We just got a note from a guy named Lawrence over at Sacred Noise, who as you may remember from yesterday, was responsible for leaving comments touting the new Escalade bits in at least three blogs' comment sections. He wrote us today, asking us to print what he called, "a retraction," so, because we're all dutiful and stuff, his apology/rationalization follows after the jump.
"Hey guys,
I saw your response to my post, and I'm pretty embarrassed.
So this whole "viral comment scheme" isn't much of a scheme at all.
Yesterday I sat down at my computer with my pastrami sandwich at lunch time and posted a link on a handful of blogs.
I viewed it as merely a chance to test our new web host's statistic monitoring software as well as show off what my friend and coworker Ravi Krishnaswami had done for the Super Bowl. I felt like a proud sibling and wanted to show off what my big brother had accomplished.
5 minutes after my finishing my final post and a root beer soda I got a call from Ray Wert. Ray asked a few questions about why we posted on his blog. I explained to him that there was no rhyme or reason behind it. Just my half-asses attempt to see if anything would happen.
Ray said that his site had relatively few readers so he was curious as to who would post such a thing on it.
Ray didn't seem to be bothered by my posting and he certainly didn't warn me. Which leads me to be a little confused as to why his follow up post said "You have been warned".
I'm sorry Ray, If the posting offended you or caused any confusion.
So that's it. No viral marketing scheme. Just an attempt to "big up" Ravi and see how our host handles browser referrers.
This half-baked idea has gotten me in hot water with superiors so if you guys could, please post a retraction on your sites? I would really appreciate it."
As a blog with a closed comments system, we don't worry about this too much, but we hate reading a thread that's disrupted by something completely marketing-oriented, which is why we called Lawrence a hoser. So you know Lawrence? We're sorry. You seem contrite. But if you ever pull something like this again, we're slappin' on the hose-hat for por vida.
Related:
Finicky About Comments [DetroitWonk]
DetroitWonk busts Cadillac's Viral Blog Comment Scheme [Internal]
[Update: DetroitWonk's commentary on the incident here.]