

This Spam Infographic About Spam Infographics Makes My Head Hurt - lotusleaf1987
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/infographics-all-the-way-down/

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igameddigg
"Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the
post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and
content creation. It’s like there’s a reason people are clicking on it."

Ugh. She didn't read the thread, it would seem.

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tommizzle
I really don't 'get' this anti-infographic movement - What's the difference
between text-based content and graphical content? Gaming sites like Digg etc
is always going to happen regardless of the format.

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mikemol
In general, I think the problem breaks down this way:

1) Humans respond in intuitive, predictable ways to graphics, particularly
with a greater emphasis on emotional response. (As opposed to an analytical
response.)

2) All information sources have bias, and any marketing competence on the part
of the infographic creator will tend to subconsciously amplify the bias of the
graphic's creator.

3) Combining the creator's bias with the infographic's tendency to more easily
invoke emotional responses over analytical ones results in a reaction more
couched in that emotion than in logic.

IIRC, USA Today was criticized for this, decades ago.

[edited to fix concatenation of numbers to a single line.)

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tommizzle
Wow, so people are getting upset that content is causing a greater emotional
response, with a direct influence on the graphic's creator? To me that seems
as if the designers and marketers are doing their job properly.

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mikemol
Sure, as long as you're aware that you're reading marketing material, and are
aware of the bias that goes with that. People often are more sheeple than
critical thinkers, though.

[I think] The anger is generally on the part of the critical thinkers against
those exploiting sheeple. You can think as critically as you like, but that
doesn't mean you won't be drowned out by those who don't.

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ambiate
Sigh, I planned on schooling the system of the system by creating an
infographic like this and posting it to Digg/Reddit/HN. I spent all day in
chem hall sketching it out and preparing it for the weekend surge.

While we may realize this part of the spam game, there's always going to be
new schemes to replace this one. The morals and ethics of SEO are always being
pushed and bent to get a page #1 in Google for a keyword. I admired some of
the infographics and even have a few saved (music/movies/picking a lock).
There are much dirtier ways than this to get backlinks and attention. I would
actually toss this in the grayhat area, because at least its providing some
thought invoking content.

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vaksel
the thing is that only the techies realize that's part of the seo
game...99.9999% of the population will not care. And if those seo guys can't
get the numbers the way they want...they'll just go and buy links.

or create a huge SEO link wheel i.e. something like this chart:

<http://i55.tinypic.com/2142vdv.jpg>

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paolomaffei
How is this spammier than usual linkbaiting?

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blasdel
There's content but it isn't textually indexed by Google, it's easy to put up
statically on any existing domain, and by using huge images it's more likely
to be linked to instead of rehosted.

