Link Bait or Spam Bait

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Wired magazine’s “Editor in Chief” is someone named Chris Anderson. Chris hates spam. Chris shames spammers — well, public relations spammers to be exact. As a big Chief, he is entitled to hate spammers because those lazy buggers send him press release spam that is better directed to his underlings. Thankfully, I am not a PR flack.

Two days ago, Chris spat the dummy and named names. He blogged:

Many of them sent press releases; others just added me to a distribution list without asking. If their address gets harvested by spammers by being published here, so be it–turnabout is fair play. There is no getting off this list.

He then listed a few dozen email addresses, presumably for spam harvesters. Boldly, he also posted his own address — what the hell, he has an Outlook filter, so he’s safe. Yes?

That’s spam bait, but it’s also link bait. I expect that a lot of sites are going to link to his post. I found out about it through a journo mailing list and you are finding out through this post. It’s an interesting way to get backlinks.

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