{"id":4568,"date":"2012-05-18T07:05:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T13:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2012-05-18T07:05:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T13:05:39","slug":"on-manufactured-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4568","title":{"rendered":"On Manufactured Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kernelmag.com\/comment\/opinion\/2164\/people-listen-to-me\/\">Dan Howe:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Why do people fake their online influence? Dan Howe, who once experimented with follower gaming, explains.<br \/>\nFaking influence in order to alter public behaviour is a very old marketing tactic. As far back as the 1930s, it was routine for promoters to hire good looking young people to wait outside concert halls for lead operatic sopranos, both encouraging actual theatre goers to join the mob for autographs and to stage a good shot for the press.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nSimilar activity persists today, with shops <a href=\"http:\/\/marketing-for-ecommerce.blogspot.co.uk\/2011\/03\/what-can-online-learn-from-hollister.html\">like Abercrombie &#038; Fitch purposefully maintaining a queue out front<\/a> in order to keep up the appearance of popularity and companies like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/11\/business\/at-colleges-the-marketers-are-everywhere.html?pagewanted=all\">HP turning the popular kids on US campuses in to paid brand ambassadors<\/a>.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nWhile it is generally accepted practice, openly discussed and debated in the media and among marketers, when it comes to applying the same principles online, you tend to get awkward silence from industry professionals.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nLast year, PR Week broke a story about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prweek.com\/uk\/news\/1085986\/Top-firms-urged-hire-covert-PR-agency-news-manipulation\/\">Covert PR<\/a>, a firm apparently offering the services  of \u201cposters\u201d to submit online comments to mainstream media websites to \u201chelp sway and nudge the debate\u201d  in favour of its clients.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Howe: Why do people fake their online influence? Dan Howe, who once experimented with follower gaming, explains. Faking influence in order to alter public behaviour is a very old marketing tactic. As far back as the 1930s, it was routine for promoters to hire good looking young people to wait outside concert halls for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4569,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions\/4569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}