Fiction for Traffic
I read a story (I think I saw it on Digg) about a 13 year old boy who stole his father’s credit card and ordered hookers from an escort service.
The headline read:
“13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers”
It’s a great headline and it’s no wonder that it showed up in my news reader. Trouble is, the story is fiction
It’s a hoax made up purely as link bait and it worked. The author of the story, Lyndon Antcliff, defends his decision to write it here, and in comments left at Sphinn.
Obviously there’s much to be said about the overall integrity of online content considering that much of it is written by folks who have no business writing (IMO) and are under no editorial supervision whatsoever.
But that’s a topic for another post or possibly a book.
The questions I throw out to you are these: Is the practice of making up a story in order to get traffic acceptable? Would you do it if it meant driving thousands of people to your blog or website? As a writer, would you take on a job writing a hoax story to be used as link bait?
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Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 6:01 am under
Yes, I remember that story. In fact, one of the writers covered it on one of the technology websites I write. That story fooled a lot of people even some papers picked it up.
There are other ways of getting link bait although some of them aren’t that great. Inflammatory posts at times gain a lot of traffic; however, I personally wouldn’t write them I think you lose credibility. I had an opportunity to write for another website. The owner had hired me; however, when I found out he was involved in a hoax story (hackers attacking Mac specific websites) I turned down him down.h
May 30th, 2008 at 8:34 pmI agree. If you’re going to establish anything in this world, let it be your integrity. Donald Trump once said that, during the time he was over $9 billion dollars in borrowed debt with over 99 different banks, the only thing that kept him from going bankrupt was his reputation.
Truth is you can only BS but for so long and it may be an excellent short term goal. But, if you’re looking for longterm success, it’s better not to build your business or expertise with hollow bricks. One day, it’ll collapse and all you’ll have left is a bad reputation that no one wants to be associated with.
Good blog.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:24 am