괜찮아요

Okay, I’m trying not to make a big fuss over this but oh well, for those of you who haven’t know, the story went this way. Today’s mid-day, we were having class when one of our colleagues randomly type ‘SMU Singapore’ and googled that [well, we were having class on social media and social bookmarking see]. Little did he expect to see the following (click for full view):

yep, you didn’t see it wrongly. For some ‘weird’ reasons, the sponsored link featuring ‘Smu Singapore’ had the URL for www.ntu.edu.sg -.-” And if you click on the ‘Smu Singapore’ word, it will link you to the NTU’s website for registering for admission to their university. Well, for clarification purposes (and not be bias), I tried to google ‘NUS Singapore’ and ‘NTU Singapore’, but all I got as results was a NTU advertisement on the right-hand side of the page. (Note: the sponsored link in the SMU case was a banner on top.. and it’s a sponsored link; not just some ad!)

Apparently, I do think someone has a lot to answer to; especially since this has come to the attention of many in the blogosphere. (see here and here and here) I’m sure they will come to realize that social media tools can be quite deadly since it’s so fast and everyone and anyone can push this information out to the virtual space so quickly! It’s viral! Anyway, when I came back about 1.5 hrs ago and tried to google it again, first it disappeared, then it appears as a sponsored link by the right-hand side now; if you google those words on www.google.com.sg, you do get to see the full-sponsored link-banner just like the screenshot above.

Seriously, whatever were they thinking by putting up something so misleading?