All Kinds of Trap - Another One

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2008-06-11 23:05 · Culture

Recently, besides the tactics I listed in the previous article, I encountered more. That is “missed call”.

In your mobile phone, you often get missed call. The caller rings for less than one second and hang up. Even if the phone is at your hand, you cannot get the call. You may find a good time to call back, but… it is a tele-marketer’s call.

P.S. My blog quoted by Wall Street Journal’s China Journal. But again, as most of time, it is because of the similar type of blog entry. Emm… I am fine if I am quoted once or twice because of the same point of view, but when it is all the times, I am not sure what I should say…:-)

3 Comments
Another trap? To be precise, it is just another defunct business model once pontificated by those so-called "internet heroes" like the blogger himself and cheered by the media. Now everyone hates the invasive wireless tele-marketing and indoor advertisement by Focus Media whose fate has fallen off the cliff just its stock price.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=fmcn

Another example, Shanda Interactive Entertainment whose dubious business model baed on youth addictive gambling has earned more controversy than admiration. Again, it has fallen down hard from sacred altar. BTW, the former CEO of Shanda Entertainment was the former boss of the blogger.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=snda

See the similarity between those guys running the internet ventures and this blogger?

They are creating things fundamentally worthless and time-wasting.

They only try to catch people eyeballs.

They are better marketers than snake-oil peddlers because they look so sincere and sound so smart.

They help perpetrators trick investors into dumping real money into the bottomless hole.

They earn perpetrators the bragging rights that make you look dumb and timid.

........
— shanghai-ren · 2008-06-12 08:23
Did she quote anything?... It seems to me that all she did was driving more traffic to your site... shouldn't be bad... I hope.

One way of dealing with the mobile phone hang-up calls is not call them back... the truth is if somebody wants to reach you... they will most likely to call you back... till they reach you. One thing I thought was interesting was that almost nobody has phone messages services in China... not on their cell nor at home. It makes hard to screen phone calls. I almost never answer my landline at home because I hate to get tele-marketers... I know I will never do any "business" with them but also feel bad for people work for them... hard to just hang up on them.
— GN · 2008-06-12 14:47
Jianshuo,

Regarding the post about talking about history, there are so few Chinese blogging in English, and so few who are willing to speak of the historical taboo subject. So you have a role that you did not ask for, but will continue to play. Thank you for playing that role! Many younger students and bloggers of the next generation in China do not even know about the event, so your role cannot be passed to them until there is more ways to explore, and more ways to discuss.
— Elliott Ng · 2008-06-12 16:03