Internet, Marketing, Web 2.0

Uncovering The Web2.0Effect.org Hoax: How Virante Marketing Solutions & Burton Hosting Fooled the Web

07.06.07 | Comments

You might remember this site from the waves it made a few weeks ago at social news sites. It was a seemingly useful experiment meant to compare the uptime of several inexpensive hosting providers when faced with a flood of traffic. Dubbed the “Web 2.0 Effect: Which Host Will Survive?“, a term they invented to group the sort of traffic rush you get from being featured on sites like Slashdot and Digg, the experiment looked to be a useful reference for anyone getting started with paid website hosting. The experiment relied on being flooded with traffic, and that they were by Digg and Reddit. It garnered an impressive 1,812 Diggs and 838 Reddits at the time of this post.

I was first referred to the site from a friend who was looking for hosting of his own. I distinctly remember the first thought that went through my head when I saw the winner: “Who the hell is Burton Hosting?” That started a chain of events that made this post necessary. My friends and I thought there was a good chance that this entire project was just a marketing ploy, and we set out to do some research.

What we found confirmed our suspicions several times over: It appears that the Web 2.0 Effect was not a legitimate experiment in any way. We surmise that it was, in actuality, an elaborate viral marketing ploy meant to shovel sales into the hands of Burton Hosting.

Initial Suspicions

As I mentioned already, I found it curious that a relatively unknown hosting provider won out so clearly. There were several other peculiarities I noted upon first seeing the site:

  • This wasn’t a very realistic experiment: The test was simply a paragraph of “Lorem ipsum” text on a colored background. If they really wanted to test real-world hosting capabilities they should have included post-1995 web features such as images, dynamic content through a database connection, and scripting of some sort.
  • It wasn’t a controlled experiment: The crux of the project relied on seeing which hosts choked when flooded with traffic. The problem is that the site needs to be highly publicized to get that traffic in the first place. What’s to prevent any of the featured hosts from surreptitiously allocating more resources to the sites? Nothing, that’s what.
  • Where are the better known hosting services?: Where’s the geek favorite, Dreamhost? And for that matter, where’s Bluehost, Lunarpages, Godaddy, or any other semi-popular hosting service?
    • Take note that the HostGator test subject is actually listed as a HostGator Reseller. Any potential problems with that listing could be attributed to the reseller allocating their allotted resources badly.
  • Burton is the least popular by far of all of the providers being tested: A quick Alexa comparison showed us that Burton receives drastically less traffic than the competitors. Burton is the blue line trailing the bottom of the graph.

Digging Deeper

A more thorough investigation confirmed that we were right to be suspicious. We started by running a simple WhoIS search on the 0effect.org domain. That gave us two names: Russ Jones and Ronald Jaffre. Looking at the Reddit submission, we learned that rjonesx submitted the site to Reddit. That matched the gmail address listed in the WhoIs data, so it appeared that Russ had Reddited his own site. There isn’t anything wrong with that in general, so we looked to the Digg submission next.

Russvirante was the Digg user who submitted the story, and we assumed that this was Russ Jones as well. Googling for Russ Jones, we found that Virante.com is among the first few search results — specifically, as Virante High Potential Web Marketing. A quick glance at that site showed us that Russel Jones is actually the CTO of Virante. And unsurprisingly, one of their specialties is social media/viral marketing. Now the idea of the “Web 2.0 Effect” site being used as a viral marketing campaign for Burton Hosting begins to gain some substance.

A Super Smart Experiment?

We then found a blog that Jones writes for, which also looks to be directly affiliated with Virante. In this post, Jones links directly to the “Web 2.0 Effect” site but talks about it as if he just happened across it. Not only does he give it a fabulously self-serving title (”Super Smart Experiment: Surviving the Digg Effect”), he also can’t seem to help gushing all over his own project:

“Definitely one of the smarter experiments I have seen these days… I absolutely love this kind of attitude of bootstrap experimentation, especially when it is crafted in a way that makes it really accurate. I have seen stories before where they just pound 1 host, but not one where they can really compare multiple hosts at the same time. Kudos!”

Sorry Russ, I don’t believe you can give kudos to yourself, especially not when you’re possibly revealing your connection to a “secret” marketing plot by doing so.

So here’s the rub–why did Jones disassociate himself with this project at all? The likeliest solution, of course, is that he didn’t want the “Web 2.0 Effect” project to be tied directly to his blog or Virante. A quick glance at the Virante.com main page shows us that posts from the “Google Cache” blog show up in a highlighted section. They couldn’t very well admit to creating this experiment on the blog if it’s in actuality something they’re doing for a paying client.

Social Spin

Still, I suppose he reserves the right to call this a “super smart” experiment. He successfully fooled the vast majority of the online community, save for a few insightful Reddit and Digg users. I found more evidence of marketing misinformation by sifting through Russ’s responses to the Reddit and Digg submissions. When pressed that this looks like marketing spam on Reddit, Russ replies:

“If you notice, there are no affiliate links for any of the domains and the data is displayed as clearly and openly as possible.

I am sorry that I can’t prove it to you that it is not advertising, it is simply impossible to do that. All I can say is that, to me, it would be very valuable to know which hosting company can survive this kind of traffic on a $5/month account. Unfortunately, i can’t figure that out without something like this, and I could only afford to try 9 hosting accounts (many require multi-month sign ups which are expensive!)”

The site definitely has an air of transparency. At first, it doesn’t look like they are trying to make any money from gathering so much traffic. Then again, if I were pulling a massive marketing stunt like this, that’s exactly what I’d want the audience to think as well.

Also, I find it hilarious that he says they couldn’t afford to test other hosting providers because it gets expensive. In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to make the most of your funds and efficiently test hosting providers that people actually use?

Jones also reveals a sliver of truth in a later Reddit comment:

“I am a CTO at a small web design / development company. This information we need to know for our clients, and the only way we could figure it out was open it up to the community (how else are we going to get the traffic to really figure out which ones are the best?)

So, we can pretend its altruistic :), but really it was a question I needed answered, but I needed everyone else to make it happen.”

First off, he tells us he’s a CTO (and we know for a fact that he is), and yet he couldn’t afford to have his company pump more funds into this experiment? It’s hard to imagine that even a small company couldn’t shell out for a more thorough survey of hosting options, especially given all the free publicity they would have gotten for providing such a useful service to budding website owners.

Also, I find it extremely telling that he mentioned he needed this information for his clients. It’s clear that this experiment didn’t really provide much in the way of useful information, but it would be useful for a client looking to garner some publicity. Saying that this experiment is meant for his clients is somewhat of a half-truth then, as it’s certainly a boon for Burton Hosting.

Other Points of Interest

We also gathered some other random facts during our investigation which make the “Web 2.0 Effect” appear suspect:

  • Burton Hosting is the only provider in this experiment not based on the U.S. They’re actually based out of the United Kingdom. This makes it seem all the stranger that they would be chosen for this test.
  • Ronald Jaffre, the other name in the WhoIS lookup for 0effect.org, has an address listed for Alvaston in Derby UK. Of course this is more circumstantial than most of the other evidence, but it does seem strange that Jaffre supposedly lives a mere 118 miles from Burton Hosting. (The Burton address was gleamed from the WhoIS lookup for their domain.)
  • Both the Burton.com and 0effect.org IPs resolve in Georgia. Could be just a coincidence, but then again there have been too many of those already.

Summing Up

So it appears that something is not quite right with the “Web 2.0 Effect.” You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to notice that there are simply too many problems with the experiment, among other coincidences and revelations, that lead us to believe that it wasn’t legitimate. While we couldn’t find any direct link between Virante and Burton Hosting, the implication gathered from all of this evidence is clear: Virante fooled the web good.

If anything, I hope that shedding light on this covert marketing ploy will make us warier of similar viral plots in the future. It stinks that we have to worry about marketing being pranced about as legitimate data, but it appears to be an unavoidable situation.

As technology makes it easier for users to connect and collaborate, it makes it even easier for advertisers to take advantage of our good will. We are not powerless against such tactics. Learn about and preach media literacy, never take any information for granted, and always ask questions.

Update 1: 7/6/07 - 6:19pm

Thanks for all the support everyone! Also, I knew more evidence would pop up once this story hit the wild. Digg user Dhalgren points out the following:

“What’s with the hidden links on the 0effect.org site?
From the HTML:
< div style=’display:none;’ >
< a href=”http://concertmaps.wetpaint.com“>concertmaps< /a >
< a href=”http://concertmaps.wikispaces.com“>concertmaps< /a >
< a href=”http://digg.com/users/concertmaps/news/dugg” >concertmaps< /a >
< a href=”http://www.myspace.com/concertmaps“>concertmaps< /a >
< a href=”http://concertmaps.wordpress.com“>concertmaps< /a >
< a href=”http://concertmaps.icontact.com/” >concertmaps< /a >
< /div >
< div style=’display:none’ >< a href=’http://www.leisurelandscapes.com‘ >Leisure Landscapes< /a >< /div >
Also, it looks like he had a tracker with Burton:
< img src=’track.php?host=burton&url=http://207.210.100.214‘ height=1 width=1 style=’visibility:hidden;’ >

Why only have a tracker with Burton? Looks suspicious to me. Like he wanted his client to know how much traffic was generated for their viral advertising…”

Although it looks like the page was edited after he posted this revealation:

“Since I’ve posted this he’s removed the links and is making the track.php dynamic. It wasn’t before…”

Not only were there hidden links, but it was quite obvious that Burton was tracking the hits to the “Web 2.0 Effect” site!

In addition, Digg users mmmooo and eviljim found a very interesting reference to a “viranteviral” project through the Apache server signature. Mmmooo notes:

“all this research, and for what…

Russ, you forgot to have bruton change the apache server sig for your ‘test’.

Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.viranteviral.burtondns.org Port 80

(just hit http://207.210.100.214/foobar)

ooops!

sounds marketing-ish.”

That probably wasn’t the best name for a secret viral project server, no?

Both of these new pieces of evidence further cement the relationship between Virante and Burton hosting. Russ has spent quite some time in the Digg and Reddit comments trying to convince us of the legitimacy of the experiment. I wonder what he would have to say about this new evidence…

Update 2: 7/8/2007 10:16pm

A few more quick updates. First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I changed the title of the story (but not the permalink) to include “Burton” and “Virante” to give this article a boost when people search for those terms. I think these tactics should be known to anyone who deals with Virante or Burton in the future.

I should mention that the main reason I invested so much in this article is that I really hate it when people take advantage of growing social media trends. I know there isn’t much we can do to avoid it. Whenever something popular appears, people will figure out a way to game it for their own benefit. In this case though, at least I was able to make a bit of a difference.

A couple hours ago, I e-mailed Russ Jones to see if he had any explanation for the evidence in the first update above. Seeing as how those two bits were pretty much the last nail in the coffin for this project, I was curious to see if he had any reasonable response to them. I’ll let you guys know if anything comes about from that.

Tamar over at Techipedia wrote a good follow up piece to this whole fiasco. She writes about how marketers need to be careful when utilizing social media and offers up some good advice on what they can do to avoid ending up in this situation. She pretty much echoes my thoughts on what went wrong here.In addition, I’d like to point out a comment that David from Host Jury made below:

Unsurprised to say the least.
I’ve caught Burton Hosting posting fake reviews to a number of web hosting review sites previously as well — including our own. They’ve been spamming on digg for awhile under a few different aliases.. a number have reached the frontpage.

So it appears that Burton is not new to sketchy marketing tactics, this project was just their biggest attempt to date. To be fair, tons of hosting companies do the same, but it’s especially relevant that we know Burton isn’t afraid to engage in these activities. You can find some of their fake reviews over here, along with one that ranks them as “Poor.”

Update 3: 7/20/07 11:11pm

Is Virante and co. pwned? Well according to Google, it looks like they are. Honestly I never expected this article to be awarded with such a lofty geek title, but it looks like you readers made it happen. Take note that before this update, I never once used the term “pwned” in this post, and honestly I don’t think in my site either.

Since this moment of victory is sure to be short, I’ve captured this moment in history for all eternity. Click  the thumbnail below for the full picture:

Virnate Pwned


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