Genius Growth Hack or Deceptive Marketing
BitClout is getting lots of press and some controversy over its practice of creating accounts for influential people without their permission. While it definitely seems to be working, I wonder how far is too far.
Another site that is trying this growth strategy is the startup ideas site Kern.al. They are creating profiles of startup influencers and making it look like the influencers are active on the platform when they are not.
I admit that this tactic worked on me. I signed up because of all the big names I saw on the site.
I know that it's common for marketplaces to fake the original interactions to jumpstart the interactions. (Reddit is famous for this) However, I haven't seen sites hi-jacking the names and photos of real people before.
Bitclout seems to be getting away with it. It also helps to seed the accounts of these influencers with bitcoin to encourage early buy-in. I suspect most influencers won't mind because they are essentially getting paid for it.
Kernal is probably too small now to get any attention. I suspect that controversy at this stage would only help them.
Would do you think? Is this a good growth strategy?
I think it's ultra shady, should be illegal. What prevents fake owners of those accounts to engage with tricked potential customers or clients into some money transactions, selling courses, etc? I am nobody, but if I make it one day and get fake "profile" I would sue them to oblivion.
It's not the new idea, btw. Tripadvisor used to have thousands of non-claimed listings for hotels, tours and restaurants that are basically posted by reviewers (location, name of the property and image are enough to set the listing) and as soon the first review is posted all other people can review it regardless of the fact that original owner of the business probably doesn't even know that is business is posted out there.
Same for Google Maps, Google Business Page, etc, anyone can set whatever they want for any business and only difference in profile is small "claimed business" mark.
Thanks for the response Dotz,
I'm not a lawyer, but I think it would be very hard to sue anyone for this. It would be hard to prove any damages. In the case of Bitclout, they are actually seeding the influencers with Bitcoin. That is a super-smart move.
Kern.al is using real startup ideas that the influencers promoted on podcasts, newsletters, etc. The ideas are not falsely attributed, it's just that the accounts have been created without permission.
It definitely worked for Bitclout. I'm curious to see if Kern.al can get away with it. It is definitely a shady tactic, but it might work.
Where is the limit? Ok then, let's make email accounts that looks like big influencer / politician / actor / whatever and just for fun let's make websites with those names or very similar looking names and do a business in their name, whatever that is. I mean, why not?
It's shady, but hey, that kind of behavior and "business model" is becoming normalized and unpunished so why not? Personally I don't see a big difference between phishing tricks and this fake account creating, but what I know.