Joost fires up spam marketing campaign

by Brian Turner

Joost stands accused of attempting a forum spamming campaign to raise awareness of its services.

The flag was raised after a member of Joost staff joined SFF Chronicles, the world’s largest science fiction and fantasy forums, and posted a string of direct advertising spam posts for Joost services, offering free downloads of popular shows.

The Joost staff member also made a deliberate attempt to evade the site’s anti-spam filters, before making the spam posts.

While the spam was very quickly removed, it highlights the importance for companies communicating and interacting with online communities to maintain good relations - and that direct advertising spam is more likely to cause alarm and anger at the company’s marketing tactics.

It is all the more surprising because Joost had previously contacted the administrator of SFF Chronicles to ask about working with a joint promotion.

At the same time, it was also made plain to Joost that the company that owns and operates SFF Chronicles also published one of the world’s leading news portal on the IPTV market - IPTV Watch.

While everyone - including Joost - can make mistakes, and make amends for them, it remains a point to underline that aggressive marketing tactics that may be perceived as spam are welcome at few places on the internet.

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