Aral Balkan

Salvatore Genovese (http://salvatoregenovese.sys-con.com) is a Sys-Con/Ulitzer author. Unlike Ulitzer authors who don't know that they're Ulitzer authors, Salvatore has an email address at Sys-Con listed on his page (which, strangely, is hamilton@sys-con.com -- I guess Hamilton is a common middle name in Italy, where Salvatore apparently lives). What's more interesting is what Salvatore Genovese looks like. Check out a snapshot of his author page:

And now compare Salvatore's photo to this photo of British supermodel David Gandy from his Facebook Fan Page (you can also do a Google Image search for David Gandy to see the same photo):

The problem is that Salvatore looks very much like David Gandy. So much so, in fact, that Salvatore's photo is a photo of David Gandy. This fact was uncovered by my friend Robert Hall.

So is this a one-time lapse in judgement or mixup? No, not really...

Enter a tweet by my friend Jens Brynildsen earlier today:

"Meet Ulitzer editor Kym Jones http://bit.ly/12YRU9 - also known as "illustration for red hair" on Wikipedia! http://bit.ly/12ZRQO #syscon".

Ms. Kym Jones (http://kymjones.ulitzer.com/) is the editor of the Ulitzer Content Network and, according to her author page, can be reached by phone at Sys-Con (201 802-3041). Unfortunately, as Jens's tweet states, the photo of Ms. Jones is not her own.

Update: My dear friend Mario Klingemann apparently brought the Kym Jones issue to light initially on March 29th in a comment he left on my original post. Sorry for missing that, Mario!

This is a snapshot of her page on Ulitzer:

And this is the Wikipedia page on Red Hair:

Check out the "Woman with red hair".

Despite everything I've witnessed in the past few days, and despite the David Gandy photo, I thought I'd give Sys-Con the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I guess it was possible that Ms. Kym Jones, being a most wonderful example of a redheaded woman, allowed her image to be used in Wikipedia.

So, clicking on the Wikipedia image, I arrived at a nonexistent page on Flickr belonging to a user called dusdin. I sent dusdin a FlickrMail to ask him if the person in the image was, indeed, Kym Jones of Sys-Con. Here is the response he sent me:

That's a very old photo that I took of an actress that I knew in San Diego, CA.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'd known that someone had posted it on wikipedia to illustrate their "redhead" article, and I had no issues with that. But this is pretty shady.

A few people have been wondering whether Sys-Con's behavior recently with regard to Ulitzer (see Sys-Con goes from bad to worse, launches Ulitzer, attacks community and content creators, And Sys-Con defames me & And Sys-Con libels me *again*) constitutes a lapse in judgement or freak occurrence or whether it is endemic to Sys-Con's regular business practice...

You be the judge.

Comments

• Maybe we're rushing to judgement too fast. Isn't it possible that the graphic was used as a proof-of-concept during website development, and somebody used the Kym Jones user account to test the portrait template mockup, and then it went live by accident? Yeah, I'm gonna be THAT commenter who defends the recurring villain.

  by Harry on 2009-04-02 07:07:57

• Oh this just gets better and better!

  by Cliff Rowley on 2009-04-01 21:28:58

• The date April, 1. somehow confuses me on this article!

  by sascha/hdrs on 2009-04-02 11:58:20

• Hmm very interesting. I'm holding my breath to hear what is coming next...

  by Nik on 2009-04-02 07:51:52

• Ehmm... april 1st?

  by Michiel van der Ros on 2009-04-02 07:52:41

• OK ignore my last comment now it's April 2nd.. BTW, did you notice that this article, alleged to be written by Kym Jones, is a xerox of the homepage text on the latter link: http://kymjones.ulitzer.com/node/897624 http://www.parascale.com/

  by Harry on 2009-04-02 07:19:47

• Also they seem to have won some more authors over night: "written by over 16,000 well-respected technology authors". Wasn't it 6,000 yesterday?

  by Claus Wahlers on 2009-04-01 23:22:26

• Rather than like to know how all this will finish, i would like to know also how to prevent/avoid these kind of weird situations. Even there are claims and posts about their extremely bad and unusual procedure, they are taking the attention they want. This is some kind of free advertisement they are having. As Kevin says, i believe that the best thing to do, is adverting to the appropriate authorities for this. Syscon would never entered in a controversial war, and in the other hand, you Aral, never had to waste your time, and get consumed by someone who doesn’t deserve your attention and respect. At the end, they wouldn’t benefit of getting visitors from this issue, and for sure they would be punished. But still not preventing this kind of situations to happen. What to do then?

  by Carlos Pinho on 2009-04-02 10:08:09

• Just in case anyone is wondering, this was *not* an April Fools' joke. Nor the article Sys-Con related posts.

  by Aral on 2009-04-02 12:18:36

• Two common expressions become literal: How low can you go? Reality supersedes the wildest imagination. Indeed.

  by rapella on 2009-04-02 11:57:11

• One of my colleagues (Ronny Van de Mael) eappears on Ulitzer as well, and he didn't post on it either. Can you let me know when you start a law-suit? We might wanna join in...

  by Kristof on 2009-04-06 10:09:50

• Who needs a TV when you can follow something like Aral vs Sys-Con online? No seriously, this is one sick company. I'm really interested in how and where this ends.

  by Dirk Bonhomme on 2009-04-01 21:35:27

• Wow :) Is she real: http://nicoleschepker.sys-con.com/ ? Another "editor" of ulitzer.com - but probably a fake as well.

  by Kai on 2009-04-01 22:34:47

• Wow. On a trip even further into bizarro-land, I called Ulitzer earlier this year and spoke to "Kym Jones." I wonder if she exists with a fake photo, or if she doesn't exist and I was talking to Google CADIE?

  by Joe Rinehart on 2009-04-02 00:59:58

• Trying to catch up – was looking at sys-con website and Alexa rankings and would otherwise have assumed them to be a credible company. Maybe I missed something - but are you sure their company is responsible rather than a rouge user? The sad thing is that you have to give them more attention then they deserve in raising awareness. Hopefully they don’t get off from the extra attention. I say make it count – not only with a private law suit but also by complaining to the appropriate agencies of whatever country they are operating from by asking for a CRIMINAL investigation. In the United States those complaints would be made with the FCC, The United State Dept. of Justice, and the state attorney general of the company’s home state and if that cannot be ascertained then I would also file complaint with the Federal trade Commission. Hope my show of support helps.

  by Kevin Goodman on 2009-04-02 01:40:26

• Aral, I always thought you where a bit of a dark horse, just look at those shadows on your profile pic - but a turkish assassin. Wow! - I would never have guessed, but now you mention it - don't tell me your weapon of choice are those Nazbaztag bunny ears! I dread to think what you can do with those things... listen just give me the nod if you want to bring the moo cards into play... peace

  by paddy on 2009-04-04 20:46:44

• It gets more fun... Can anyone tell me what movie this author's image is from: http://maureenogara.sys-con.com/ I'm drawing a blank and can't quite put my finger on it. Seems like Sys-con doesn't just rip off the good bloggers but even the shite ones. Maureen O'gara is one of the latter.

  by Antonio on 2009-04-05 06:14:41

• No, Kristof, that would be wrong. And, at the moment, Sys-Con is in the wrong with what they've done. Any such move would both be illegal and actually give them a case against the people carrying out those actions. I appreciate that you are angry at how they have behaved — as am I — but there are ways *within the law* to deal with them.

  by Aral on 2009-04-06 13:37:50

• It's funny, looking at the whois you see this ICANN Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC. Created: 2007-05-08 Expires: 2010-05-08 Updated: 2009-01-23 And on their website, for instance Maureen O’gara ULITZER AUTHOR SINCE: July 7, 2003 Mouahhahaha :)

  by zeflasher on 2009-04-10 08:57:52

• Isn't there a way to hack Sys-Con to put their website down. I guess it won't be too hard to find a bunch of people prepared to launch a major attack. No terrorist underground group like they claim we are ... but just some honest people not interested in being fooled around with.

  by Kristof on 2009-04-06 09:26:46

• hey Aral, hang in there, situations like this are always hard when they hit you, no matter how entertaining they appear to bystanders. You're doing a good job and I hope that Sys-Con advertisers will see what's happening. best,

  by Jacek on 2009-04-06 22:34:40

• Here I thought was you taking taking liberty of the 'april fools license', but no, this is all true. P.S. Where can I sign up for your underground army to fight Sys-Con to the death? ;)

  by Kevo Thomson on 2009-04-01 21:56:05

• [...] Aral continued to dig deeper in his crusade against Sys-Con Ulitzer. [...]

  by Rounding Up April Fool’s Week on 2009-04-06 15:00:52

• Are the 'no author images' lifted from Facebook as well?

  by James on 2009-07-15 14:42:35

• [...] Several of their staff writers and editors appeared to be fictitious. One, Salvatore Genovese, was actually British supermodel David Gandy. Another, Kym Jones, editor of Ulitzer Content Network, was the photo for "Woman with red hair" on Wikipedia. They've since changed several of the pictures to use royalty free images form iStockPhoto (this is against iStockPhoto's terms and conditions). The details of these findings are documented here. [...]

  by Aral Balkan - My Sys-Con Nightmare on 2009-07-27 15:10:43

• The article mentioned by "Harry" above is still posted, but now its author is shown as "Liz McMillan", and she has her own subdomain: http://lizmcmillan.ulitzer.com/ But the picture is THE SAME! I wonder how the bios compare. Are they word-for-word?

  by Lonny Eachus on 2009-07-27 20:06:18

• And actually, Kristof's suggestion (or rather, something like it) is neither a bad idea OR illegal. If enough authors who have been used without permission can be located, there is a chance of having the suit declared a class-action suit, in which case all affected parties can "join in" and support the lawsuit.

  by Lonny Eachus on 2009-07-27 20:10:42

• Seems "Sal" has moved from Search Engine Optimisation to Cloud Computing Consulting and Kym Jones is now Liz McMillan (http://lizmcmillan.sys-con.com/). Sam

  by Sam Johnston on 2010-03-04 15:20:42