behind netvocates (and it's link to customscoop)

I was looking at inbound links this evening and came across one originating behind the firewall of a company called NetVocates which is a "blog intelligence and advocacy service". The website blurb says, reasonably enough:

"...blogs frequently impact an organization and its products and image in uncontrolled and often unexpected ways. In addition, the sheer volume of blogs, message boards, and other discussion forums makes it difficult for organizations to effectively monitor the activity relevant to them."

Organisations want to know what people are saying about them online - that makes perfect sense. However, I spent a bit more time on the NetVocates site and found this:

"NetVocates then recruits activists and consumers who share the client’s views in order to reinforce those key messages on targeted blogs – and rebut misinformation when appropriate."

So they hire sockpuppets to go out and pretend to be "ordinary users" when they post stuff on blogs? ANYONE THINKING OF HIRING A COMPANY TO DO THIS needs to think very seriously about the backlash that's likely to happen if people find out. Don't believe me? Then see this post about a company that tried it and got caught.

Other bloggers who have found themselves visited by NetVocates include:

PSoTD
Make Chai, Not War
CracksInTheFacade
pandora's jar of mixed nuts

What do each of these have in common? Well, based on a very brief visit to each, I'd say they all discuss political issues at least some of the time. On my visits, Pandora's was discussing nuclear power plants in Australia, Cracks most recent post was about American troops in Iraq but the following post had a link to an article about energy, MakeChai describes himself as a "Pakistani American Muslim... human rights and responsibilities advocate..." and PSoTD has a "leftie blog" badge on his site and reckons the netvocate people visited this page about the Al Gore movie. I also just found this guy who posted about Net Neutrality on the day he was visited.

I'm starting to worry...

So who are they? Well, a search of the whois database on network solutions, where they registered their domain name late last year, found that the owners are Griffin Strategy Group, LLC who list an email address at eoutreach.com as their contact and a non-sense contact phone number of 999 999 9999. Searching based on the listed zipcode + "Griffin" I found this page which seamingly ties netvocate to a profile on iKarma for Chip Griffin, Chief Innovation Officer at CustomScoop, a trademark of "eOutreach Solutions, LLC". Which leads me to a biography of Chip who also has his own blog here. Customschoop has actually been featured in TechCrunch and in this post on Micro Persuasion who, I reckon, don't have a clue that Chip is also involved in a company like NetVocates.

So returning to the whole who is Chip Griffin question, a quick google search throws up lots of stuff. He seems to write a lot of stuff of interest to Republican candidates, congressman, etc and his own blog says: "Griffin worked for a variety of politicians, think tanks, and public relations firms in the Washington, D.C. area. In addition, he headed townhall.com, a conservative internet portal." I won't embarrass the guy by telling you he used to be into knifemaking and castle wolfenstien...

So do people out there know that the guy behind NetVocates, a service that watches blogs and message boards then hires "activists and consumers who share the client’s views in order to reinforce those key messages on targeted blogs" is also the guy behind CustomScoop, a service that's getting some kudos in the blogosphere? Somehow I think people haven't noticed - what blogger would talk up a service that has a sister service that, basically, pays people to post comment spam?!

There's still some room for a bit of sleuthing around this... have you been visited by NetVocates? What was your content about? Maybe you've been approached to "blog" or "comment" by them? Let's find out more.

---

Update 22:52 BST: It looks like cracksinthefacade and PSoTD both posted about the Al Gore movie, as did the Pandora's jar guy - so someone has paid to find out what people are saying about the Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Did you post about the film? Did you get inbound links from NetVocates? More interestingly, did any user comments appear and what did they say? Let's see if any feedback posted looks similar...

Update 18.22 BST 06/01/06: Chip has posted a bit of info on his blog in response to this and posts made by other bloggers. One paragraph of it, if true and I have no reason to doubt that it is, makes me feel quite a lot better about the idea of NetVocate asking people to post comments (see my other post - I've since changed my mind about that). Chip says: We have a few basic principles we ask all of our staff and the activists we work with to operate under. First, we ask our activists to only engage on issues they actually believe in. Second, we ask everyone not to lie about anything. Third, we ask our activists not to create multiple online personalities to engage in blogosphere conversations.

[see my other posts about netvocates]

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Comments

[Trustworthy_Guy1234]

You're completely misstating Netvocates position! Netvocates is a grass-roots effort to put the views of the people front and center on the web! They advocate fairness, trustworthiness, and give food to starving puppies!

To slander them with your lies and half-truths speaks poorly for your moral character.

(yes, just kidding - thanks for doing some exposition on these guys)

[Human]

Peace to you and yours Mr. Hamman.
Thanks for the research. Reading yours and the comments, my best estimate so far is that it is an attempt at mass spam comments. There is no reason to "urge" people to blog. There are thousands of sights created a day. Anyone being paid to blog is quite suspect and scores low on the veracity scale from the get go. If someone is paid to be a freelancer, where articles are accepted and put up with proper attribution than that is alright by me.

[Bob Reynolds]

NetVocates is a fine and upstanding corporation that does a LOT of good work for the internets.

[Christopher]

I think we are all jealous becuase people get paid to read and post in blogs and it isnt us.

lol

Netvocates looks neither good nor bad to me.....just another company making the $$$ far worse things out there imho.

[sans-culotte]

PR companies have been known to do this sort of thing. . .

The Man Who Sold the War
Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

" Rendon was also charged with engaging in "military deception" online -- an activity once assigned to the OSI. The company was contracted to monitor Internet chat rooms in both English and Arabic -- and "participate in these chat rooms when/if tasked. "
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8798997/the_man_who_sold_the_war/1

[Alice Mike]

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[Zaphod]

This is hardly a new issue. During the run up to the U.S. presidential election, Soros' MoveOn.org had set up networks and actual offices full of paid workers to monitor major publications, news and media sites, and blogs for the sole purpose of posting talking points into the comments. And they were not so shy about using multiple profiles and "swarming" to overwhelm dissenting opinion. Though scaled back, I am told that these operations are still funded and active today.

[Smirnof]

I've got a small blog with few readers and hardly any commenters, and suddenly I get 3 or 4 commenters on the 'net neutrality' issue! But they are all the same, looking like corporate PR guys. What a disappointment.

[Neil B ♪]

Here is a related, more recent story about another (?) company doing this astroturfmenting (eh, sorry):

http://www.politicsandtechnology.com/2007/07/make-no-mistake.html

There's a company called Advantage Consultants that's offering up "professional blog warriors" to "flood the zone" with comments. In short, astro-turf trolls for the blogosphere.
...
Incidentally, who are these people? Who is Advantage Consultants? Their president is Doug Guetzloe, a right-wing radio host and anti-tax activist in Florida.
~~~~~

BTW if their commenters IDed themselves as working for either company, who would listen to them? So is the "ethics" thing really to the point, can it even work?