“SocialChorus, an ‘advocate marketing’ firm working on behalf of Microsoft, has been offering to pay bloggers for promoting Internet Explorer,” Himanshu Arora reports for TechSpot. “The campaign was exposed after popular blogger and Twitter designer Paul Stamatiou, who also contributes to TechCrunch as a guest writer, was approached by the company to write a paid piece. Besides Stamatiou, TechCrunch founder and former editor Michael Arrington also received the offer through an email.”
“A quick look at the marketer’s website reveals that Microsoft’s Bing team is, or at least has been, one of its customers. Microsoft officials, on the other hand, are distancing themselves from the campaign,” Arora reports. “When reached out for a comment, a Microsoft spokesperson said the ‘action by a vendor is not representative of the way Microsoft works with bloggers or other members of the media.’ Since then, the program has been suspended.”
Arora reports, “SocialChorus’ poor execution certainly backfired, harming Microsoft more than doing IE any good. A quick search for the #IEBloggers hashtag on Twitter reveals the hilarious — if unintended — results.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we just wrote on Monday:
Good God, they just keep getting stupider.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “goddess” for the heads up.]