Facebook Marketing: College Prowler Caught Using Fake Accounts and Facebook Groups to Build List
In what could be remembered as one of the larger exposés of aggressive viral marketing tactics on Facebook to date, a recruiter in the Butler University admissions department has unearthed evidence that college guide book publisher College Prowler has been using Facebook Groups, fake Facebook accounts, and savvy understanding of some behavioral dynamics inside Facebook to essentially build a mailing list for the entire incoming college class of 2013.
In his original post on Thursday, Butler’s Brad Ward discovered that over 500+ Facebook Groups for incoming freshmen next fall at colleges around the world, like University of Michigan – Class of 2013 and The Official Cornell University Class of 2013! were all created by a small group of accounts that were friends with each other and affiliated with College Prowler – none appeared to be legitimately affiliated with the incoming freshman class at any of the hundreds of universities for which they had created groups. Said Ward,
But for 500+ schools? Owning the admin rights to groups equaling easily 1,000,000+ freshman college students? That’s huge.
Think of it: Sitting back for 8-10 months, (even a few years), maybe friending everyone and posing as an incoming student. Think of the data collection. The opportunities down the road to push affiliate links. The opportunity to appear to be an ‘Admin’ of Your School Class of 2013. The chance to message alumni down the road. The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.
Responding on Mr Ward’s blog, Luke Sherman, College Prowler’s CEO, left the following comment:
Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.
Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups (all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):
• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica LashFrom a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.
Feel free to email, luke@collegeprowler.com, with any additional concerns or questions.
Luke
This looks like a classic class of guerilla marketing gone wild. As Butler’s Ward discovered, there are a lot of aggressive marketers out there taking advantage of Facebook Groups to reach hundreds or thousands of Facebook users. Groups grow virally through Facebook’s invitation channel, and some groups can even grow into the millions of members in a matter of just a few weeks. However, unfortunately, College Prowler apparently used fake accounts to carry out its marketing tactics, a sure fire way to get shut down (usually by Facebook’s automated systems – but in this case, by the self-regulating social pressure from other Facebook users).
As we discuss in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Groups are one of the oldest ways to build community around your company or brand, but Facebook is encouraging legitimate brand owners and marketers to adopt its Facebook Pages platform. Pages are a better way for marketers to build long lasting relationships with large volumes of people, and are extensible with Facebook Platform application functionality. Learn more about the best ways to employ both Pages and Groups as part of your overall strategy here.
Also see more notes from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
There is a hearty debate about this on Twitter as well. Search for #2013.
December 21st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
hey Justin… if you have time to do a followup, i’d be interested in hearing more about College Prowler and their founders. Sounds like there’s a more in-depth story there.
December 21st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
How could College Prowler be “unaware” of the tactics that were being used on their behalf? Shame shame. Most of all, I do hope this is a wake up call to higher education to get more actively involved in social media, especially Facebook and Facebook Pages.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
|\/|@|\|, T#39 |\/|(_)$t |33 ||\|$@|\|3!!!
December 21st, 2008 at 10:07 pm
You have to wonder how many similar “endeavors” are currently under the radar…
December 21st, 2008 at 11:02 pm
The Internet just has too much information.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
[...] by macewan on December 21, 2008 Hey there I’m Robert MacEwan the author of Ideal Absolutes. If you’re new to macewan.org, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.In what could be remembered as one of the larger exposés of aggressive viral marketing tactics on Facebook to date, a recruiter in the Butler University admissions department has unearthed evidence that college guide book publisher … Read the original: Facebook Marketing: College Prowler Caught Using Fake Accounts and … [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 am
So why is this even news?
I think people get upset about this type of thing because they didn’t think of it first. Marketing is Marketing, and there’s nothing unethical about this.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] That takes public relations and social media to the next level…allowing Digg to make revenue from their attention stream, and allowing advertisers to promote content that is well aligned with user interest…rather than having advertisers set up fake accounts to do guerilla marketing. [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
[...] More like Fakebook (Inside Facebook calls out guidebook publisher College Prowler for creating fake profiles and [...]
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
[...] Facebook Marketing: College Prowler Caught Using Fake Accounts and … [...]
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:25 am
[...] That takes public relations and social media to the next level…allowing Digg to make revenue from their attention stream, and allowing advertisers to promote content that is well aligned with user interest…rather than having advertisers set up fake accounts to do guerilla marketing. [...]
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I just want to clear up a few things about the recent Facebook controversy surrounding my company, College Prowler, as I have seen a lot of misinformation being posted out there. The facts are this, we created about 125 Facebook groups with the intention of promoting free access to our college guidebook information. In so doing we were not upfront about our affiliation and our intentions to the members of the groups. As soon as I found out about these issues we took full responsibility for any wrongdoing and disassociated ourselves from the groups.
We never sent any messages to the students and never posed as university officials. Our intention was to engage the students and promote a free college guide for incoming freshmen. Anything you read to the contrary is inaccurate information created in the internet community as the story gets told and retold.
Since this controversy broke we have worked proactively to fix any harm done and educate the higher education community about social media and how it is being used to market to their students. We’ve started a discussion on Facebook (join our group to add your thoughts: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41590893650).
In short, we made some mistakes but are working toward being a part of the solution. If you have any further questions or concerns please contact me at luke@collegeprowler.com.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
[...] Marketers create fake groups to spam future students A marketer trying to reach college students has created fake groups in order to get them to quickly sign up and get their friends on board. In the long run this will result in the ability to glean info as well as market products to this [...]
December 24th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Nice! i`ll be stopping by from time to time ;)
December 26th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
[...] That takes public relations and social media to the next level…allowing Digg to make revenue from their attention stream, and allowing advertisers to promote content that is well aligned with user interest…rather than having advertisers set up fake accounts to do guerilla marketing. [...]
December 29th, 2008 at 7:01 am
[...] Facebook Marketing: College Prowler Caught Using Fake Accounts and Facebook Groups to Build List This looks like a classic class of guerilla marketing gone wild. As Butler’s Ward discovered, there are a lot of aggressive marketers out there taking advantage of Facebook Groups to reach hundreds or thousands of Facebook users. (tags: facebook marketing) [...]
January 13th, 2009 at 12:35 am
[...] That takes public relations and social media to the next level…allowing Digg to make revenue from their attention stream, and allowing advertisers to promote content that is well aligned with user interest…rather than having advertisers set up fake accounts to do guerilla marketing. [...]
January 16th, 2009 at 4:06 am
[...] That takes public relations and social media to the next level…allowing Digg to make revenue from their attention stream, and allowing advertisers to promote content that is well aligned with user interest…rather than having advertisers set up fake accounts to do guerilla marketing. [...]
February 25th, 2009 at 7:28 am
[...] a “bait and switch” on Facebook users. For example, some marketers have been known to create Groups under the guise of non-commercial purposes with the intent of spamming the Groups later on. In order to prevent this from happening with the [...]
December 17th, 2009 at 9:20 am
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December 14th, 2010 at 12:34 am
[...] Ein Beispiel wie es schief gehen kann, bot der Verlag für einen amerikanischen Universitätsführer, der multiple Konten und Gruppen für Studierende angelegt hat, ohne seine wahre Identität zu offenbaren. Dadurch hatte er Zugriff nicht nur auf die Daten der potentiellen Zielgruppe, sondern gleich auf die Zielgruppe selbst und konnte sie mit verdeckten Werbebotschaften beliefern. Als dies herauskam, hagelte es massive öffentliche Kritik, die mit einem Imageverlust für das Unternehmen endete. (Quelle & Bild: Inside Facebook) [...]