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Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers
- 21 8y agoI've seen something which I think is even more interesting. Second tier influencers (100k followers) paying expensive hotels and private plane trips of first tier influences (1 mil followers), so that they can appear on their feeds, and gain new followers.
- swampthinker 8y agoI'm sorry, completely off topic. I can't believe your username was available up until 2016, kinda jealous.
- fredley 8y agoThis is straight up Black Mirror (season 3, episode 1: Nosedive) Obviously the whole point of that episode was to imagine Instagram in its darkest future, but it's scary how much of it is becoming real, and separately with the roll-out of social credit scores in China. Scary stuff. --- Hansen: So in terms of quality, you could use a punch up right there. Ideally, that's up votes from quality people. Lacie: Quality people? Hansen: High fours. Impress those up-scale folks, you'll gain velocity on your arc and there's your boost.
- staticautomatic 8y agoI don't know whether to up or down vote this. I respect it as art and it makes me ill.
- andybak 8y agoYour concerns are themselves ironic. I'm so confused.
- staticautomatic 8y agoI don't understand what you're saying but would like to. What did you identify as my concerns and in what way are they ironic?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sopooneo 8y agoI think the joke is that you're choosing to upvote a post, and by proxy the person who wrote it, in relation to the horrifying "upvote" centered plot of the television episode quoted. It's upvotes all the way down.
- shkkmo 8y agoPresumably the irony arises from your confusion as to if you should add or remove social reputation from a comment discussing an episode primarily about the near future of adding and removing social reputation.
- tlrobinson 8y agoAnna Delvrey tops them all, at least in ambition: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/my-misadventure-with-the-magician-of-manhattan https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/my-misadventure-with... TL;DR socialite of unknown authenticity (but definitely real confidence woman) scams a bank, luxury hotels and restaurants, private air charter company, and the author of that article out of several hundred thousand dollars. Did not get the $20M she was hoping for, though.
- netsharc 8y agoThe article that broke the Anna Delvey story was more thrilling: https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-y... . She managed to exploit people's need for vanity... There's talk of a movie deal, so, her brazenness might be rewarded after all.
- minhaz23 8y agoVanity fair initially broke the store, the author was scammed by Anna Delvey.
- madads 8y agoAnd thus another pyramid appears...
- kaendfinger 8y agoI think this goes along with the (perhaps perceived) increase in self-centeredness in society.
- mc32 8y agoOr just a general idea of mooching off of someone for free for very little in return. Apparently, it’s a bit of a con with most influencers, but for a select few who actually do move the dial.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoThis is the entire advertising industry in a nutshell, and that funds Google.
- cityhomesteader 8y ago> and that funds Google. ... and the atlantic and most newspapers, media companies and even this site. Welcome to the consumer economy where trying to "influence" consumers to consume is the name of the game. Advertising is at the heart of everything in our society from technology to politics to news. We don't even realize it most of the time because it's all around us like air.
- rland 8y agoI think there needs to be some new word for this ill. Advertising is only necessary because of the breakdown of social trust that comes with fungible living in this individualized, modern world of ours. I think this nebulous ill of "advertising" extends far beyond ad tech, ad agencies, and media and right into the structure of society and the human condition itself.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoWhat does an increase in self centredness in society mean? Did people in the past do everything for the benefit of society somehow
- newfoundglory 8y agoWow, 10% of unsolicited requests are worth looking at? That seems remarkably high.
- wuliwong 8y agoThe stats cited in the article fell short of my definition inundation.
- dasil003 8y agoI'm guessing most people realize it's ridiculous to even send such requests when they have 2k followers.
- dalbasal 8y agoThat would not have been my first guess.
- duskwuff 8y agoI think the implication is that 90% of the unsolicited requests are obviously garbage and are immediately ignored. The remaining 10% may still be mostly worthless, but it at least takes some investigation to identify them as such.
- ryandrake 8y agoThe fact that they look at more than 0% virtually guarantees the flood of requests will continue. If they really didnt want to be inundated with these requests, they only need to cease acting on all of them until the message gets out.
- CamTin 8y agoI wonder why the strategy of these "brand personalities" has to be limited to "luxury" type branding. For example, could you build a following traveling the country by interstate in a Fiesta, staying at Motel 6 and eating at Waffle House? It wouldn't cost Motel 6 and Waffle House almost anything to comp a few waffles and otherwise-unoccupied rooms as an experiment, if they aren't doing similar things already.
- overcast 8y agoPeople want escapism. Something out of their ordinary lives. Like movies. As someone who is heavily involved in Instagram marketing, I don't see the value for anyone other than dreamers. Which is why my focus is niche, local, and accessible to everyone. In return I send a TON of real customers to places that I choose to promote.
- Hnrobert42 8y agoWhy do people trust your recommendations? I’m not saying you are untrustworthy. I don’t know you. But that is my point. Why do people trust “influencers”? I would feel like a tremendous fool even following a stranger’s account, much less going somewhere on their say-so.
- smallnamespace 8y agoWell, why can people trust any other people at all? Well, here are some ways: 1. They have an incentive to be honest* (e.g. they would be punished if they weren't), e.g. lawyers, engineers, family members 2. They seem like just honest people, e.g. the Dalai Lama? 3. They say or do many other things that you agree with and your values seem aligned, e.g. politicians, athletes, some corporate leaders 4. They are a lot like you, except slightly different, so you trust them implicitly because you would trust yourself Influencers can hit a bit of all those notes. At this early point, it's probably easier as an influencer to actually find a place that they like and think are good, rather than just taking cash to promote something they don't believe in. Later on that may change. Influencers do have a reputation, if they keep sending people to garbage, eventually those people will notice, so they have something to lose. Some influencers are really good at certain things that people admire (e.g. game influencers), and a lot of influencers go for that 'just a regular person who is your friend and let's go on cool trips together' feel. But note that these same points are potential reasons to distrust, e.g. an influencer who has hit it big and plans to exit the business anyway may find it more worthwhile to start shilling since their future reputation doesn't matter to them.
- newnewpdro 8y agoBy the time we pivot to EVs the travel industry will be sure to prevent any dip in CO2 emissions thanks to social media and its hoardes of mindless consumers.
- mud_dauber 8y agoMaybe I could become a chip industry influencer. Especially if I could wear a suitably chic factory floor bunny suit.
- stevewillows 8y agoa bunny suit with a tuxedo print would really help your brand.
- BostonEnginerd 8y ago#metrology is awesome! #quadruplepatterning #FinFETastic! I'm really happy that I don't work on consumer products.
- bonestamp2 8y ago> "The vast majority of cold-call approaches are really badly written" I think he means, "poorly written".
- ascorbic 8y agoBadly and poorly are synonyms.
- bonestamp2 8y agoYes, of course. However, "badly written" is poor grammar.
- ascorbic 8y agoNo it's not. They're equally correct.
- empath75 8y agoSounds to me like this is a big opportunity for an intermediary to connect useful social media influencers with various brands.
- hamandcheese 8y agoI am very loosely acquainted with someone working on exactly this: https://www.joinstatus.com https://www.joinstatus.com I’m sure there are others.
- lyzan 8y agoThe one I've heard about is https://influential.co https://influential.co - they're definitely out there
- bongo662 8y agoIve thought about this idea. You could potentially make an influencer marketplace that brands could search through to find a specific influencer that matches the demographic theyre looking to target.
- grecy 8y agohttp://revfluence.com/ http://revfluence.com/
- majani 8y agofunny thing is, there are also tons of influencer marketplaces and agencies, it's a space with incredibly low barrier to entry. Thing about the marketplace is, there is little incentive on either side for the influencers or clients not to skip over the marketplace altogether after using it for window shopping
- coatmatter 8y agoThis sounds like Marketing.
- blawson 8y agoPlenty of sites like popsugar already do this. That was basically one of my good friend’s wife’s job.
- futurix 8y agoI just want to know who the heck takes recommendations of 'influencers' seriously? Gullible teens with no money?
- Rjevski 8y agoMy thoughts exactly. It seems to me that the target market of these “influencers” is teens with little to no money that spend hours looking at these “influencers” exactly because these pictures are as close as they’re gonna get to that luxury lifestyle. People who can actually afford this will just go on holidays by themselves with no thoughts about the “influencers” whatsoever, also because by the time you can afford such lifestyles you widen up to the obvious commercial intents of these influencer “recommendations”, making their “review” purpose moot. In my social circle people who spend days & nights looking and sharing the influencer pictures can’t actually afford any of that even if they wanted to. Those that can afford it don’t give a damn about the influencers.
- xapata 8y agoApparently the advertisers buying space in FT's "How to spend it" issues think at least someone cares.
- notimetorelax 8y agoI think of this publication as a guide to expensive presents for your wife or a girlfriend.
- gaius 8y ago... by way of apology for working all the time and neglecting her... It’s a big circle.
- ascorbic 8y agoWhile most readers of the FT wouldn't drop six figures on a watch, the people who would spend that are more likely to be FT readers than most, so it's the right place to reach them. As for Instagram influencers: who are the people staying in these hotels? Sure, a lot of them are likely to be the sort who read the FT or the Economist, but a good chunk of them are going to be honeymooners, for example, who I'd imagine are exactly the sort who would look to Instagram for ideas. Likewise there are obviously people in their 20s who could afford to stay in these places, and not all of them spend their time on HN. I'd guess Instagram is as good a place as any to reach them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pentae 8y agoAlmost all of these 'influencers' have fake followers. If they didn't buy them, the majority of their followers are auto following bots or people using bots to auto-follow to get more followers. Working inside this industry it's remarkable how little reach 99% of these people have. Who wouldn't want to get luxury hotel stays for free, have brands send you free stuff, or get paid to promote something? It's an incredible deception and many are falling for it.
- rwmj 8y agoFrom the article: > "We have to filter out influencers who have basically bought bots. There's a lot of those these days."
- davidmurdoch 8y agoThere are companies[0] that scan a user's following to try to determine if they are primarily bots, dead accounts, occasional users, or active. [0] http://blog.fohr.co/post/2017/9/20/searching-by-verified-authentic-following http://blog.fohr.co/post/2017/9/20/searching-by-verified-aut...
- not_a_moth 8y ago"Influencer". From browsing the influencers in the article, the formula appears to be a) expensive clothes b) expensive hotels c) trailing photographer, d) regurgitation of corny "I am so cool" lines like "It takes cool people to do epic shit", "No one here gives a fuck". Do you think we could design an AI, maybe GANs and caption generation, to generate influencers like these? The hotels could pay the AI makers to use their images, and would solve their problem of actually having to host them.
- Ayraa 8y agoBelieve it or not, really realistic looking computer generated Instagram influencers already exist. Example: https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ - 1.2m followers
- pjc50 8y agoIt's being done: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/23/the-makers-of-the-virtual-influencer-lil-miquela-snag-real-money-from-silicon-valley/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/23/the-makers-of-the-virtual-... (Predicted in the Gibson novel Idoru, and no doubt elsewhere)
- geodel 8y agoI think using AI itself sound tech influencer trend. This can be a customized old-school bullshit generator e.g. http://www.bullshitgenerator.com/ http://www.bullshitgenerator.com/
- sorokod 8y agoIn "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" there is a story about a society that shipped out all its useless members (hairdressers and telephone sanitizers) off planet. If Douglas Adams was writing the book now he may have replaced sanitizers with influencers.
- mprev 8y agoExcept the lack of telephone sanitizers led to the downfall of the Golgafrinchans, whereas the loss of blogger wannabes from a society would not have provided such a plot point.
- MattConfluence 8y ago> The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers. They sent the B ship off first, but of course the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
- Animats 8y agoIn "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" there is a story about a society that shipped out all its useless members (hairdressers and telephone sanitizers) off planet. Stanford is doing that with their new Redwood City "campus", an office park five miles from the main campus. No professors. No students. No researchers. No labs. All administrators. "Stanford units that will have at least some employees at Stanford Redwood City include Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; School of Medicine administration; Office of Development; University Human Resources; University Libraries; Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning; and Residential & Dining Enterprises." "The first phase of construction at Stanford Redwood City will include four office buildings, indoor and outdoor dining areas and plazas, a child care center, a glass-atrium fitness center, a parking garage, a landscaped greenway, a 2.4-acre park and a sustainable central energy facility." It's Stanford's version of a luxury center for influencers. (As a Stanford alum, I consider this embarrassing.) [1] https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/ https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/
- United857 8y agoEvery reputable travel publication/blog I know of have strict editorial policies against accepting freebies/discounts/gifts in exchange for reviews/coverage. Those so-called "influencers" aren't really about serving their audience -- they strike me as just a scammy way to travel "for free".
- forapurpose 8y agoFrom another angle, I wonder why their readers trust the influencers when they are well-known to be bought and paid for.
- themodelplumber 8y agoSome influencers take this issue head-on because they know their followers will actually be buying and evaluating the stuff they are reviewing. So they want to build trust because they know it'll be obvious if they are shilling. Newspaper columnists faced this question long before the internet, and some did handle it really well.
- pessimizer 8y agoBecause the quality of the product or experience is irrelevant. The goal is to imitate the influencer, and to thereby also become someone who people want to imitate. If I can pattern myself 90% after someone that other people are imitating, those other people are virtually already 90% imitating me anyway, they just don't know it yet. If I can get them to remember my name, and a significant chunk to think that my 10% difference is in qualities where I'm superior to the person I'm imitating, I've at least carved out a niche, but I maybe on the road to completely replacing them. Of course on a very small scale, this could just be amongst people at my workplace, or who go to my college.
- forapurpose 8y agoVery insightful; thanks.
- drb91 8y ago
- paulie_a 8y agoThe only answer to these people should be "literally, not figuratively, go fuck yourself"
- merinowool 8y agoThis is such a downer on holidays, when you want to rest at luxury place, but some young people ruin it for you with their obnoxious behavior. I hope there will be hotels that ban such Instagram addicts from premises.
- coatmatter 8y agoThis was not my experience with my last holiday. But then again, I did not go for luxury.
- code_duck 8y agoThis phenomenon is well known among boro glass artists, or artists in general. Paying with 'exposure'. People frequently contact us on Instagram, asking for free merchandise, ostensibly to review. If they have 20,000 followers, that may be worth it... for 50,000, it probably is. Often, however, it someone with no significant following who therefore has little to offer. Businesses similarly ask for our time to be donated or traded when we do public demonstrations, though typically they would pay other entertainers such as musicians or comedians. This definitely is not limited to my niche of glass artists. There's a twitter account about the wider world of people who think artists have vast advertising budgets and lots of free time: https://mobile.twitter.com/forexposure_txt https://mobile.twitter.com/forexposure_txt I think these hotels are in a similar spot - it may be worthwhile advertising, or it may be a worthless request.
- goatherders 8y agoMy GF has 18000 followers and gas worked hard for her brand to be meaningful as an influencer. She isnt just posting a picture sitting next to the pool. As a result she gets a number of things comped at hotels and restaurants, sometimes without even asking.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- megy 8y ago> sometimes without even asking. How do they know who she is then?
- qu1mby 8y agoI believe a number of brands use software to monitor social channels for tags/locations related to their brand. This happens, of course, in near realtime and then it becomes fairly simple to identify them and start manufacturing instagrammable circumstances - comp'd bottle of wine, pretty amenities sent up to the room, etc.
- goatherders 8y agoShe tags the restaurant or hotel while we are there. Then a $0 check will appear with thanks from the manager on duty.
- davidmurdoch 8y agoYup. My wife has only 7000 and still gets an annoying amount of emails (at least for a busy mom of 2) from brands wanting to send her product for "collabs". Hotel comps would be nice!
- ChildOfChaos 8y ago"Influencers" are everything that is wrong with the modern world.
- marban 8y agoPeople want an authority to tell them how to value things, and they choose this authority not based on facts or results, they choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar. -- Michael Burry (The Big Short)
- kylehotchkiss 8y agoMake them pay upfront for the hotel and then if they can directly attribute 25 guest stays in the future they can a refund. Problem somewhat solved :)
- intrasight 8y agoI use Instagram and other social media. But I just don't get how this works. Perhaps someone can give me and others an overview. I only see the posts from my friends, so how would posts from these "influencers" influence me or other's like me? Why would I follow some random person I don't even know? Really, I'm looking for some enlightenment here. I assume that I'm not the only one.
- billdybas 8y agoIt's the same way any other marketing material may influence you to make a purchase. A lot of online influencer marketing is recommendation-based: "I like this product, so you should buy it, too." Think of it similar to celebrity endorsements in traditional media. For many Millennials and Gen Z who follow these influencers, they are like celebrities (but usually on a smaller, niche-scale).
- 0x38B 8y agoI'm in the same boat, but what I've found from talking with many people is that they use Instagram to discover places and get an inside look, with what they see on Instagram determining whether they go or not. This leads to reviews on Google like "they run a really good Instagram, but things don't measure up in-person" (I saw this exact review the other day).
- nomocrypto 8y agoSounds like they just learned a good lesson about not trusting marketing. ;)
- gm-conspiracy 8y agoHa. I just checked into a Marriott about an hour ago. In the lobby, there was a giant touchscreen and one of the icons was "social media". I tapped it, and it said "Our Instagram account is currently offline."
- coatmatter 8y agoI chuckle to myself every time I see a superfluous piece of technology like this being out of service. Then, I realise the probable reality is that no one cares. All they care about is that the core business is still operating (for better or worse). I've never managed to get free WiFi properly working on a plane or train.
- speby 8y agoIn almost every field and industry, companies get requests like this go something along the same lines as mentioned in this post: "Hey, I have access to XYZ audience and we will be doing event ABC next month. It would be great to showcase/use your product and share that with the group. Your company and your product would be front and center for this group of people. All we need is your product for free." In the end, all this is is just ad sales: I have alleged access to customers who want your product but don't know yet. I can share your company or product w/ them. They trust me. It will influence them to become your customer. Give me X." And worse than that, many times those requests come with a price tag on top of providing the company's product or service for free. And really it's no surprise given how social media works. Now any "idiot" can gain a following or an audience over some set of topics, or philosophy, or style, and gain a following that tunes. I say "idiot" less as a derogatory thing and more as a "every Joe or Jane" kind of thing who persists and is focused. Any following of people that tunes into something, anything, can often be cajoled into seeing or experiencing some mention or ad about an unrelated thing and that causes some %-age of that group to pay attention and some %-age of those that pay attention to potentially investigate further and possibly become paying customers of some company or product they didn't know about before. Certainly not rocket science and definitely not new. What we're seeing here is merely a temporary fashion/trend that tends to focus heavily on luxury hotels and envious-appearing travel experiences.
- davidmurdoch 8y agoI still see influencer advertising in a better light than a brand's own ads. Influencers, especially the more popular ones, help inform consumers about a product/service/experience. The only thing an influencer has is their followers and most influencers really are careful to not advertise products that they don't believe in themselves.
- bigbluedots 8y agoThe influencers get the product for free, otherwise they would not post. This is not people 'believing in a product', it is people using leverage to sell advertising for which they are paid with the product.
- cavisne 8y agoI really think theres an opportunity for a startup here, some intermediary between the influencers and the clients (hotels, brands etc). I think this will be another huge market for facebook when they eventually solve this. Proper tracking of influencer posts, verification of audience demographics, filtering out of time wasters would solve a lot of these issues.
- rorykoehler 8y agoI've seen multiple successful (ish) startups doing this already
- abootstrapper 8y agoSo, Klout?
- duckduckno 8y agoWhat hypothetical scenario do you guys think could possibly result in the termination of this trend? I think it would be interesting to figure out what could cause social media to die out in the future.
- razzimatazz 8y agoI can think of two directions we could go from where we are - perhaps Authorative Media: a return to the government telling us everything we need to know? Very dark, but a "government influencer" could still work.. And perhaps more positive - Truthful Media: Information generated by people, in the 'open source' way that you can fully trust. Hard to believe, but almost necessary. A blockchain of real information sources and trusted information processors (aka influencers), who give opinions that can be traced back to facts. I think that perhaps glamour and fantasy will always win out - reality is boring and human nature wont get us to choose facts when fantasy gets our attention much more
- TheBeardKing 8y agoAnother worse case scenario for the future of social media could be one outlined in the movie The Circle with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. Soon, the "influencers" will be available live, all the time. If you have no job prospects or useful skills, why not just sell your privacy for brand promotion? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4287320/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4287320/
- dev_north_east 8y agoA recession? I know we didn't have the same type of media now as in 2008 but I remember the huge fall-off in similarish influencers at the time (mostly magazine based).
- fma 8y agoInfluencers... Probably the same kind of people who reviews Amazon product for free and ends their review with "I've written this review with my own unbiased opinion". We all know it's biased. Thanks but no thanks. Ironically everyone of those followers wants to travel to that special unknown destination, only after somebody with one million followers posts about it.
- chrshawkes 8y agoI personally have 100,000 people following me on YouTube. My daughter at one point had over 100k people following her on Instagram. It's much more difficult to get subscribers than followers on Instagram. In addition, a lot of followers are typically on Instagram just to creep on young women and provide no monetary value except for just being another creep in their followers. Basically, 100k followers on Instagram is a joke and is about equivalent to 25k subscribers on YouTube, only it earns less cash.
- timmytwotime 8y agoI have never had the self-{confidence,absorption,righteousness,worth} to think that I could "influence" people in such a way.