointing to his blog, and traffic to his site has increased dramatically.

Even American science fiction writer Cory Doctrow is pointing to Macdougall's blog on his own blog, BoingBoing, and Half Pie is now one of the top 10 sites on Google when you search for "ticketek".

Ticketek's hardly alone though. This phenomenon is so common it's got a name - "astro-turfing" - which refers to the dubious marketing practice of companies starting a fake "grass-roots" campaign in support of their own products using online comments in newsgroups and blogs.

One local telco did something similar, listing a glowing review of its new services under "our customers say" without mentioning that the review had been written by its PR company. Even Microsoft has been caught trying its hand in the "happy customer comments" field of marketing.

The good news is Ticketek has a new marketing manager, and one of her priorities is sorting out the website. She doesn't know who "Simone" is and said nobody at Ticketek Auckland would own up.

Maybe if the new version of the website is good Simone can be retired and Macdougall and his blogging cohorts will be able to chalk up a victory.

They might even celebrate by buying tickets to the events they want to see on the Ticketek site.

* Email Paul Brislen