Nationwide Domain Name/Yard Sign Conspiracy 324
robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."
but do they work ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anyone seriously got a date from one of these sites ? It seems Mr. Moore overlooked a vey obvious question in his research.
My garbage can is full of these signs (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank You. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is genuinely relevant to my interests, and made my day better.
BTW, those signs are illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
If you hate them as much as I do, visit this site [causs.org] for tips and contact your local code enforcement office.
Legally, they are no different from litter. If you don't have a permit to leave something in a public place, it's nothing but trash. That said, the neanderthal assholes who post them might not be aware of that* and almost certainly won't be happy if they catch you taking them down, legally right or not, so be careful when picking up trash.
* and I'm sure the assholes who SELL the signs never mention it, either.
Re:Well done (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed.
What I'd like to see next is this guy taking out the "Crazy Fox" scam. Late-night TV commercials with the same video, namely a poorly-rendered CGI fox, talking about what an awesome home-based-business... yadda yadda yadda. The commercials are identical, except for a random number prefixed or suffixed to the domain name containing the string "crazyfox".
It's obviously a pyramid scheme of some sort, but the mechanism of spamvertizing it is ultimately the same as that employed by the "randomaffiliatename"{singles|dating}.com scam. The only difference is that it uses TV commercials (which are probably the "thing" being "sold" by the people at the top of the pyramid) instead of lawn signs.
Re:Slow News Day? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's think this through:
1. Anyone who wants to get more Obama can go to news.google.com and read through several dozen international news sources, as well as the Huffington Post and Fox "News", and get more than enough of the regular headlines.
2. Slashdot, as a news aggregator, is finding slim pickins on the tech side, as Obamamania sucks the oxygen out of every other news story. Cool for us political wonks, not so cool for CowboyNeal & co.
3. This really is a nationwide conspiracy. Every tiny suburb and exurb of Dallas is frequently spammed by these guys. I thought they were a local outfit, so it's very interesting to see the extent of their reach.
4. The way the guy investigated is cool, and I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my own DomainTools.com account to "paid" status, now that I know that it really works.
5. Last, but CERTAINLY not least, it's about a DATING SITE. Dating, as you may have heard, is part of the mating ritual of Homo Sapiens Solaris, aka "those of us who have emerged from our parents' basements". It involves meeting FEMALES, which is kind of an awesome concept when you think about it. Opportunities for +5 Funny moderations abound (deserved or not).
I think the "Together Dating" guerrilla marketing behemoth, with its sign spam [causs.org], is reaching the same shallow end of the gene pool that buys enough v1@g@ra to keep our inboxes full of e-spam. Pretty sad. Especially when there's a free dating site [plentyoffish.com] that almost certainly generates better results. But I guess some folks think, if you don't pay for it, it's not worth anything. Hopefully, those folks won't be asking me for a date.
Together (Score:5, Interesting)
*Applause NOW* (Score:3, Interesting)
Great primary research and very entertaining. Reminds me of the p-p-p-p-power book scandal. Gotta wonder if he had a slow day(s) with his business to do this.
Re:The "from the..." Department (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as the money/time/etc is concerned, agreed, it is yours and it is great not having to worry about anyone bouncing a check, spending more than you had planned or a whole host of other things.
The flip side, as you allude to, is that there are those times you want to spend it with someone, whether a football game, a movie or a simply walk in the woods. Then there's the whole human touch thing for those of us who are of the affectionate type. It's especially difficult when you work with a few cuties and your mind has lascivious thoughts of them throughout the day. Not good for work performance.
Then again, dating is like combat [earthlink.net] so it's not necessarily an easy thing to do.
But then, what do I know? I have an entire region of women who want nothing to do with me unless they want a problem solved.
Re:Together (Score:3, Interesting)
But why not do subdomains, it has to be insanely cheaper?
Almost every demographic I've listened to the radio in has *helpwanted.com. I doubt that people would mess up *.helpwanted.com, plus it'd be MUCH cheaper.
Re:but do they work ? (Score:1, Interesting)
However, considering this is an article about guerrila marketing, seeing you comment several times about how good they are is bound to raise suspicions ;)
Re:Fines? (Score:5, Interesting)
In my city, a little old lady was arrested walking down main street placing more of these signs by none other than the chief of police. The signs stopped appearing for awhile, but apparently they got someone to replace her.
Re:missed the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Together (Score:5, Interesting)
The price of Coroplast has tripled over the last 24 months. I buy 4'x8' sheets of it for making cages for small animals. My price went from around $6 to over $25!
Recycling election signs works nicely though...
Re:How Much Did You Pay? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Together (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, in the end, I believe it was worth it. My little 5 year old is pretty happy to be alive too. Of course, had I known then what I know now about these dating sites, I would have argued with them and purchased a smaller block.
Guess the bonus for a female using the site, is that your going ot find a guy who has $3600 of disposable income. So, he should be able to blow some cash on you. lol.
That's assuming that the competition since then (it's been 10 years for me) hasn't drastically lowered the price.
Re:Together (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Together (Score:5, Interesting)
not in oversaturated markets. When these started springing up around DC with different neighborhood/town names in the same style I leaped to the conclusion the article draws. It is good to see it confirmed though. Additionally, since the geographical granularity is so hilariously fine, it seemed less than likely that non-transplant locals were behind it. (Of course it could have been non-transplant franchisees getting buffaloed by their franchise distributor.)
Franchise distributors have a strong proclivity to assume your market is like the market where they come from and bully you into making decisions that are more valid for that market than yours. E.g. I knew a Blimpie franchise owner who was bullied by the franchiser into following a NY-NJ business model for a fast food restaurant: find an office building and rely on the building to supply the majority of your customers. The problems with this in the DC area are several, but here are two of the biggest:
-most DC buildings are smaller than NY buildings (esp in DC itself due to the convention of not building higher than the Washington monument.)
-due to lower population density and poorer public transit, parking is usually needed in DC whereas NY restaurants can ignore this, relying on foot traffic.
These and others contributed to the failure of the franchise.
As an aside, knowledge of how to sleuth out domain registration and correlation is somewhat de rigeur for most of us in the Slashdot audience, and as such should reduce the newsworthiness of the story.
Re:How Much Did You Pay? (Score:4, Interesting)
That was 8 years ago.
So the only thing I got out of it was a very satisfying marriage and a little boy with CP who is happy all the time (in fact, that was his first word- happy- amazing that his mother and I, both of whom are very pessimistic people, have a child who is so happy).
Re:Together (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a small animal rescue (wildlife and guinea pig) and "Cubes & Coroplast" [guineapigcages.com](p) is about the best thing you can use for Guinea Pigs.
Most store bought cages are criminally undersized for active, grazing, social creatures.
Re:The "from the..." Department (Score:3, Interesting)
This line caught my attention in your essay,
No longer is dating an activity to be pursued because one wants to find their 'one and only' but rather, dating is an investment in time.
Like any statement that involves the phrase "these days", "nowadays", and "in this day and age" it is actually the opposite of what is stated. Dating today is probably more about finding the "one and only" than ever before.
Case and point, after my grandfather died and we were sorting out his belongings I had the opportunity to look through some of his old books. I came across a book he had during his college days, the 1950's, that was about college study practices. It had what you would expect in it, good study habits, a disciplined schedule, etc. But the interesting part was that the sample schedule had set aside a few hours each week for dating. Along with that was a whole chapter on proper dating techniques where the entire emphasis was basically about efficiently finding a good mate.
This was over 50 years ago and dating was really this cold interview where you were looking for someone worth your investment. From talking to my grandmother, it was common, and expected, for a person to date many people at once and never really enter into an exclusive relationship until a proposal for marriage. She said she herself was dating several men up until the day my grandfather proposed to her.
And in the centuries before this arranged marriages were quite common, which is as far away from the "true love" thing as it gets.
In conclusion, I would say that throughout the history of civilization, human coupling has been more about pragmatism than romance. Thanks to the luxury of modern life, we don't need to be so pragmatic, so there is more romance involved than any previous time in history.