
Zynga CEO: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues”  - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/
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dabent
One could say that Google did and continues to promote a variety of scam
offers through AdWords/Sense. They've tried to clean things up, or at least
move the small players out with quality score, page 1 pricing, etc, but the
real results show:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=acai+berry&pws=0](http://www.google.com/search?q=acai+berry&pws=0)

The second result when I searched was "www.CNN.com" What you want to bet that
it really _isn't_ CNN but some scam site? These clicks cost about $3 or more a
pop, so Google is still making big money off of rebills.

~~~
byrneseyeview
That CNN site is hilarious:

[http://www.cnnhealthonlinereports.com/news/dieting/acai-
berr...](http://www.cnnhealthonlinereports.com/news/dieting/acai-berry-
products-reviewed.html)

I'm amazed that this works. (But clearly, if they can afford to pay for the
second highest search result, it does.) The article goes straight from a
slightly newsy story (CNN investigates scams) to a pitch, complete with
product screenshots and a list of benefits. Reminds me of:
<http://www.infomarketingblog.com/images/Mark_Haroldsen.jpg>

~~~
dabent
In terms of money, those acai products have made millions. It's a feeding
frenzy probably bigger than ringtones.

I'm amazed that it "works" in that Google allows this to show up. Putting a
different display domain than the desitnation is a clear violation of policy.
It's also amazing that CNN hasn't found them and shut them down.

I guess what I see with the Zynga thing is a bit of selective outrage. It's
been happening EVERYWHERE with the biggest players in the game for years.

Speaking of CNN, even they run ads for fake blogs and "advertorials" with what
look like scam offers. Where's the TechCrunch article about them?

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byrneseyeview
It's hard to get accurate data on this, but I wonder how many startups avoid
doing morally edgy stuff at the beginning. Reddit used fake accounts; Kevin
Rose reviewed Digg on his TV show and submitted affiliate links; Google and
Yahoo! used Stanford servers; eBay told anybody who would listen a completely
fabricated story about the company started.

Obviously, none of that stuff is as bad as Zynga's scam ads (or Myspace's
wrinkle creams and spyware). But is that because Zynga was evil, or because
they didn't get around to stopping until they were too visible?

~~~
zaidf
I am pretty sure many many founders, if not the startups necessarily, have
very 'interesting' pasts.

I definitely do and it goes back to high school. But I make it a point not to
post about it online primarily because not understanding the context, it can
be spinned many ways. I don't mind talking about it offline when I have time
to tell the whole story from my mouth.

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wallflower
When Julie Aigner-Clark founded Baby Einstein and started shooting her
edutainment videos in her basement, she never worried about licensing the
Einstein name. She just went ahead and did it. Many years later, they settled
the name licensing dispute with Albert Einstein's estate, paying them
considerable royalties.

True entrepreneurship involves risk taking. You can't plan for everything and
you can't wait.

~~~
zaidf
I agree with you. Yet is it wise to go talking about something stupid? I'm not
sure. Big corps already know this. The Valley might be learning. In the big
scheme of things this might not be a _huge_ deal, but as this story is
spinned, it might give the image that Zynga's revenue is 100% scam, when in
fact it might be 10% of 20% scammy.

I have something stupid I did in my past. I don't talk about it for the same
fear as having to take heat like this dude is taking. I've actually written
about it a couple times only to delete the post minutes later.

Seeing this play out, I feel I made the right decision. Otherwise, you never
know when a competitor of yours will find that lil post and try and spin a
huge negative story out of something that happened years ago in my teens and
is hardly relavant. This might be a good lesson for startup CEOs on
controlling their mouths even at the risk of coming across as a suit.

Btw, another great example is to read up the MySpace story in the book Hacking
MySpace. Their parent company was deep into spyware business and pretty much
that is what helped pay the bills. It also almost killed the myspace
acquisition.

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staunch
"Behind every great fortune there is a great crime". Obviously that isn't
true, but I'm shocked no one has written a book that details the shady
beginnings of famous silicon valley startups. There's more than enough
material.

One of my favorites is MySpace, when they were still called
eUniverse/ResponseBase.

~~~
emmett
A common quote from balzac, inaccurate though. The real version is:

“The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a
crime that has never been discovered, because it was properly executed.”

[http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/epigrammatic_accumu...](http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/epigrammatic_accumulation/)

(please excuse the marxism)

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fnid
He also says in the video that he got investors who were friends, which is
revealing as well.

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catch23
why does this keep showing up here? the last posting was flagged and
eventually removed...

~~~
transburgh
maybe the people that did not read it last night (now that it is lower on the
main list) are reading it for the first time. Some people don't live on YC
News.

Since (at the time I write this) 11 people have up-voted it, there is interest
in the story

