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Social network hiring fake Indian customers?

The owner of a U.S. social network is offering to pay Indian workers 10 cents per signup to his site. In these times, the seemingly fraudulent come-on is a sensible business move, since investors willingly pay inflated prices for sites based on their user numbers. A suggestion to any venture capitalist with a social network in his portfolio: Bid 11 cents per signup to find out who this guy is.

12:00 PM on Fri Dec 28 2007
By Owen Thomas
1,463 views
6 comments

Comments

  • If anyone discovers this individual's name, please post here!

  • Oh and: "Thank you, sign-up again!"

    (sorry if this gets posted twice)

  • Um, is this any different from having affiliates? I know a few web2 attempt targeted at Indians in US that could use this.

  • geez, if followed up this story could be a real winner!

  • Dear ValleyWag,

    Thank you for taking the time to write about Famesource on Valleywag and, more importantly, for giving us this opportunity to respond. After reading this post, it is very clear that your "tipster" miscommunicated an offer we have in place to drive traffic to Famesource.com. We are not offering any monetary incentive for people to sign-up, as your article suggests. Like any Cost Per Action (CPA) offer, we are looking to work with a person and/or company that can drive US traffic to our site and we are willing to pay for every new member that registers as a result of this traffic.

    This is no different than advertising on Google Adwords, Azoogle, or Hydramedia, all of which offer a CPA service. After dealing with a number of these CPA companies, we found that many of the campaigns were being managed by people in India. Since Famesource has been completely self-funded by the two of us, we made the choice to try and cut out the middleman. We want to emphasize that we are not paying any individuals (from India or anywhere else in the world) to join Famesource; we are only trying to strike a more affordable CPA deal.

    The funniest part of all this is that we have not even found a qualified party to work with overseas, not even a single sign-up! We would appreciate if you could clarify these points in your title and article because it wrongfully tarnishes Famesource's wholesome nature, which we have worked so hard to maintain.

    In the future, we encourage you to contact us before making any claims about Famesource or ourselves as we are more than happy to discuss any matters in more detail.

    We look forward to hearing from you soon.

    Best,

    Allen Vartazarian & Anthony Zanontian
    Co-Founders, Famesource.com
    Allen@famesource.com
    Anthony@famesource.com

  • This article is completely false and misleading. Follow this link for the full true story:
    [www.famesource.com]

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