Zango caught in lies about their software on MySpace?
Zango's videos have been found all over MySpace, along with a number of sites pushing Zango videos to MySpace users without disclosing the presence of Zango. Profiles named Zango were found on MySpace and Zango later admitted an employee created the profiles and said it was a "mistake". It looked like at one point that Zango was being pushed out of MySpace, but, alas, that has not turned out to be the case, per Boyd here.
When asked about their presence on MySpace, Zango spokesman Steve Stratz denied targeting MySpace to Information Week:
Zango denied it was targets MySpace as a distribution resource. "Are we targeting MySpace?" asked Stratz. "No. Does our content show up on MySpace? Yes."
Spyware researcher extraordinaire Chris Boyd, aka Paperghost of Vitalsecurity, has been pursuing Zango's entanglement with MySpace like a trusty hound dog on a trail. Now Boyd claims to have proof that Zango was, indeed, targeting MySpace.
An anonymous tipoff (who claims they were an affiliate of Zango, but got fed up with them emailing him all the time) recently saw the whole "Zango on Myspace" thing and was surprised to see Zango claiming they have a "hands off" policy towards Myspace. [...]
Surprised, because he claimed they sent him what appeared to be a mass-mail shot from a Zango rep, showing all these fun ways to push Zango on Myspace. Intrigued (and having this confirmed by another source), a third person then went and sent me a copy of (what I presume) is the full Email, completely unnanounced. As you might have guessed, it's a rather spectacular read.
Boyd posted some choice snippets from the email, like this:
"Zango is fairly new with myspace sites and it took me some time to see what works and what doesn't."[...]
...more profitably, *go to a bunch of your friends* who have popular profiles and pay them (it's up to you so much. One of my partners said 5$..maybe offer to split the money with them?) to put a zango video into their profile through your site. This will give you hundreds of extra installs a day (this probably works even better than having them on your actual site).
Boyd has more from the email. Full read here.
Update: Boyd has posted the full contents, minus names, of the email as a text file here. There's more propaganda by the Zango rep about how to push the videos.
A Zango gateway is a “door” that the visitor passes through to access free content on the other side. The “key” to the “door” is installing zango. This is very popular. For a great example of what a zango gateway looks like, go to www.musicvideocodes.info and click on any of the songs. You’ll see the Zango gateway (first make sure zango’s not installed on your computer: you can see the zango icon on your desktop).
Fascinating -- a Zango gateway. No thanks. TechWeb contacted Zango for their response, and got Boyd's rebuttal to Zango. In typical Zango style, they dance around the issue and refuse to take responsibility.