Comments on: TechCrunch founder gets last laugh

By: Dorothy Kuns

Dorothy Kuns — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:42:55 +0000

It’s obvious from your remarks that I’m nowhere near as smart as you guys. But I am smart enough to know that if someone offers me a job to work out of my home and earn 78.00 an hour, that it’s a scam. I agree with what you have all said about these companies having a responsibility to their customers. However, these scam victims also need to take responsibility for themselves. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

By: Teri Gidwitz

Teri Gidwitz — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:51:36 +0000

While I appreciate the challenges start-ups have in reaching critical mass and in attracting funding and investors, the ends don’t justify the means. How can a business expect to be viable and gain respect if they don’t respect their audience/customers? The bottom feeders are the first to leap to new platforms to ply their wares; ethical business leaders shouldn’t succumb to the appeal of “easy money” and instead build their business responsibly. At the same time, the investment community needs to differentiate between those building a business on a solid foundation vs those building one on a house of cards, and not be seduced by models that have to resort to deceptive business practices. I for one hope the FTC investigates and ultimately prohibits the spurious come-ons , protecting the consumer and fledgling start-ups who are trying to build a business legitimately.

By: John Hooper

John Hooper — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:46:47 +0000

Scams in social gaming is just the the tip of the iceberg, the bigger picture is the scam trio of: cpa networks, their affiliates and whoever is behind the shady offers you mentioned ["shady mobile offers, diet scams (hello acai!), homebiz offers, and teeth whitening etc.]

They (cpa networks, their affiliates and the shady companies running the scammy offes) are all making millions daily from deceptive advertising and ripping people off – Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Fox, media buy ad networks etc make millions from the ads and do little or nothing about them because they don’t want to lose the revenue?

A very short term outlook because long term damage is done to their brand equity and to the general perception of marketing and advertising online meaning it’s harder for the ethical companies to thrive…

When people find out the truth (or when they get scammed) they are going to (at least partly) blame the carrier – be that facebook, Google, ABC news website or wherever else they saw the ad.

So good on Arrington for the expose – how about a follow up giving the bigger picture?

By: steve sandbar

steve sandbar — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:56:32 +0000

I think the facts are a little fudged in this summary.
The blogger in question attacked the CEO in a public form with 3 specific issues: kids are stealing credit cards from parents, advertisers are not getting value, and the platforms are complicit with this activity. From watching the video she gave data and facts to counter these accusations: they dont see that kids stealing parents’ credit cards is a statitistically relevant number, advertisers are happy with quality or they would not stay, and platforms hve published stringent guidelines that have to be followed.
Had the original question been- are there some or how many ads of less than savory quality – the answer may be different.
We will never know, but the blogosphere has distorted facts as is often the case.

By: Jack McCullough

Jack McCullough — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:47:48 +0000

I think that Arrington was 100% correct in confronting the various players and shining a spotlight on these scams. I hope that he keeps up the pressure until we see some meaningful, aggressive movement by Facebook and Myspace in dealing with this problem.

Shulka was justifiably removed from his position; his comments and behavior suggest that these scams run by Offerpal were part of his business model and not aberrations. Zynga and other game developers should handle Offerpal the same way that they handled Tatto Media – fire them.