Netcoins marketing scam: Vote for Steem?
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.
@holoz0r's been of similar mind.
He points out their near invisibility on Alexa until the last week.
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!