Seth Godin FAIL

The other day, “Marketing Guru” Seth Godin launched a service with the help of Squidoo. Brands in Public is basically an aggregator that brands can use to organize conversations about themselves in social media. Sounds cool, right? So why are people so pissed?

The tool pulls all the information into a dedicated profile. Squidoo has already taken the liberty of creating a bunch of “unofficial” company ones already in hopes that the companies themselves would take notice and front the cash to be able to have control over the thing. I look at this like someone creating a Facebook profile for me and then demanding cash to be able to take over. NOT COOL.

How much money? $400 a month. For something you could do yourself on your own dashboard with listening tools like Social Radar, Scoutlabs, or Radian 6.  This whole controversey sparked mainly because the genius didn’t ask permission or let anyone know what he was conjuring, and is ultimately is trying to scam brands into giving him money for absolutely nothing, aka “brandjacking”. In recent events, Squidoo has backed down and stopped creating these unofficial pages, they’ll now only create them if they’re asked.

I checked out Squidoo’s Brands in Public profile and (despite having heard rumors that they were blocking negative comments) can only hope they’re realizing they’re ridick. Here are some screen shots I pulled:

How do you feel about this? Here’s what Techcrunch has to say.