MetroMela removed from the poll for local startups

January 10, 2008 · Posted in Misc 

Call this an impulsive act - I really dont care.

After getting 7-8 self-promotional, spammy comments from MetroMela folks, my patience wore out. I’ve removed them from the poll for local search startups. I ignored and simply deleted the first 4-5 comments but after receiving an additional 2-3 today - it looked like they werent gonna stop.

Here’s a suggestion to MetroMela folks on how to do PR via blogs - Dont Spam !!! Not just me - everyone hates it.


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Comments

10 Responses to “MetroMela removed from the poll for local startups”

  1. Prabhu on January 10th, 2008 2:49 pm

    One quick question. How did you find out that the comments were actually from metromela guys. Any body can give the url as metro mela right?

    Disclaimer: I am not associated with metromela.

  2. pranav on January 10th, 2008 3:06 pm

    @prabhu,

    if you are tech savvy and familiar with Wordpress, you should be easily able to figure it out.

  3. Pankaj Joshi on January 11th, 2008 1:02 am

    Pranav,

    I think you have taken very harsh step of removing MetroMela from the polls. In this web2.0 world how do you stop people from commenting. Even if I agree to the fact that there is a chance that some MetroMela junior employee may have written comments out of enthu/ignorance, you should not take such a extreme step. Just deleting the comment sends the right message.

    I think you should put MetroMela back on the polls.

    Pankaj
    Cofounder MetroMela.com

  4. Sonny on January 11th, 2008 1:36 am

    So..the cofounder of MetroMela comes and tells you how to run your website, without so much as an apology for his folks spamming your site.
    And, it is obvious he didn’t really read your post since he still thinks that “just deleting the comments sends the right message”.
    Hmm…what do you make of that?

  5. pranav on January 11th, 2008 12:03 pm

    Pankaj,

    No one is stopping people from commenting. Lots of other startups, companies also engage in blog whoring. and thats ok. I understand– after all, they need the PR. But when you start spamming in this manner, it just irks me.

    “Just deleting the comment sends the right message” - well, I did delete the first 4-6 comments. If that wasnt clear enough a signal, let me know what is. As the founder, you should have realized this sooner and educated your junior employees accordingly.

    “Even if I agree to the fact that there is a chance….”
    You still arent owning up to the responsibility, are you ?

    Anyways, I’ve sealed the lid on my decision. What made it really simple was the below:

    a short time after you leave the above comment, I get this:

    http://www.startupdunia.com/2008/01/07/vote-for-you-favorite-local-search-startup/#comments

    Look at comment # 6.

    Please dont tell me that there may be a chance that it came from a metromela employee - because I know it did and if need be, can prove the same.

  6. Pankaj Joshi on January 12th, 2008 12:30 am

    Pranav,

    I dug deeper into the reasons for the post and this is what i found.

    Since you have one vote per IP address, when people log on to your page to vote they see the results page and no voting option ( since most small businesses have 1 or 2 IP addresses). This is very confusing for them as there is no note saying that this IP address has already voted. Hence some of them thought the way to participate is to leave a good comment about MetroMela.

    Now please explain how will your poll make sense. lets say if couple of people from same comany want to vote for different local search engines how do they do it? For that matter even one internet cafe can have only one vote as it will corresposnd to One IP address. My service provider at home assigns me dynamic IP, so I can vote multiple time is it?

    I think the poll was an interesting idea but it should have been designed more carefully. I am sure your one vote per IP address scheme confused a lot of people and not putting any instructions/note made it even more confusing. I dont know what realistically can be made out from result of such a poll.

  7. pranav on January 12th, 2008 12:43 am

    Pankaj,

    the issue was never with the votes..It was the comment spam.

    thanks,
    -p

  8. AT on January 17th, 2008 1:56 pm

    Hi Pranav:

    Props to your blog. Really informative and entertaining. As for this nonsense goes, good stand.

    The so called co-founder of metromela is a Bully. He’s more like a monkey on your back and instead of doing damage control has resorted to deviation and patronization methods.

    WTG for you man!

  9. wellwisher on February 19th, 2008 5:56 am

    Not sure desperate attempts of such comments from Metromela indicates that either its not running or there is smth seriously wrong

  10. Bubbles on April 22nd, 2008 5:46 am

    hah! good or bad you gave metromela its advertising. and whatever it is i landed on this page jus because i typed metromela in a search engine

    dont fret the next time something like this happens
    it might just backfire :p