You are reading a single comment by @Velocio and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Velocio
Related: Sky seem to have hired a company to promote the events and their sponsorship throughout social media.
The company did actually contact me ages ago, but I ignored it as I didn't see it as being directly applicable to this community in that I felt that they didn't give a hoot about us, we were just one of a number of targets for their campaign... which was fair enough.
However I've now noticed as a result of a post made earlier by the user "GoSkyride" that http://absorb-london.com/ had actually registered a number of accounts which I an only assume that they were going to use to back-up any positive spin their primary account made.
Thankfully a couple of people reported it as spam, and so now it's gone. As are their other users.
Just for note: I don't mind promotion or participation or support of anything that gets people on their bikes. And in fact I'm happy if we can lend support to such things.
However my beef is this: This forum and community was not established to allow some corporate giant to pimp their brand through a crass use of external companies who would like to game the opinion of the community through duplicitous behaviour (those extra user accounts).
If the community wishes to champion any event... then fabulous. If a company wishes to try and game it... you'll earn a fuck you response and the ire of the community.
Social marketing should be approached non-cynically. Don't try to buy it! It won't work. To Absorb and anyone else contemplating trying to game the site... if you want to engage with us, don't treat us as a market to be sold to, don't treat us as a company or entity to approach... realise that the site represents a lot of individuals, and to reach this community your only option is to be a part of the community. If you want to reach us, join our rides, come have a beer with us... but don't do what you just did.