Cute Cancun Story or Clever Spamming Technique?

I noticed an unusual post that seems to be doing the rounds on many Cancun message boards today, although it doesn’t seem to have made it to my own Cancun message board yet. No doubt it’s on a ton of diving boards too and will be on lots more boards tomorrow. It seems to have spread virally by word of mouth, someone sees it on one board and then posts it on another similarly themed board they frequent.

It sure is a cute story but I’m convinced that it’s a clever form of spam.

Follow the link to see the text of the post:

“(I found this on another board – it had been copied from still another board.)

My brother found an underwater camera at McFaddin Beach on the Upper Texas Coast on June 26, 2006. Its case was covered in barnacles and was unrecognizable.

He heard something shaking inside the “rock”, he began breaking away to discover this camera. He took it home, opened it to find that the camera still worked and that all pictures and two videos were intact.

The amazing part is that the last picture was taken at Playa Del Carmen on August 11, 2005 which means it travelled through three hurricanes to get to where it was!

If you know anyone who lost a camera during that time, please have them contact /email address removed/ .The pictures include only one woman, but several men. There were both land pics and scuba pics as well as two dive videos on the memory card. There is a truck with the sign on it /website address removed/. We have a picture of the actual boat that was used for diving and the license number of the boat. I hope we can find this cameras home. The pics are beautiful and deserve to be with their owner along with the camera.”

Maybe I’m too much of a sceptic and this really is one of those amazing stories that sometimes gets reported. But what a great way of getting your website business displayed on maybe hundreds of similarly themed message boards, not only for the clicks that would generate and brand recognition, but also the one way inbound links which help a ton in your search engine rankings.

Already, well intentioned message board users are talking about contacting newspapers, TV stations etc to help find the owner of the camera that crossed the Gulf of Mexico. If that happens and the story receives wide coverage then the dive operator concerned should look forward to a short term boost in business.

What do you think?