The anonymous blogger smearing e-mail service provider Epsilon Interactive president Al DiGuido may not be some low-level employee who DiGuido fired, as one first would suspect.
The blogger, whose work can be seen at http://kingofemailmarketing.blogspot.com, is demonstrating a reasonably high level of knowledge about the inner workings of the industry.
The blogger launched his effort last week and announced it in an e-mail to Magilla Marketing and three other trade editors. The blogger pretends to be DiGuido writing under the pseudonym Pal Dodido bragging about becoming the King of E-mail Marketing. The blogger describes duping venture capitalists into buying into what is assumed to be Bigfoot Interactive, and duping analysts at Forrester and Jupiter into giving the e-mail service provider a high ranking.
The blogger also apparently knew the names of the venture capitalists behind Bigfoot Interactive, which was the name of DiGuido’s company before it was sold to Epsilon.
The blogger knows that DiGuido worked in publishing—at Ziff Davis—before going into e-mail. The blogger also ends his posts with the signature “until-next-time” sign off DiGuido uses to end his columns on ClickZ.
In an e-mail exchange with Magilla Marketing, the blogger said he never worked with DiGuido and that he is being fed material by people in the industry.
“Never worked there, just have more free time than the people providing the content,” he said. “It appears as though the group is growing.”
However, as of this writing, the blog has drawn a grand total of one comment.
A check of the blogger’s e-mail headers revealed that they were sent from BigFish.com. Google said in an e-mail it would not reveal the identity of the blogger without a subpoena.
DiGuido has been a high-profile, vocal member of the e-mail marketing industry for years, so the list of possibilities for the identity of the blogger is practically endless.
The effort is an example of how easy the Internet makes it for people to anonymously harass others.
DiGuido said he has no idea who would launch such a blog.
