In the panic, I think very few really looked at this "vote for steem" marketing "scam"...
Scam you say?
Netcoins is REAL!
The voting was REAL!
How is this a scam?
Ok, scam is a pretty strong word. I'm not sure what YOU would call it... but let's look at a few things:
Everyone that ran around like a chicken with its head cut off screaming "netcoins! vote steem!" -- basically ran around echoing the Netcoins brand.
Quite a genious tactic -- to cause every interested person to say NETCOINS about a few hundred thousand times to their friends and networks ever since this voting procedure began.
Next, Netcoins used Wishpond, as the voting platform. All you have to do is go to wishpond.com which clearly states:
What did the voting require?
- A valid email address.
So not only did you register to vote, but you also gave away a cryptocurrency marketing lead with your email address.
Quote from https://www.wishpond.com/small-business-marketing/contests-for-small-business/
You get the email addresses of all the entrants as well as every one of the people who vote
What else happened?
- You saw that INS https://ins.world/ was beating STEEM right near the end.
What did people do?
They started googling "Who is INS" - why is it better than steem?
They also found out "who is Netcoins" too
The real ones that won today, was:
- Netcoins
- Wishpond
- INS
...and the marketing genius that got most people running around like frantic chickens with their heads cut off in this marketing scam (or marketing ploy) got many of you to participate.
IF Netcoins really saw the value in STEEM, they shouldn't need to run a vote. They could simply do their research and investigate whether or not STEEM was a good token for them to incorporate into their platform.
Do you really believe that Netcoins has the ability to run their operation... but be dumbfounded on which tokens or coins they should incorporate unless it is by vote?
Voting spreads their brand. Showing other brands on the list also advertises those brands (like INS) to you.
Look at what they have me doing. Even I'm talking about Netcoins and INS now.
The only thing I did not do, was vote, nor provide my email address to Wishpond, who builds marketing funnels to gain leads... :)
I totally understand where you are coming from... It was a tactic but don't everyone have a marketing tactic when promoting something? :)
If that's what it was it's a pretty good one. My question is, who's "Jeff?" After I voted, that name appeared on the page. Maybe he started the campaign?
Yup, good question! :)
So true. I was thinking the same thing but felt I should support Steem anyway.
Yes indeed, I was one of those who lapped it up without doing the kind of due diligence or background checks that you did - I would not have thought to do so, instead just locked onto this seeming opportunity for Steem (and, boiled down to it, personal gain).
I feel a little dirty now (not angry - I accept this is a game and that I played along; didn't know I was being played). In order to wash the experience off my being and feel free of it, I am now making this comment and resteeming your post :D.
Yes, I must admit that I have found it frustrating that lots of Steemians (including me) will spend a whole lot of effort voting multiple times just to get a free exchange listing but when something far more valuable and significant is offered to them - free 2 minute signup in a class action to win them a lot of money in damages - they act in far smaller numbers.
Prove me wrong at https://www.jpbliberty.com/class-member-signup
I was just wondering some days back, Steem has come a long way and has a good market structure and there was absolutely no need for steem to be in a contest to be listed. When Huobi listed steem, there was no contest. You are right, its just a marketing tactics to gain more popularity
The main reason I didn't start voting until day 2 was that I didn't want to give up my email address. Now they have it. Oh well. Good for you for seeing through the hype. :)
I agree with what you are saying. But don't you think, if Steem wins, what kind of exposure will steem get through netcoins and even if we had to give our email ids and have given exposure to some of the altcoins like INS, I think its worth it.
Nice post. Happy to see someone showing the other side of it. Thank you!
Of course, if steem wins "it's great".
But it didn't matter to Netcoins, Wishpond, or INS in this case. :)
Quite an accurate observation. I used one of my spam email addresses for this but it was indeed a marketing ploy for those involved. I think that sites like INS, Verge and NetCoins got a lot more traffic than they have at other times. Lots of Steemit users were probably like "wtf who are these guys and how are they beating us?" and they got lots of traffic.
Agree with you 100% @intelliguy. We did our own little scam too because all the other communities especially Verge and PacCoin got to know that they have got serious competition called STEEM. We also got the whole community to blast Twitter with STEEM tag. Which wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Honestly speaking, I would not call it a scam. I would call it a Marketing Genius! ;-)
It IS a marketing genius --- get people to say what you want, "for free".
Not free actually! They have spent money to arrange the competition. Also, they are listing one coin for free. And giving 25% off to other coins coming in 2nd to 10th position. I wish STEEM marketing team could do such a campaign in the future that would go crazy on the internet. I know they will!
Who is the steem marketing team?
@kittyninja is the Social Media Manager of Steemit Inc.
She is handling the social media account of STEEM Network on Twitter. I am not aware of any other person behind their marketing but they do have a team for that. And they are planning many things in the future!
Am I the only one who thought this was a bit of market research? Well your post proves I wasn't.
Netcoins is going to list whichever thing is going to bring them the most bu$ine$$ and in the mean time they have a nice data base with your email address, IP address, and which coin you hold. INS, ranked 265th with a market cap of only $15 million is going to compete with Steem? Yeah right, dirty deeds, ...and they're done dirt cheap. (AC/DC)
P.S. The reason I didn't vote is because they couldn't deliver on their claim of 53 Countries; their website only showed me locations for Canada.
He points out their near invisibility on Alexa until the last week.@holoz0r's been of similar mind.
Certainly a legit approach to come to similar conclusions. Since some of us post using our real names, we don't have any privacy concerns when it comes to holding Steem, but those with anonsteem accounts do. Greetings!
They have a resellers model. I will check out in the coming days one of these stores where a reseller is present in my town (in Romania), to see how they work.
I look forward to reading what you find, LMK. Thank you.
Apparently YOU -- are the minority. Most people wave the flag "of the day" without doing the due diligence you did. I'm impressed.
I certainly do not have all the answers; just don't trust those "we give it away for free in exchange for your info" contests. They also used a non-https: website for the contest; sloppy!
Good analysis and I think you're probably right! 👍
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do you happen to know what the final vote count was? were we even close? lol
Yes #2 in the scheme...
We were around 1000 votes less. Check out my last post. I took the screenshot.
It could be 1,000 votes less, 10,000 votes, or 100,000 votes less.
Netcoins won!
Everyone posted about Netcoins vote, and the netcoins brand won "for free"
Yes, netcoins “won” at a price. Now Netcoins has to list “INS” for FREE.
But I will still wait for the result. I am an optimist and ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
No worries. I always use a spam email for things like this.
Many people do, and they didn't care. Everyone spreading the word about Netcoins was plenty enough. :)
If it is an underhanded email database gathering tactic as you say the first email that goes out will drive unsubscribes through the roof and blacklist the domain! Secondly there was no GDPR double opt in so if they do email anyone with any sort of marketing material we as a community have the right to report them and they can be fined
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Time will tell. The future will tell. We'll see how it plays out.
Either way, everyone screamed Netcoins brand a lot -- you must admit.
I agree! This community went crazy about it, brand mentions and links and traffic to the site went through the roof
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Want to know the next marketing angle?
"Sorry STEEM, you lost. Umm.. are you willing to do it again? It worked so well the last time... please talk about Netcoins again"
Actually, I think this might actually be my next post on the subject.
LOL! I hope we don’t fall for that if netcoins wants to support its own growth it would be stupid to ignore steem thats 15k daily users you exclude right off the bat! I mean what are verge and INS users doing besides hodln and watching porn hub?
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If they use a different online entity it will be difficult to prove where the info came from, and foreign registration of paper corporations make it very difficult to track who is who. A search often ends in the law practice of some attorney who will claim Attorney/Client privilege to keep his mouth shut. Greetings!
You make a good point there! They can also like you say model marketing campaigns based on the email addresses or the IP addresses! I also went to check the site now and there’s no mention of counties it can be used in apart from Canada as if they are the biggest crypto users in the world lol
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what is seen is more than what one wants to see looking at who is involved in the project ins, netcoins allright i see what is the case thank you for this to let others know that! whats the deal with it anyways?
Ofcourse most of us knew that. I expect some email in the future as well. But at least they knoy steem as well now and so did all other voters of the other coins. We were top 2 most of the time.
Top 2, yes. But everyone kept staring at who was #1 -- and most people wanted to know who #1 was... and that's advertising at its finest. :)
You could say the same about anyone who runs a competition here on steem.
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Meh. I hardly even use email any more. It’s so 20th century.
It's not a scam, but it certainly is good marketing. Most of us never heard of Netcoins before the contest.
I was aware of the entire thing the whole time, and still wanted Steem to win. Obviously didn't use an email address that is important to me. It's basic online "culture".
Too bad it was a "who cheats the most" contest, instead of a real one.
Yeah, a real contest would have been so easy to set up as well... this is blockchain.
Oh, we definitely won the vote. INS tripled their vote count on the last day.
The email I give out has an exclusive filter that sends everything to the garbage except for my whitelist.
An email only has value if the owner gives it value. You have to wonder if the emails we gave them have any value at all. Steem is a very niche community and I'm sure we could run quite an effective smear campaign.
hey, @edicted.
It's official, too. STEEM did win the listing, according to the netcoin site update sometime earlier today. I have one email I use for all my online dealings and so if netcoins starts sending me stuff, it will end up in the junkmail pile along with all the rest. :)
Hey, @intelliguy.
While I can't disagree that this was a good marketing ploy by netcoins, I don't know if that necessarily means that getting a listing for free for STEEM was a bad thing, or even a thing not worth making an effort on. I gave them an email I always give for online usage, so I'm not worrying about being spammed.
Netcoins gets its name out there, probably INS and Verge, too, but in the end, so does STEEM.
And, according to the final placings now on the netcoin site, STEEM was deemed the winner. Don't know how, don't know what good if any it will do, but hopefully, at the very least, it means a few more people learn about STEEM.
Mhhhmm, love unpopular ideas <3
Heard about this stuff on Steemit everywhere today, finally found a case against it.
If they open trading and there is enough liquidity I may try it out, but since most steem markets in existence have low to no liquidity this is all probably just a lot of talk. I'll believe it when I see it, had natutrally never heard of this particular platform before today so your case here is valid. The name sure stuck quickly that's for sure, and the (magical) repetition aspect of the freakin' name is not to be underestimated as you pointed out.