cre8Buzz Blog

Hi Antman,

Here is my take on BTF. I’ve interacted with Divya a few times on mybloglog. I would not go so far as to call her a friend, but we’ve crossed paths a few times and she kindfully reviewed my blog a few months ago. I have signed up, out of a mixture of curiosity and reciprocity, to her BTF program. I’ve not added her buttons to my sidebar and don’t really care about the prizes - that’s not why I blog. I don’t really care about votes.

I would, however, say that the truth is probably in the middle of these two gals. My gut says that it’s not a scam. Scams in my mind have negative intentions from the start. I don’t think Divya has negative intentions.

Did she potentially bring her product to market a little early? Perhaps, but you still have to give her some credit for the vision.

As for the direct challenges by Sara - I think she might be going a little hard on Divya.

My spidy senses are telling me that this is Divya trying to pull something together by herself or with a small team and I give her props for that. Has she over promised? Time will tel;, but I don’t think it warrants such stone throwing from Sara.

Just my humble opinion. Best of luck to both. I’m sure this will sort itself out and quite honestly, this is all insignificant chatter in the long run.

-Kendall

Comment from Kendall Schoenrock on June 5, 2007, 6:59 pm

US Office: 4702, 7th street apt.-9303
East Moline, IL 61244 United States

Contact Person: Sonal Singhal

Phone: +1 (309) 7921033
Mobile: (309)-716-9057

a simple phone call might do the trick.

as far as spelling and grammar - not uncommon i sees it evearywhere especially when english is a second language.

all “linkbait” isn’t evil - if this is legit then it’s a fine and proper way to build up the ranking and position of a site.

about the contact being in india - or the lack of finding the “labs” anywhere on google - it’s probably because A. divya is from india (and there’s a US contact above now) and B. this is probably the only place you will find World Net Labs. nothing too scary about that.

let the curious use http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/ and you’ll find pretty much the same info as the site has - and it’s legit on that count.

i hope it is real … very clever idea and i hope it works brilliantly for all involved.

peac4d.
amos

Comment from amos on June 5, 2007, 8:37 pm

I think that her post may be a little hasty and harsh.

Anyone who has had anything to do with creating a site should know how much work is involved to create what Divya and her team has done.

Grammatical errors and typos are certainly not something to judge the validity of the authenticity of a site. Just as Amos pointed out, you’ll find that in countless blogs. I’ve probably made a few in this comment alone I think that she does exceedingly well for a second language.

As for not appearing in Google, it happens to many websites. I have a business website in addition to my blog. I hadn’t been aware for almost a year that the big G doesn’t acknowledge youor existence until you have an inbound link.

Once I found this out I submitted our site to Google and began aquiring legitimate inbound links, and practiced only white hat SEO. We were hitting the top of page one for all of our keywords for several months, and then fell off the map, into the sandbox.

Even entering our website URL into the search box didn’t bring our site up. It was as if we didn’t exist in G’s world. Several months later we were indexed once again. As much as Google claims they don’t have a sandbox, I feel they do. There are age filters among numerous other factos which can place you there.

I’ve also done searches for sites in the eastern part of the world via Google when looking for information for some of my posts, and there is very little support or info for them if any, even when I knew for a fact that they existed.

I didn’t notice a URL for Worldnet Labs to validate proof of non-existence, but the site for the competition appears in all of the major search engines.

In any event, I agree with you 100% that Divya has conducted herself in a very professional manner. She consistently writes about the importance of providing good content that gives value to readers. A spam site places no value on it whatsoever. In fact, I believe that the I had read that they don’t accept registration for spammy sites, but I can’t recall where I had read that.

I visit sites as I see them appearing on BTF. Divya’s avatar can be seen on all of these blogs, obviously validating the blog itself. If this were merely for linkbait, I don’t believe that there would be such attention to all that register.

Time will only tell, but my hunch is that Divya is straight up, and a decent person in her own right. She has my vote of support.

Comment from Deborah on June 5, 2007, 9:24 pm

Thanks guys for coming up here and all support and bit of anger for dead links.
There’s a cool story i always tell our team.
There’s a guy brought a new car. But he was not driving the car. Can you guess the reason why. He said, he will get his car to streets only on the day when all traffic signals in city are green.

Now the above mentioned blogs are in there own thoughts and bound to be limited to them only.
Even after our numerous attempts to do some healthy conversation at their blog, they are least bothered to publish our comments. They are just to bring bad word for us.
Just check these points they brought up:

1st)They are pulling absurd things. Just from one of her friends blog: They have already started to peek into our accounts by asking cheque payable to field in registration form.
Now this is meant to check that people submit their own blog. I don’t know where i peek into her accounts.

2nd) Most scams are when people start some get rich quick scheme and then all they get vanish taking all the money. I think you guys just ask yourselves, what will i do with all the links pointing to our website if things are not working. And it would have been a scam if i would have been asking for $2 or so for registration. And we are not even compelling to put our widgets to claim a blog or such kind of things.

3rd) They compared BTF with all those junk mails about 18 millions of loto prizes or so.
For them, shooting a mail from an anonymous yahoo account = creating a website with such an efforts, time and energy we spend.

So guys all things come to one thing very precisely: Where the money coming from. we know how to get things done, and everything will be done to get this event a success. There will be winners and awards.

Next WorldNetLabs is my company, with no working website online as we have enough projects at our hands. You guys want it, have it tomorrow. Want it in Google. Have it in weeks time.
And what authority BTF has. See that in 2 weeks time.
This what I can assure you, it’s a 6 months project and so i cant bring all things in one go.

And also hearty thanks to Deborah and all those supporting my cause.
Divya

Comment from Divya on June 6, 2007, 12:07 am

My guess is that Divya is going to get everyone to go to the Chicago Seminar (with a hefty entrance fee) and then MAYBE give out some of it as prizes. She can also make money by selling the domain once it gets all the links, traffic..etc

What’s more if things don’t work out there is nothing she will lose except the $10 in purchasing the domain for BTF and the time that she puts in promoting it. To save from the extra costs, she didn’t make the WorldNetLabs website yet since she is not sure if it will work.

At least she is being honest and her own words describe a pyramid scheme/get rich quick scam: “what authority BTF has. See that in 2 weeks time. This what I can assure you, it’s a 6 months project and so i cant bring all things in one go.”

Yeah! So she will get rich in 6 months time depending on how many people “fall” for it. The only reason people take part in this “project” is because few will get a piece from the money she will make.

I say.. it’s one big global SCAM!

Comment from anonymous on June 6, 2007, 2:24 am

Oy oy oy! What a fiasco!

First off, your comments were not published directly because I refuse to allow links from my site to yours. I did however post them in a separate post BEFORE you contacted me complaining that I hadn’t posted them, which is why I then made a SECOND post about it. The comments were there, you just didn’t bother to read.

I’m glad to see there is more info up, and I certainly do hope this pans out. I’d hate to see anyone put a lot of work into promoting themselves with nothing to show for it. But the way this has been done so far has certainly been less than professional. Allowing votes before the contest officially starts? Not disclosing sponsor information? Holding a contest in a country you don’t even live in? You have to expect there is going to be some amount of skepticism.

Maybe you are just too busy to do this in the usual steps. Maybe in the excitement of putting it together you overlooked things. Maybe it is legit and you just have been a little sloppy with it. When I see someone with a check in hand I’ll have no problems posting an apology, I’ve certainly had times where I’ve been wrong before. But due to the way this has been done so far, my opinion stands that this will not pan out.

For the sake of everyone involved I hope you prove me wrong.

Comment from Suburban Oblivion on June 6, 2007, 4:29 am

Sorry, Antman. Never heard of Blogging to Fame. Don’t know a thing about Divya.

Comment from davidbdale on June 6, 2007, 5:53 am

Interesting. First of all I have no idea if this is a Scam/Spam thing or not. I do know that if nothing else, it is exposure for the Blogs who have entered, mine included.
There are many SEO and Linkbait Sites out there and who among us hasn’t benefited from back links?
I am unsure of the reason that someone is so anal as to actually check for typos, bad punctuation and grammar..I suppose those are important to some but I certainly have made mistakes of grammar, punctuation and spelling.
I suppose the only way we will know for sure is to wait and see how it shakes out in the end.
Meanwhile all we are doing is increasing traffic to the Sites involved in this little drama…perhaps there’s a method to the madness then?

Comment from carol on June 6, 2007, 5:59 am

I know of both the author and the sites reasonably well. I managed to put both feet in my mouth and say some rude things about Divya’s blog and then she said thank you… I was so ashamed of my rudeness. Anyway I am a managing director of an IT company and English is my first language. I barely scrapped a basic pass in English when I was 16 and the Almighty alone knows how I got an A level in the subject. I learned my grammar in a trial by fire by joining a fairly elitist (if friendly) site and trying to earn my sh*t as they say there.

I have or had (long story let’s not go there) possible mild dyslexia… at the very least I have shocking spelling problems and did not start to learn good English until I was 24.

I’m 30 now and although my spoken skills are great my written skills MUST have a spell checker and I call on two or three people to proof read for me if I have to write an important letter.

I have mad “leet” hackorz skillz when it comes to code and all that unseen stuff but I work like a slave at my text and design at which I suck.

When it comes to bugs I am the dev team.

When it comes to blogs am seven tens of the writing team.

I have about 10 blogs and umpteen other projects on the go.

Many are “pro”. Take for example globallylocal.com - you will find spelling errors in the head banner on the secure payment area (unless the new graphic is up yet) and that was me being careful. Thoughsparks (another MBL member) spotted it to me with a lot more grace than I showed others when I first joined.

The long and short of this story is Divya is a real nice person and her English skills have many of the same weaknesses I strive to overcome but she has a much nicer way with people and is far more gracious.

Now where’s the spell checker gone?

Comment from Lord Matt on June 6, 2007, 6:20 am

Oh and you’ll not find my company on Google but you’ll find it at the Companies House website for registered UK companies.

Comment from Lord Matt on June 6, 2007, 6:31 am

Yeah i think ALL BLOGGING is a SCAM + ALL BLOGGERS need to be put in JAIL preferably with PARIS HILTON!!

;PPPP

It’s time all this chicanery + tom-foolery came to an end*

Comment from BillyWarhol on June 6, 2007, 7:03 am

Wow, stop the hate, Divya is a young woman putting her heart and soul into her blog. I cannot spell and do not care about grammer, the thing is ideas and I subscribe to Divya blog, because of the value. Many great thinkers face critics.I consider myself a good judge of people and Divya is the real deal.I am sadden by the vicious attack on this young friend of mine.

Comment from jimdwalton on June 6, 2007, 9:43 am

[...] It all came to my attention when Antman from Cre8buzz messaged me this morning asking for my opinion on his post “A scam or not a scam…“ [...]

Pingback from O’Flaherty - » Blogging to Infamy on June 6, 2007, 12:56 pm

I haven’t done any due diligence on either organization, but I will say this, when anyone throws stones at another organization my first question is why? What’s the motivation? So why is it that Suburban Oblivion or whatever her name is, is casting stones at Divya? Is it her desire to win the money? Is her quest for authenticate the organization for the good of blogosphere? If her goal was to authenticate, did she ask questions of the organization? Did she give them an opportunity to respond as anyone should? It seems to me that if her goal was truly altruistic, the post she wrote would have been written with a completely different tone. It would have been much more thoroughly researched, along with comments from Divya.

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 6, 2007, 2:40 pm

I really hate to this…but here’s my feeling…women do this stuff and I hate this….I really do. Why is this 28 year old mother who’s probably never ever done any start-up company in her life….throwing stone at another woman……….this is the kind of crap that starts cyberbulling. These women bring in onto themselves.

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 6, 2007, 2:49 pm

Oh, by the way, I’m a woman…and I see this stuff by other women all the time….that’s why I’m saying it. These are the reasons I’m writing a book about women……so the stop the hate…and propagating and perpetuating ugliness.

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 6, 2007, 2:55 pm

I just read the comments by Suburban oblivion and now she’s really pissed me off………let me tell you something about the real world because obviously YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE REAL WORLD……..you don’t know anything about start ups do you??????????? from SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE FIVE START UPS…BEEN WITH TWO FORTUNE FIVE HUNDRED COMPANIES…………….NO NEVER MIND……….I’M NOT GONNA WAIST MY BREATH

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 6, 2007, 3:04 pm

Ev, you seem to be jumping to a lot of conclusions yourself. I am not registered with the contest, nor will I be.

I’m sorry you were so upset by my posts, but given the way the contest has been handled, as I explained above, my suspicions were certainly justified. And as I also explained above, should this ever come to fruition, an apology will certainly be forthcoming. I would love to see it happen. No one is bullying anyone, I simply posted on my own blog the doubts I had. Free speech is, last time I checked at least, still part of the Constitution.

Comment from Suburban Oblivion on June 6, 2007, 8:01 pm

I did register on the site in order to Fame someone that requested it. The reason I stopped short was, in fact, because of the spelling and grammar. Why would this bother me? I am a little anal about trying to check my spelling and grammar, and that’s just for some stupid mommy blog.

That’s when I started asking more questions. Due diligence.

If I was giving away $100,00, I would want to be sure I was as professional and polished as possible. That might mean hiring someone to proof read for me whose first language was that of the country where the contest was being held. I would want to look credible. Heck, I want to look credible and all I have is a blog.

I’ve owned businesses before and I always made sure that I had every “i” dotted and “t” crossed before I launched anything. First impressions and all that jazz. Hence, my hesitation about Divya.

I will say that Divya has responded with nothing but patience, when she could have just as easily gone on a crazy defensive attack.

I should also point out that Suburban Oblivion and I were not taking it all that seriously when we started talking about this. It just seemed really odd that someone giving away $100,000 would seem so ill prepared.

At best, Divya launched prematurely. At worst, there is no $100,000. If I’m wrong about it seeming sketchy, I will happily apologize. Sincerely.

Comment from Megan (Velveteen Mind) on June 7, 2007, 6:00 pm

OMG I was thinking the same thing, the little guy or girl (in this case) has no chance…

what a great little post, Thanx for making ME Laugh!

Harleyblues

Comment from harleyblues on June 7, 2007, 9:27 pm

Hum reading over some of these posts, I ask myself “SELF” why are people so pessimistic? I don’t know this Ms. Divya (Cool Name) but I see her heart is in this.

Brillant idea!!~

“If you don’t Stand for Something, you’ll Fall for Anything”

All The Best
Harleyblues

Comment from harleyblues on June 7, 2007, 9:41 pm

Suburban Oblivion & Megan of Velveteen Mind,

I’ll assume that you’re intentions were good. But here’s a lesson in start-ups. You put it out there and developed it you go, otherwise if you wait for perfection you will never launch. Now I’m a pathetic perfectionist and I guarantee you, you will find LOADS OF MISTAKES on things I do….but the reality is I DO A WHOLE HECK OF ALOT……..MORE THAN 98% OF THE POPULATION.

So, my suggestion is that before you cast any stones at anyone…you ask some questions. It’s called good manners. That’s all. And if you are writing something you know nothing about…what don’t you go check out bloggers that write about start ups…you might learn something in the process. I’m not suggesting you read my stuff, go check out Success From the Nest. He’ll teach you something.

Here’s what I do have an issue with…you don’t often find men do this kind of thing…it’s generally women…and that’s what I want you to think about..that’s all. Think why..what’s the point? What was your goal? To protect consumers? Or to bring her down? If your goal was to protect consumers, then before either one of you ever again consider throwing any stones at anyone else, do a lot more due diligence. If you are basing due diligence simply and soley on spelling errors you two have a lot to learn about business.

Don’t be so harsh to judge someone who’s trying to do something. This is how cyber bulling starts. Don’t get on a band wagon…it’s ugly and cruel. You two have the capacity to big…so go be big..not small.

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 8, 2007, 2:32 pm

After all of this…I agree with Billy Warhol.

Comment from Ev Nucci on June 8, 2007, 7:37 pm

This just amazes me with the negativity and mud slinging. I’m speechless. I truly am. But I’m going to try once more.

What big of a deal is it to ask whose name a cheque is to be made payable to? Did Divya ask for your bank account number? No.

To compare her to lottery spamming…I can’t believe you’d even have the gaul. But people never cease to amaze me with their cruelty.

How can you say that she’s going to just take the money and run when no contestants have invested any cash into this?

A hefty entrance fee??? Have you even read anything from her blog or the site itself? She’s paying transportation and hotel accomodation to the final 4 from wherever they live in the world.

In addition, if it were a scam to take money from people, she would surely be bringing a lot more than 4 people to the Chicago ceremonies.

How you can state that Divya’s invested a mere $10 into this should she get a domain name is absurd.

I can’t even understand where this is coming from.

Like Ev said, women can be the most viscious towards others. I’ve experienced it first hand myself, countless times, and always uncalled for. I’ve worked with women that have attempted to make my life a living hell. And all for naught, as I had always shown kindness and respect to those prior to being on the receiving end of their ruthlessness. It’s very rare to see a man do things like this…it does happen but very rarely.

I’d like to see you try to put a contest together and see just how well you perform yourself. I’ve read numerous blogs that have written about their experiences of holding their first competition or contest. Every single one of them have said that they made fierce mistakes.

It really makes me ill to even read this mudslinging. You’ve already heard defense from others who have known and dealt with Divya personally, yet you still continue. Shame on you.

If for some chance I may be wrong, which I seriously doubt, I’ll eat crow myself. But I really don’t think I’ll be having to travel that route.

Do you even comprehend how many people you are affecting by your words? I’m seriously sick to my stomach with this cruelty. Shame on you again.

Comment from Deborah on June 8, 2007, 9:01 pm

One more thing…

You have your facts wrong, Jack.

The contest does not start mid June, it started when the doors opened to the site. The first round of the process of ellimination begins June 17th. Try getting your facts straight before throwing crap.

I have read your comments laughing about the comments from all of the people here. It’s absolutely despicable. Where is your shame???

Comment from Deborah on June 8, 2007, 10:03 pm

lmao off alot alot!!

oh Antman may I say you are most funny man!!!!

All the best Harleyblues!

Comment from harleyblues on June 10, 2007, 5:41 pm

If it cost money, run the other way….but that’s just a jaded New Yawka speaking

Comment from Kali on June 10, 2007, 9:15 pm

Give Divya credit for what she HAS done, brought bloggers together to help other bloggers…..none of us are perfect.
It’s sad that people have to go ahead and trash so easily without considering the good side ie: communication, meeting new people, learning from others and so much more.
Ok so the spammers are having a field day with Blogspam at present, which is a pain in the butt, but I have met many new and interesting people with some wonderful blogs, and now I have some very good friends.
If you really waant something to trash then pick on blogspammers etc, not those that are getting communities to unite in the way that Divya has done.

Comment from Colin on August 1, 2007, 10:14 am