

Red Herring awards: a scam? - abhimir
http://www.techinasia.com/red-herring-awards-scam/

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pavel_lishin
> When I attended the first time to present, I found a nearly empty room with
> five or six people and another entrepreneur presenting on stage. Next up,
> was me. Before I started, I just asked, “Who were the actual Red Herring
> judges?” No one raised their hands. Since it was only five others, I asked
> who they were with. They were all entrepreneurs waiting to present next. We
> then realized, there were NO judges and NO “esteemed panel.”

I expected the "conference" to be lackluster and crappy, but I didn't expect
that they would literally not even bother setting anything up for the awards.
Amazing.

~~~
jemka
That's what I found weird.

>... a nearly empty room with five or six people and another entrepreneur
presenting on stage. Next up, was me.

Why was the first person even on the stage talking? There had to be an MC.

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NelsonMinar
TIL that Red Herring still exists. As an aside, the blog that's the source for
this article (<http://www.techinasia.com/>) is a fantastic English language
source for what's going on in the Asian tech startup scene. Lots of coverage
of big companies like Sina Weibo, Baidu, Renren, etc. Also coverage of smaller
stuff. There's a lot of innovation happening in Asia, particularly in China,
and this is one of the few English language sources doing detailed reporting
that I know of.

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alttag
I'm amused by the irony of the name "Red Herring". Perhaps the idiom isn't
familiar to non-native English speakers?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring>

~~~
alizaki
Red Herring used to be a major tech magazine back in the day

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Herring_(magazine)>

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drumdance
Back in the late nineties a variation on this was for the scammer to call and
say you'd be featured on some cable business show hosted by a big shot ex-
politician. When they called me it was Casper Weinberger, but I remember
hearing about other names too. The catch was that you had to pay the
production costs of $15-25k.

More info: <http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-954-461-2100/2>

This is also a common charity tactic. They throw a big dinner party honoring
some rich guy, then shake down all his friends to pay for tables at dinner.

~~~
danielweber
I've been there. We had a new person in the office who didn't believe that
such scams could exist, so for the lulz they were assigned to deal with the
person. They could say whatever they wanted as long as they didn't agree to
pay.

The salesguy ended up _screaming_ at our person who was just playing dumb.

It's also the "Who's Who" scam, where they print your name in a book of
important people and sell you the book, or the "You Won A Poetry Content" that
Dave Barry had so much fun with.
[http://www.miamiherald.com/2007/07/22/165002/poetic-
license-...](http://www.miamiherald.com/2007/07/22/165002/poetic-license-with-
no-rhyme-or.html)

------
vincentchan
They contacted me before saying if I'm willing to pay for the $3,000, I will
get the top 100 award. It's a joke. But there are still so many companies
willing to pay them every year in Asia. So sad.

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kolya3
The Red Herring magazine and brand was bought years ago. The brand was whored
out to promote Dasar conferences. If you want some sad entertainment, read
through any Valleywag/Gawker articles about working at Red Herring. Sad thing
is all the stories are easily verifiable - just talk to any ex-employee.

------
HyprMusic
I used to work in a "multi-award winning" agency. They would pay extortionate
amounts to win these awards given by people with absolutely no credibility in
the industry. It wasn't an award, so much as an endorsement. The sad thing is,
it used to work, clients lapped it up.

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PhrosTT
I heard this about the Webby Awards as well...

<https://www.google.com/search?q=webby+awards+scam>

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driverdan
Why would anyone pay $3000 to attend a conference to receive an award, which
in reality amounts to nothing?

Your users don't care about some stupid online award they've never heard of.
If the investors you're talking to care about it then it's time to find new
investors.

~~~
JoblessWonder
Ego most likely.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not even ego, it's external validation. You're not sure you're doing it
right and then someone says you are. Powerful.

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manys
The name isn't enough of a clue?

~~~
swang
Red Herring was actually a legitimate tech magazine at one time. It is brushed
upon slightly at the beginning of the article.

If you goto the Wikipedia article, the names line up.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Herring_(magazine)>

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sesqu
Hmm. I recently saw a company advertize their Red Herring award, and my scam-
sense was tingling. I did a little looking and decided the whole thing was a
bit of a scam, but targeted at me, the potential impressee.

I never considered the possibility of the company itself having been scammed.

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TylerE
JD Power isn't much better. Supposedly they really do select based on quality,
but it's setup so you have to pay MASSIVE fees if you ever want to acknowledge
publicly that you've won.

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dhawalhs
I googled "web awards" and all the top links required you to pay a
"participation fee".

------
DaniFong
For what it's worth the US stage this year was a pretty professional
production. Just viewing the pitches was worth the money. Notably, many of
those that pitched -- including some competitors of ours, did not receive the
award.

