Sock Puppet(ing) is The New Peeping Tom(ing)!

Jul 17th, 2007 | Filed under: Industry

My favorite marketing campaign from the ‘first’ Internet Boom (I know, I
know, this boom is different) was the Pets.com sock puppet. I
loved the puppet’s voice, I loved his half-baked, party-all-the-time surfer
expression on his face, and I even loved that goofy song he sang on the
delivery truck in the TV commercials. (I’ll explain what TV commercials
were in another post).

I admit that I had a torrid, short-lived relationship with "SP",
as I called him, with the requisite full-sized, autographed photo on my
desk. I laughed every time I looked at it And I was somehow emotionally-absent when I threw him
in the recycle bin on April
17, 2002, dreary with having any more reminders of those rah-rah times.

So imagine my excitement today when I learned that the sock puppet is
back! No, not as a regurgitated retro marketing scheme by some clever web
company or as the eventual realization of the online-buying pet food revolution
(finally!). But as a term related to my first post about questioning common sources for investment advice and to what we are doing
at Cake.

“Sock puppeting” is a description for when public company CEO’s visit online
investment chat rooms to talk about their companies. It’s defined as "the act of creating a
fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for
one’s self, allies or company."

What!? I cannot believe those chat rooms are not trustworthy! I mean, if you can’t trust a pseudonym in an anonymous
online chat environment for quality investment advice, well, who can you trust!?

Among the snoopy executives that have been caught sock
puppeting are:

John Mackey, Whole Foods
Conrad Black, Hollinger International
Patrick M. Byrne, Overstock.com

At Cake, you can trust member activity and commentary because Cake is all about REAL data and REAL information. When someone makes a post about a particular position, you can see if that member actually owns the position he is writing about. It is one way we are bringing transparency and credibility to online individual investing.

Last is my offer to CEO’s everywhere: if you feel the need to get online and have an open and honest
dialogue with your real shareholders,
please contact me anytime. I will happily arrange it on Cake.