If Squad 10 had extra funding, she would have her own phone!

In today’s blogging world, many people look for ways to communicate with their readers without the use of a computer–even a laptop. The iPhone is a very useful tool for live blogging at events via Twitter, as well as capturing moments of an event. Mobile phone companies are looking for ways to tap into the market with potential iPhone killers. But something’s been bothering me lately…it seems that the only way to get people to buy iPhone killers, it to market it to innocent bloggers, making it look like an honest comment about something that could be used on a phone…but it isn’t.

All of this isn’t about the best phones to blog with. It’s actually a warning for bloggers who don’t get many comments as they should. Instead, they get comments–actually a pitch, to get people to buy a phone from a certain mobile phone company.

The Phones

I’ve notice a lot of comments on other blogs of a commentator talking about one thing that they’ve taken interest in, but if you look real close at the commentator, he’s not interested at the topic at all. It’s really a plug about a certain phone that claims to do everything the iPhone can do already. It doesn’t have to be an iPhone–it can be a regular old phone. The iPhone in this case is just a good example.

The phone in question is made by a very well known cell phone company, which I will refer to as “Motokola” to prevent trolls from “advertising” by doing a little search. While the commentator seems to know very well about the topic, clicking on the URL he leaves behind–either where his screen name is, or in the comment–and it’s actually a link to the website of Motokola’s newest phone.

The Spammer

Writing this, you can probably tell that I’ve had commentators like this in the past. It’s true: The commentators would talk about one thing. Sometimes, he leaves a link to the phone’s website. One comment was normal, with him leaving the link to the phone at the end of the post. He would also link back to the site with normal text that’s possibly related to the topic, like this:

I was waiting for this to come out! It makes me wanna do the *original text censored and URL altered due to a reference of Motokola’s “spokesperson”*!

Another way he got around to leaving comments is changing his screen name every few comments, which was why I decided to take action. I was being nice to him for a few of weeks, but the more he did it, the more irritated I became. While it appeared that he was somewhat interested in the post, I kept his comments intact, but removed traces of the URL to prevent any problems in the future…a.k.a. legal problems.

Thinking back, could it be that he was being paid to promote the phone on smaller blogs, whose blogger doesn’t take care of their comment moderating?

The Blogger

Everything that the spammer did was certainly not fair to myself, and what I did wasn’t fair to the spammer… But when you think about seeing a URL of a multimillion dollar commercial company being thrown recklessly all over your blog, It’s really unethical of Motokola to hire people like this for a phone that you can buy from *any* major wireless retailer at your discretion.

Is the economy really that bad that major companies resort to the cheapest method of advertising? Motokola isn’t the only one who has gone that route: another major phone company has done the same to another innocent blogger.

I happen to own a phone from Motokola, but it doesn’t do extra things what the advertiser insists on; it’s just a simple camera phone that I use to keep up with my family and friends. After this, I don’t think I would want to buy another cell phone from this company again. Of course, there’s a matter of time before another company steps in.