Seth Godin brought the wrath of the web upon him when he announced Squidoo Brand Pages.Simply google brandjacking and you'll see.
Today, he has amended the original post:
Our intent in building sample pages and letting brands see them in action was misunderstood by many people, and I can understand why. As a result, to clear the air, we're going to be taking these 200 sample pages down today. The only pages that we'll be posting are those from our sponsors, we won't be building any others. Thanks to those that let me know about their concerns, and I'm sorry for the confusion.
One way we tried to encourage that was to build 200 sample pages, pages brands could adopt. Alas, some people felt that this was inappropriate, so we've recalibrated and we'll take those pages down before the end of the day.
When a brand wants a page, we'll build it, they'll run it and we'll both have achieved our goals.
Part of the magic of the web is that you can adjust as you go, particularly if you're willing to listen.
I apologize if anyone was confused by my original post, and we're looking forward to having major brands and non-profits using this tool the way we intended--to join in to the conversation that's already happening all around us. Thanks as always for reading.
See, this was all a misunderstanding because these were only sample pages.
Except it's not a misunderstanding, because nowhere in the original post before it was amended did he say they're sample pages.
I'm sure people who felt this constituted brandjacking will be mollified (or not, self-righteous anger being a difficult thing to let go) by this adjustment. And of course Seth knows the value of a real apology, and that's great.
Let's get one thing straight, though: an omission on his part does not constitute confusion on our part. We weren't confused. We can read.
But was he really wrong to do this in the first place, as so many felt? Is there really such a thing as brandjacking anymore? Anyone can create an aggregation site. How is that brandjacking? The Squidoo Brand Pages are not creating or controlling the conversation around brands, only channeling it. When TechCrunch displays info from
its CrunchBase, is it engaging i
n brandjacking? I haven't heard anyone say so. If the CrunchBase info were more thorough and they charged companies to access the analytics data of clicks on that info, would they now be brandjacking? I don't think so.
Seth and his team are doing the work these companies can't do or won't do--or at least, can't do it efficiently and knowledgeably enough. They deserve to be paid for that. The term brandjacking implies theft. Tell me, where is the theft taking place, here? What, exactly, is being stolen?
