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CNN Guerrillas in the Midst: A Viral Marketing Campaign Exposed | Nick Lewis: The Blog

CNN Guerrillas in the Midst: A Viral Marketing Campaign Exposed | Nick Lewis: The Blog: "Last week, CNN appeared to be attempting an unusual marketing campaign in the blogosphere. The two day campaign combined blackhat search engine optimization techniques, viral marketing tactics, and guerrilla comment spam. Unlike the majority of comment spam, this spam only targeted mid-level blogs that discussed CNN. So far, 14 separate instances of the spam have been found. Most alarmingly, the spammers may have also left malicious keywords in 4 out of 14 of the targeted posts; its suspected the intent was to use google's keyword stuffing detectors to censor them. CNN's Christa Robinson denied their involvement, 'CNN is not responsible for this or any other guerrilla spam campaign. This is simply untrue.'

However, these findings are part of a much larger and more important story: CNN is gambling that they can use the blogosphere to gain a competitive advantage over their seemingly invincible arch rival Fox News[5]. Regarless of whether this was CNN or a smear artist, allowing these guerrilla marketing campaigns to continue could result in our blogs -- leftwing and rightwing alike -- to become the battlefield in ratings war between two of the largest media giants."

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