I’m intrigued by the notion of online personas and the manner in which people can mask themselves well via forum discussions or email for the sake of hiding who they truly are. I’ve been frustrated by the auto-mail I have received from Google when I’ve tried to ask a question. I’ve wondered at the type of people behind the usernames in forum discussions and if they are who they claim to be really. At Affiliate Summit East I discovered that many are who they really claim to be. In the flesh. For good or bad. With a few exceptions.
I arrived in time to check in, register, enjoy a continental breakfast before a keynote address by the master of online entertainment. Entertaining and witty, the audience browsed through Ze Frank’s brain like Firefox on speed. Exceleration. Web 2.0. Interaction and visitors creating content. A blast for my creativity. He was who I expected him to be.
After the keynote address I began walking through the exhibitor booths where I collected t-shirts, pens, bags, money and a yo-yo. The Google gang was helpful with my Adsense and Adwords accounts. I expected them to be too busy to answer specific questions but they were not. One Googler had me log in to help me with Adsense. When I exhausted my concerns with that account, the Adwords gal took over. Helping me through the tools with plenty of answers to my questions, I walked away with a yo-yo and a great satisfaction at the helpfulness of their attitude. They were better than I expected them to be.
I found Linkshare who took my name and card and promised to explore why the four merchants I applied as an affiliate turned my website down as it made little sense to me. Again, better than I expected in person.
I walked into the HackerSafe booth with some questions and walked out with great information which should help me with security issues and concerns of my customers.
At this point, I was impressed with what I was experiencing. Better face to face communication with people I had only met through email or online forums that left me satisfied with the quality of character. Online and Offline matched or exceeded my expectations for the better.
It was then that I passed a booth with a name I recognized from some online forums for webmasters. This was a guy who had been banned from a few sites I was a member. His latest blog and forum ownership claim to be a place for discussions about online marketing and one, which when I visited in curiosity, was less than professional in content. “U no watt i meen?” In fact the thread titles contained profanity, content applauding the “black hat” area of earning with *coughspamcough* and much about the “adult” online industry. And here he was in the middle of Affiliate Summit exhibitors as though he was offering something wonderful to someone like me.
I was intrigued. I stood off to the side and watched his booth for a while out of curiousity. At some point an online marketer walked by who I know as a successful and moral online earner. He was called back to this booth. He turned, shook the hand of the booth owner to demonstrate respect, was offered a t-shirt which he laid over his chest as if wearing it while one of the booth’s helpers snapped a photo from a cell phone. Further curiosity revealed much more of a lack of character and a display of deceit that made my skin crawl. Back at my hotel I visited this guy’s forum to find the photo displayed for the humor and entertainment of his forum members.
I was disgusted as I thought of the childish, morbid behavior that I witnessed in person and on the online forums where he was banned. And now on his forums. And yes, he is exactly as I expected him to be. I had hoped for better and received far less.
“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is; the tree is the real thing.” - Abraham Lincoln
We may work hard to mask who we really are for the sake of our online business. But given enough time and enough interaction online and off, true character will demonstrate who we really are. Not the shadow of the reputation but the real thing.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 10:45 pm and is filed under Web 2.0, Affiliate Marketing, Monetization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Guaner Says:
Thank you for sharing Frito Pie. What you found at Affiliate Summit East is by far the norm. I am glad that you were treated nicely and respectfully by the exhibitors present. After all, that is why they were there!
On a side note, why would a forum owner of such little character both online and offline be allowed to have a booth at the conference? I guess that when the price is right these things will be overlooked…
Frito Pie Says:
I can only imagine that the price was right and/or the managers of the conference don’t know about his character issues? I would like to lean on the end of reason that they did not know. But I am not so sure. 
JulieLA Says:
I have been responsible for taking exhibitor applications for a professional organization I used to belong to and really - you have no choice but to allow any exhibitor who meets the specific criteria. If you try to winnow the wheat from the chaff, you expose the organization to liability issues if someone decides to take exception. If you had a “character” requirement, everyone would check themselves off as being of good character (of course!) or challenge the definition of good character. It’s a real slippery slope.
Let’s just hope the conference exhibit hall doesn’t deteriorate into a majority of these types of exhibitors.
My non-domaining business is 100% virtual. I have never met some of my clients. I have met very few of the people who work for me, but I “know” many of them online. Both my managers were selected on the basis of my online interactions with them in forums. There have been very few I’ve met that have projected an online persona that differed from their face-to-face personality.
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Ken Iovino Says:
on July 11th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
An excellent blog Frito Pie.
I believe that anyone with such great disrespect won’t actually achieve anything great in life. Your reputation will follow you everywhere in life, and I know that the waves of the universe will soon turn the tables of those who “get-off” on this type of behavior.
I can tolerate and ignore those who work this way, but I draw the line when you begin bringing ones family and children into this disgusting world of theirs.