[yalogin]

Why is Rap Genius afforded this coverage? There are a lot of SEO scammers out there and are punished as found. Reading through one of those TC articles it appears that they were interviewed on stage by TC during one of their events too. Why is a scammy link baity company given this importance?

[skrebbel]

Three reasons:

1) The site itself isn't actually half bad, especially when compared to other lyrics sites.

2) They're a YC company, and took money from other big investors. This automatically makes them high-profile on places like HN.

3) The founders often publically act like douchebags, write emails with bad spelling, and generally seem to think that being cool is the most important part of running a startup. I suspect that this is just for show, but still, many people want to see them fail because of this. This article is about them failing, so it gets upvoted by those people.

[AVTizzle]

Also, nobody seems to mention the fact that this story was created out of an HN thread... I imagine that has a lot to do with everyone's interest in it.

[obstacle1]

Indeed. People are forgetting that the only reason RG came to G's attention is because Matt Cutts stumbled across the HN thread and took action.

[greghinch]

#3 definitely is why there is so much enthusiasm running around regarding their punishment

[philangist]

It's actually kind of bullshit too. It's in a similar vein to the joy people have in many of the 'Facebook is no longer popular among 14-16 year old' posts. These sites provide a valuable service, just because you don't like them doesn't justify being (in the parlance of the youth) a hater.

[AndrewKemendo]

I disagree somewhat. Yes, I think that if people are creating value then their own personal behaviors should have little to no bearing on how that work is translated.

I think their affects do set a bad standard for tech founders, and just how people behave in general and those attitudes spread into how they run their business.

I can envision other future founders looking at these guys as successful and thinking, "yea that is how I have to act to make it big." In a similar way that The Game and all that has influenced dating, I think these guys applied some of that to the startup/hip/rap thing which in my opinion is detrimental and smacks of trying too hard, especially when they are all very well placed, affluent people.

Add to that the fact that they genuinely did shady things (regardless of whatever anyone else did) and the bullshit wears off even more. So maybe someone who is coming up will think twice about behaving similarly in all aspects.

[judk]

It is kind of funny how people think that only white rap-fans/rappers came from non-poverty backgrounds. Rap industry markets itself slickly.

[AndrewKemendo]

Who said anything about race? The distinction is class and culture, not race.

[dragonwriter]

> These sites provide a valuable service, just because you don't like them doesn't justify being (in the parlance of the youth) a hater.

The founders put on a public face to create reactions in audience members. Some of those positive, and that's no doubt what they are seeking. Some of those are negative, and while that may not be what they are seeking (although I suspect that, given their actual target market, the negative reactions of those outside of the targeted culture are just as intended as the positive reactions), those are no less legitimate than the positive ones.

[judk]

On 3, I wonder if they think being cool is the most important part, or the reality is that they are executing on everything AND ALSO trying to be cool to differentiate themselves AMD get noticed, but the critics only see the PR front and ignore the rest.

[ryguytilidie]

I'll give you a hint: the other SEO scammers aren't YC companies...

[trevelyan]

Presumably because they are playing and pushing the story to get more inbounds links and thus higher SEO.

The real story is that Google is incompetent and incapable of identifying these sorts of things unless a company is called out publicly on it. No wonder their search results are increasingly a disaster zone.

[sanderjd]

Yeah, you're right, missing this makes them incompetent.

Does that word have any meaning at all anymore? It seems like everyone who isn't an amazing brilliant self-made billionaire is incompetent. Oh wait, I forgot, we were discussing the incompetence of a bunch of amazing brilliant self-made billionaires... So I guess it's everybody now.

[jeffmould]

Was about to write a similar response. In the end they will walk away with the penalty removed, and hundreds of links from bloggers talking about this story. While the links may not be the highest of quality in terms, they will still be links from sites like TechCrunch, The Verge, and many others with high PR scores. The story will die down over the next couple days and then I am sure we will see another influx of stories as their ranking increases again, providing more links to their domain again.