Busted! Social Media plagiarism spotted at iMedia Connection Asia
I was reading R. Chandrasekar’s contributed piece on the “Social media marketing myths debunked” and sad to say the article is nowhere near original.
Wrote Chandrasekar,
Myth no. 1: “Social media is free”
This is true, but only to a certain extent. Anyone or company can join Facebook or Flickr, but in order to promote your company and still do so for free, you would have to do it after company hours. For some smaller companies, this may still be possible but as your set up gets bigger, you may not be able to find the time to keep up with task Also, how would you know which site is better than the others?
Wrote The SEM Blog on December 4, 2007,
Myth 1 - Social Media is Free
This is true, to a point. Anyone or company can join Facebook or Flickr but in order to promote your company and still remain free you would have to do it after company hours. For some of the more smaller companies out there this is possible but as your company gets bigger and bigger you may not have the time. Also, how do you know which site is better than the others?
Wrote Chandrasekar,
Myth no. 3: “Only tech-related stories stand a chance”
Websites such as Digg have started out with such stories as a main focus, but that was a long time ago. However, the one question at the back of many marketers’ minds is whether there really is no room for other types of content.At the beginning, most stories on Digg, one of the most well-known social media websites, were tech-related. But despite its shift in focus, such sites are still receiving a lot of exposure at this point. Nonetheless, the sites’ early success has led some webmasters to assume that there is no room for other types of stories.
Wrote theratingblog on Jan 30, 2008,
Myth#7: “Only tech-related stories stand a chance”
Websites such as Digg have started out with such stories as a main focus, but that was a long time ago. Is there really no room for other types of content?
Origin: At the beginning, most stories on Digg, the most well-known social media website, were tech-related and actually, these are still receiving a lot of exposure at this point so that some webmasters assume that there is no room for other types of stories.
Reality check: Things have changed and any type of story can make the frontpage nowadays (it was even possible in the past, with a little work), as long as it is appreciated by the community and as long as people vote for it.
In the rules of Social Media, when you come across an interesting post and would like to post it up, the blogger copies a piece of the quote and links it back to the original blog post.
Give credit where credit is due!
It is very easy to check for plagiarism with Google, just copy the whole phrase and see if it turns up on an another site.
The problem with plagiarism is that now I wonder if R.Chandrasekar, one of the founder of Velvet Penguin, really understands the social media space.
However, if Chandrasekar can prove that he is a victim of plagiarism, I will gladly remove this post!
No wonder the name sounded familiar. The chief behind Velvet Penguin. It was quite obvious from the Velvet Penguin website alone that they haven’t a clue about social media. I don’t think it is up any more, but I remember being frustrated by the lack of product and contact information. Lots of social media keywords spewed out without the substance.
It 430pm.
If they were so into Social Media, they would have responded to this post already.
Surprisingly, the “contributed” article at iMedia Connection Asia is also still up.
Dear All,
Let me first apologize for this article. The article was contributed and submitted by me. However, i got help from a research assistant who helped in writing this piece.
Due to a family bereavement, I could not contribute an article in time and got my research assistant to pitch in. Her piece was well-written and I had submitted the piece wholly given my inability to write myself this time round.
I did not realize that it was plagiarized till this post was brought to my attention.
I was callous and I should have checked the piece before submitting this post. I sincerely apologize for this and would like to re-iterate that it was unintentional.
This is uncharacteristic and will not recur again.
Sincerely,
Chandra
Please provide the contact of the “Research Assistant” that wrote this article. We would like to verify the claims.
I don’t think this is uncharacteristic at all.
Aiyah why waste time just get the brotherhood ppl to come in lah and in to time you will get all the information.
I hate copy cats!
Thanks for pointing this out. As real do it took a lot of time and research to come up with the post I did on The SEM Blog http://www.thesemblog.com/2007/12/social-media-my.html as any good blogger should do I linked back to any source I referenced in a post. The original post on Ignite Social Media http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/busting-the-10-most-common-social-media-myths/ was a great post and I tried to expand on that. I can’t accept nor deny the claims of a rogue assistant but the fact Mr Chandrasekar has been caught and has not removed his totally false post is in fact an act of admitting guilt.
Thank you for taking the time to actually point this out
Thanks for pointing this out, Gretchen Hyman of iMedia Connection has removed the post
Gretchen just called me to apologize and said that the post was taken down and they are looking into it