Don’t Get Caught

PR guru and Irishman Tom Murphy points to an interesting development on Slashdot. JBoss is a middleware vendor who have gotten a little too creative with their online marketing efforts:

“For years rumors have run rampant about employees of JBoss Inc. being actively encouraged to post anonymously, drumming up business by flooding the net with fake posts and simultaneously attacking competitors, all from behind a safe veil of anonymity. With the advent of a new feature for tracking users by IP on TheServerSide.com, the floodgates have been opened and those rumors have apparently been confirmed.
The Java blog space now erupted with posts from a variety of bloggers (here, here, and here for a start) exposing a variety of anonymous/pseudonymous accounts used by JBoss employees to put forth their Professional Open Source message and simultaneously slam anyone who gets in their way in online technical communities such as TheServerSide, JavaLobby, and various personal blogs.

Companies do this all the time. And, in many cases, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s guerilla marketing, sure, but as long as you’re not constantly spamming thousands of forums with baldfaced praise for your product, it’s a legitimate tactic. Companies need to be certain to limit their postings to relevant forums and discussions. And, obviously, conceal your IP address.