Lifehack 2.0: build a wiki to blacklist PR spammers

Lifehacker writer/blogger/editor Gina Trapani has taken the art of blacklisting PR flacks to a new level with a wiki listing of PR firms that spam bloggers.

The idea of publicly shaming PR spammers first gained traction when Chris Anderson first chided “lazy flacks” on his blog. (See my post from last November, PR flacks and the new media: a cautionary, not-so-long tale.) But Trapani has made blacklisting a more social act, inviting other bloggers to add their favorite PR offenders to her wiki.

All of this has led Todd Defren of Shift Communications (one of the firms on Trapani’s blacklist) to post an open letter to Gina Trapani on his blog, appealing for her to remove his firm from her list. “If you can dig up the offending email from a shiftcomm.com address,” he writes, “I will publish and critique it on my blog, and will include any of your personal comments as well. We’ll gladly fall on the sword if it’s in service to improving our agency and our profession as a whole.” (Via @flackette.)

Friday Five: more free stuff about free stuff

Wednesday’s post about Nine Inch Nails’ recent announcement they were giving away their new album over the NIN website opened up some discussion about the merits of free. Plus, it gave me fodder for today’s Friday Five. And best of all — say it with me — it’s free!

  1. Brad J. Ward has been thinking about free for a while now, and shares a post from March called ‘Free’ is here to stay.
  2. Eddie Merille, a relatively new higher ed blogger, has also been thinking about free and shares some info about how the video game industry is embracing the concept of giving away stuff.
  3. Mark Greenfield points to an excellent (albeit long) Wired article by The Long Tail author Chris Anderson about the future of free in business: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. Brad Ward also references the article in his post (mentioned above) and points out that Anderson has coined a new term: freeconomics.
  4. Most music fans know about the blog Stereogum, which gives away a lot of mp3s.
  5. Music lovers also might want to check out RCRD LBL as a source for free tunes.