Hm. OK, I understand the distinction there. The Alias one still strikes me as a borderline case, since the marketing firm themselves aren't pretending or encouraging people to pretend to like the product.

Obviously this is all horribly relevant to the concept of reputation capital...

Is it the case that reputation capital as we envision it includes the assumption that reputation capital is more valuable when it comes unprompted? To keep on picking on Cory, is there a difference between Cory saying "Someone did a web ring, cool!" and Cory saying, to someone who liked the book, "Maybe you should do a web ring..."?

I think there probably is.

Bryant, I think you've answered your own question. The difference is that grassroots projects are started by people who genuinely admire the thing they promote; astroturf projects are started by people paid to pretend that they admire the thing they promote.

Separate from the distinctions of "legitimacy", this campaign's nothing new from a marketing standpoint. I used to work in music marketing, and online street teams were an understood part of every campaign as far back as 7 or 8 years ago.

I'd guess that half of the AOL chat rooms dedicated to certain bands or artists are created by people either hired by or encouraged by the major labels to promote a record. The name "street team" is derived from the nanme for people paid to plaster promotional posters and signs up around cities in advance of a new release.

OK, this is a deliberately contrarian question, because I'm interested in the answers:

How does encouraging Alias fans to talk about the show differ from promoting a Web ring dedicated to your new book?

I.e., where's the line between acceptable grassroots marketing and unacceptable grassroots marketing? Is it whether or not someone other than the creator is getting paid to do it? I.e., is the Alias marketing bad because they hired a marketing firm to push the message to the "tastemakers"?

I think there's a pretty clear line between pretending you like a given product and really liking a given product, but the Alias campaign seems not to cross that line.

Thoughts?