It's like Amway for golfers, but slimier

While friend-surfing on FaceBook today, I got hit with an ad offering free golf balls in exchange for beta-testing a new social networking site. Curious, I clicked-through and registered. Worst-case scenario, I do a little self-marketing of this blog and score a couple of free Pro V1's, right?

Other than the form asking for a bevy of information, the Swing Matrix site was extremely minimalist. As in, just a page with an offer of free balls and the promise of something big to come. Filling out the form led to a dead-end within the site, and yet another ad offering even more free golf stuff from a different site, MySocialAdvantage.

Ping clubs, a driver and a Scotty Cameron putter, all could be mine for just buying a couple of products that wouldn't run me more than a few bucks. "Too good to be true!" you rightly say, but c'mon! Who could resist a new set of G10 irons? I've made a deal with myself that I'll get new irons when I break 90. But there's nothing in my little deal with myself that says I can't win 'em before then.

Blinded by the G10-potential within, I pursued the deal headfirst, and MySocialAdvantage structures it so it is easy to fall headfirst into: buy two things, get free clubs. Cheap things! Cheap things! Click here! Only $5! I clicked through, filled out another form, and started scrolling through the list of things to buy. The variety of offerings was weird, simply weird. I'm not sure who they want to market to. I opted for my first purchase to buy five posters for $5. I don't need five posters, but for $5 with free shipping, I could use them for wrapping paper. I figured I'd go back later and sign up for a free credit report.

I just happened to be checking my credit card balance a few minutes later when I noticed that the poster company had charged me $25 for my five posters. Turns out their extremely fine print notes that the posters are $5 each. After getting my money refunded by a customer service rep, I went back and looked deeper to see what kind of bastards I was dealing with. I spent years in marketing and PR, helping found one of the first interactive marketing divisions in a major PR firm back in 1997: I earned the right to lovingly call these people bastards because I am one of them.

Turns out, you have to do more than buy a couple of intentionally misleading products. You have to buy a couple of intentionally misleading products, and then get two friends to come buy a couple of intentionally misleading products, and when those two friends get a few more people to come buy a couple of intentionally misdleading products you have a chance at winning some clubs. These bastards have developed a social networking pyramid scheme! The only difference is, they've managed to create a catchy little image that makes it look so much more FaceBook than Amway.

"Oh, it looks good on you though!"
If you wind up joining up with these guys and actually win anything, be sure to let me know. I'd love to hear how many people you had to refer to get any swag. As for SwingMatrix, the guys behind it are LifeFitter and they are out to create a social networking site for every possible sporting niche out there.

LifeFitter offers twelve different "brands" of social networking, all with catchy little marketing names an ex-PR whore like myself can truly appreciate: Reef Drift for scuba divers; Paddle Spin for kayakers; Huntrush (boy, don't say that one ten times fast in mixed company) for hunters and so on.

It will be interesting to see if people would rather play golf than waste time jonesing on golf while sitting at their computers at work. Then again, you've read this post this far...

Topics: Golf