Hi Jonathan, I'm not up for the witchhunt, as far as I'm concerned people have done far worse than what's been suggested here ... However, don't you think this could have been avoided by not saying 'I am not in any way affiliated with Starbucks' ? - it's a bit misleading, and I think people are right to be suspicious of your motives as a result, dontcha think ?

Why did mobiquity erase this page, which lists Starbucks as a client? http://mobiquityinc.com/clients/

Forgive me if this rubbed you the wrong way. I could've worded the title better. FWIW, no one (at least not me) is questioning the good intentions behind this even if it was planned. I just thought it was a cool idea, viral campaign or not.

I think the project is a great idea, and it would still have been a great idea even if Starbucks was involved. Thanks for doing it!

Quite tellingly, you make no denial of the main accusations. The question is not whether this was your idea, but whether you were telling the truth when you said that your website was 100% not affiliated.with Starbucks.

No, that's just a sideline, a thing people are investigating as to proof to the actual main question, whether or not this is a viral campaign sponsored by Starbucks. He quite firmly denies that.

No, because time is a consideration. If SBUX jumped on the bandwagon to sponsor it after it became a big hit. Because he could be telling the truth as at the point of the card's creation, it was just a hobby project of his and SBUX knew nothing about it.

The main question is whether he is affiliated with SBUX in any capacity, because that's a statement he made from the start and it's provably true or false.

My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between. That it was a hobby project. But that as Starbucks is a client, he figured getting some goodwill from them through it would be frosting on the cake. He didn't intend to make money directly, but obviously, if it was a success, SBUX's benefits and so does Stark's company, indirectly.

This is his website's traffic on the day of the HN mention: https://twitter.com/#!/jonathanstark/status/1005925637146624...

The card had been active for more than two weeks previous. My guess is that a project that is intended to be a mass-viral ad would not wait for someone to randomly submit it to HN.

Mobiquity released a statement on TC confirming no affiliation with Starbucks.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspira...