Tough times call for desperate measures. No. I think the saying goes "Desperate times call for desperate measures." It’s an interesting saying, and we always tend to think of it literally in that order, that the situation causes the action. What are desperate times though? Try to name a few, and chances are you will name finite events – do or die times, often literally do or die moments. What about now, though, in this economy? Does now qualify as a desperate time? For some of the hardest hit it most certainly does, but what about our industry? How can we get a sense of the health of the sector? Perhaps the answer lies from taking the reverse approach. By looking at the actions and asking what they would qualify as. The creation of flogs for instance, while chock full of issues, doesn’t look like an act of desperation. It might look risky and careless but all in all opportunistic. The same probably holds true for the evolution of the fake blog to the fake newspaper site, the fake celebrity site, and the move from acai to teeth whitening to work from etc. Something, though, came to my inbox that while also opportunistic clearly smelled of desperation, and perhaps worse for those employing it, smelled distinctly of some serious legal implications, that is if history is any guide.
The actual sender of the email didn’t arouse any suspicions; it came from Facebook. Depending on one’s engagement with the site, receiving a message from Facebook can happen quite frequently and range from friend requests to, in this case, an invitation to an event. Already, that tends to mean a high signal to noise ratio as Facebook’s event offering doesn’t act as a standalone tool for any organizer or participant. And this one doesn’t help the cause. One look at the subject line, and you know it has crafty affiliate marketer or MLM written all over it. This one read, "<Friend’s name> invited you to the event "Make Money From Home In The New Year!!!" First of all, what kind of event could it be? If it were coming to your LinkedIn accont, you might expect it to come from someone promoting a free webinar, but with Facebook, who knows what it could mean? Perhaps not surprisingly or enjoyable, it is exactly what we didn’t think we would see – a new way to promote a flog.
The text of the email reads:
<Friend’s Name> invited you to "Make Money From Home In The New Year!!!" today.
Event: Make Money From Home In The New Year!!!
What: Lecture
Start Time: Today, January 5 at 12:15pm
End Time: Tuesday, January 19 at 3:15pm
Where: From Your Own Home!!!
To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=237501399270&mid=1ae0375G22642df7G48bf1edG7
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
Clicking on the link, we see this:
One look at the upper right hand corner to the profile picture and we know what we are dealing with, even before we get to the link advertised. The copy… simply classic.
Well according to the news jobs are about to change for the new year. It seems jobs for the new year is going to be working at home. Who would want to work from home. I know I sure do. I found this article in the news and thought it for sure going to change me and everyone around me. So i wanted to make an event to share what I have discovered and so all of us can have the freedom of working from home. The news article I found was this…
First I heard this in the local news channel. Then I decided to do my research about it online to see what I could find. I then found this news article about it. I just started today actually doing what was said and I have already made $20 bucks. $20 bucks is not a lot but when I have only been working for 1 hr that is a lot. I would take 20/hr working from home any day. Well I guess that is enough you guys can read and try for your self. I hope you do as i think it will bring all of us great freedom. Thanks and good luck!!!
Don’t bother trying to click on the hyperlink. Facebook creates redirects for any link, and in this case they have already disabled that redirect. Getting to the landing page requires doing it the old-fashioned way, copying and pasting, which takes you to a familiar design and massively non-conforming landing page with data circa January 2009.
The Facebook event page and landing page, while startling in their ballsyness (just check out the number of people yet to respond on the event – more than 200,000 (someone buy an old app’s list?)), has much bigger issues and implications. Yes, the whole thing might become outdated by next week, not to mention it having more holes than a NYC highway, but those are minor details. The combination screams not only idiotic but more worrisome an act of desperation. You don’t try to make money this way if many other options exist.
This has the makings of all other sources going dry. So, while this humorous marketing method (assuming you view the world in our skewed manner) helps us avoid writing about the Google Phone, it really makes us wonder about the health of continuity as practiced by the performance marketing industry. Or, it could be nothing, and we’ll just hear that this was the work of our industry’s Keyser Soze, Sanford Wallace.
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