Comments on: Why Fake Social Media Avatars Suck – My Experiment

By: Scott Schablow

Scott Schablow — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:33:25 +0000

Donna,
That’s hilarious. The difficulty of maintaining an alter ego makes you wonder how some psychos do it so effortlessly.

By: Lisa Marie Mary

Lisa Marie Mary — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:00:42 +0000

Very interesting experiment, indeed! I’ve experienced some of this myself – in getting my husband’s local business online. I’m following Seth Godin’s guidelines – which involved including your business address on the first ‘fixed’ post on your blog. For this reason, I haven’t used any of my own already-established contacts or ‘followings’ to promote him. It’s been quite tricky starting from scratch. So tricky, in fact, that I’ve given up and ignored the whole thing (his site, his Soc. Network accts, etc) several times! This last time – he’s been sitting online ignored for months!

It has, itself, been quite the interesting experiment. I’m sure after the first of the year I will take it back up again and then maybe do a case study on my experiences, too.

By: Jaan Kanellis

Jaan Kanellis — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:58:46 +0000

I love seeing the real person face with some creativity or personality.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:35:08 +0000

I see. I have all sorts of issues commenting on blogs with that installed.

By: Internet Marketing Joy

Internet Marketing Joy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:17:24 +0000

Maintaining a fake account is very hard..I tried it out before and I just find it exhausting…I have to constantly lie about my location, personality, etc..that’s why I decide to close my other account and concentrate on my original one..^^

By: TK

TK — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:58:58 +0000

I couldn’t see why anyone would want to act like someone else over the internet. Yeah, having a provocative or interesting avatar might be a misleading, it’s better than actually adopting a new persona. Interesting post!

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:06:14 +0000

Dennis, that’s probably a wp-supercache foobar. I’ve turned caching off for the moment.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:44:25 +0000

Interesting little case study. I can only imagine the difficulty as I have enough of a time with just me. LOL

Btw, I just refreshed the page and all formatting is gone. I’m commenting now on just a big post on white background.

By: Marty

Marty — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:34:22 +0000

@Donna: Well…the “ruckus” actually had very little to do with avatars, real or fake. Also to our mind, corporate brand ambassadorship has very little to do with “popularity of the hot chick avatars/personas.” 🙂

This is a very fun article. We hope to meet you in person @ Pubcon if you are there.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:59:14 +0000

LOL! I did a similar test last year but I found that there were more people clicking through because of the hot chick in my avatar… that’s why I left it there 😉

But I guess it was slightly different from your test.

Jay