Rejected!

My membership with a social web site was rejected late last week because they felt that my content was not wholly original or that some of my content was pulled from other sources. I wonder when the last time they checked that their other members were truly wholly original? Perhaps they should send themselves a rejection notice as well! It can be easily said that there is nothing now that is wholly original. Nothing that has not already been thought of before. The closest to original you can get seems to be a variation of an idea.

All businesses are copy-cats. Look at Microsoft for instance. Look at business in general. They buy their expertise through acquisition, repackage an idea, mass market, etc.. Once an idea that hasn't been done before is successful or even a failure, you almost immediately see businesses spring to life that in some way imitate or merely swing a slight variation of the same.

It is not a matter of originality but rather perhaps uniqueness of the same, quality, and marketability. We are all pirates of the earlier innovations and ideas. No one on this earth today has an original. If so, there would be far less businesses, far less wealth. There would be less competition of similar products. Consumer choices would be more definitive. Companies with bad products would not survive to try again as consumers would move onto the better idea rather than be confused over the choices and have to go through the experience of crap vs. genius.

We would not have to wait to speak to customer support or be given the run-a-round when a company like Dell sought to use it's customer service reps as a wall to prevent customers from returning bad product, getting refunds, and or new parts. Google "Dell Nightmare" to see any one of over a thousand posts. (There used to be over 480,000 posts with the content of Dell nightmare. Or see my experience here. My post is the last one near or on the bottom. Dell's stock price has been in an overall downward trend since March 2005.

In fact while the site rejected my membership it is not original either. While its monetizing idea holds some merit, it is not original. The site I won't mention here trys to bring bloggers and businesses together. It seeks to allow businesses to reap the benefits of a blogger's positive comments as a way of gently promoting a product or service on their blog. Businesses give bloggers an opportunity. The opportunity offers to pay bloggers for their words expressing the product/service. The idea is that this gives businesses more exposure for their product/service. What I haven't found out is; does the blogger still get paid if his/her comments on a product are negative?

This is nothing more than an offer to cheaply pay someone to sell their product for them. It is cheap exploitation of blogger's time for little compensation. This is not a new idea. Nor are most of the products/services touted. The site takes the idea from FaceBook or MySpace to exploit networking for dollars. This is no new idea either. Its all a matter of perspective. But we are all pirates. Better perhaps to be a pirate who trys to do something better by providing something more through: education, entertainment, better ROI for the user's time, charity, or something else perhaps.

Anyway it is no different than how companies like Nike exploit the poor and disadvantaged in Vietnam. They might retort otherwise but they are no different in how they use bloggers as cheap labor. Read this article written just this month. Click on the Asia Times pic.

Nike has been a buy since March gaining nearly $10 to a closing price Friday of $67.89


Do I have wholly original content? No
Do I glean supportive content from the internet? Yes
Do I blog to promote thought? My perspective? To ask questions? Yes

I may be rejected by a site that thinks they are original but then I just smile brightly and giggle at the thought.