Web 2.0 Effect Debunked As Marketing Ploy

Each day, something attracts the attention of the fanbases of social media sites like Reddit and Digg, to the point where these sites send the destination plenty of traffic. Some marketers have tried to take advantage of this to their benefit.

Devindra Hardawar wrote about one such effort from earlier this year. The Web 2.0 Effect project appeared to measure the effectiveness of several low-cost hosting solutions. On its surface, such a project would have some value for people seeking a comparison of services.

Hardawar and some friends did some digging into the background of the site. They were skeptical and believed that the winner, Burton Hosting, backed the project that they ultimately won.

The blog post Hardawar wrote regarding their research showed a lot of threads all leading back to two people, Russ Jones and Ronald Jaffre. Little pieces of evidence indicate that the Web 2.0 Effect existed solely as a viral marketing effort. A company called Virante, where Jones is CTO, apparently did the marketing work.

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