Saturday, May 26, 2007

Copy Paste (CP) Contests and Productivity

Some of you are aware about the “Great Indian Blogger Hunt” (few call it Great Indian Copy-Paste Hunt), which is currently on at IBIBO.

Many have questioned ibibo’s approach in awarding points for plagiarism. Am not touching that topic here, but the effect of this approach in the long run.

Till now 3 rounds are over at ibibo and in all these rounds, mostly copy-paste (without interpretation) guys have got the maximum points and money. In all these rounds, ibibo has rewarded those who brought maximum traffic/activity, giving less importance to content quality. In the process, you will find in ibibo platform, people who have posted 10000 posts in 5 days and in its archive the maximum CP content.

Now the discussion points are:

If ibibo comes out successful commercially retaining the current approach of rewarding the CP guys, what effect will it have on the internet space?”

- Will other online companies also sense an opportunity in this approach and change their marketing strategy and replicate ibibo’s model?
- If that happens, what would be the combined productivity loss?
- Amount of garbage (duplication) that would accumulate over the internet space?
- How many would get entangled in legal issues for plagiarism?
- Will that push many to do mostly unproductive work and thus curtail creativity and add few more to the unskilled category?
- The effect of continuous bullet postings (2000 posts per day) on health
- more such questions

I would rather prefer ibibo to change its strategy and come out successful as a quality player in the market. It may take some more time, but would be a steady growth to the top. Their platform is more interactive comparatively and can hold participants together, provided the approach is genuine.

By doing so it won’t open a Pandora’s box. I wish it happens…

To view my page at ibibo, click here

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