Update: The second email listed below, sent to the Courting Destiny blog, was actually sent by an identified THP employee and not (as I had initially believed) an anonymous member of the public (unlike the email I received). The text of this post has been changed to include this new information. There is still plenty of evidence to support my conclusion that THP was attempting to engage bloggers in a viral marketing campaign using emails from individuals that did not disclose the nature of their relationship to THP.

Marketing — I don’t know too much about it, but I’m learning. Having never actually read a marketing book or taken a course or even really googled the subject, I bet one of the key maxims of marketing is ‘know your audience.’ At MaxPower, I try to keep track of my audience.

This month (June), my audience has shifted. Somehow I have attracted the attention of a ‘predominantly leftist news and commentary outlet’ called the Huffington Post. I don’t really know too much about the post; a little wikipedia research leads me to believe its a blog run by a famous person. It makes money by selling advertisements and is apparently very popular with most of its stories written about politics, ‘big issues,’ and the like.

Anyway, someone (or someones) at The Huffington Post (THP) seems to have a keen interest in MaxPower. Recently, I wrote a post about how I believed THP was “astroturfing” (the use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement [source][wikipedia]) after I received an unsolicited anonymous email that asked me to promote THP’s newest marketing venture with an ad firm called JWT. I label it anonymous because this initial email did not disclose that the sender, an intern, worked at THP. It was only through a series of subsequent follow-up emails where it was disclosed that the intern sent, “a few emails to blogs he likes.” This final piece of information was revealed by THP partner and technology director, Jonah Perretti as sent via a contact form on MaxPower.

Here is where things get interesting: » Read the rest of the entry..

Chris Anderson of the Long Tail blog has neatly summarized a few media statistics by meduim (which is the message). For example, music sales where down 21% last year. So what does this mean? Who knows, but in conjunction with this smackdown of an article by Michael Geist entitled, Piercing the peer–to–peer myths: An examination of the Canadian experience » Read the rest of the entry..

CNN has been reporting about the Pope’s condition for the last couple of days. The headline is: Pope Close to Death. The interesting part is that every other station reports about it, for about 5 minutes and then carries onto the next story. Well CNN feels it needs to follow the story almost as much as Sept 11th. They hire hearsayers and speculators to fill the other 55 minutes of each hour. What do they talk about? They have their video relays from “knowledgable” people from around the world where its believed that the further away a speculator is from us, the more he/she knows. They speak as if the Pope is already dead. They basically post his obituary and read out his eulogy. You cant tell, while watching, if he is dead or not.

The other interesting thing is that currently, both CNN stations are showing LIVE pictures from Vatican City. Yet one says 3:40am and its dark out and the other says 6:40am and its light out. Both reporters seem to be quite sure they are reporting LIVE. One wonders if the later one will break the news of the Pope’s death 3hrs earlier then the second CNN channel.

What person finds this much speculation informative and necessary?