Black Hat vs. White Hat
The discussion about black hats vs. white hats is about as futile as the discussion about black vs. white, or sin vs. virtue, and that in turn is about as old as mankind and the gift of speech itself.
Soft Warp thinks that there cannot possibly be any ultimate “right” or “wrong” decisions here and will stay strictly impartial on this issue: you alone have to decide what is best for you. We can however try to shed light on our position:
The ancient Greek philosophers already established the necessity of coexistence between black and white. Since then this approach has been accepted and integrated in every major religious and philosophic system.
Except for the web community it seems, where black vs. white is still discussed with an impetus and zest as if Adam had bitten into the apple of temptation just moments ago and was now choking to death from its vile content.
Adam in this case may stand for any advanced web marketer – the typical customer of Soft Warp. But we don’t want our customers to choke from poisoned apples. We just want them to grow in creative and dynamic paradises, even though we are not half as religious as we possibly should be and not half as philosophic as we would actually want to be. Does that compute?
Paint it grey…
If you like it. But you don’t have to. You could instead opt for decent cherry picking among all the pros and cons from white over grey to black to achieve highly customized solutions. Solutions that perfectly meet your requirements both tactically and strategically – or short term and long term, if that fits you better. Soft Warp is here to help you achieve, not just simply believe.
Take the facts, not the stereotypes
No matter how much love, effort, creativity, time and money you poor into the golden chalice of flawless site development, a single change of algorithms, completed with a single keystroke by an overworked search engine developer, could ruin your dream product.
Like a burnt out star into a black hole, it could helplessly fall into complete oblivion, finally hitting timeless singularity way down on the bottom. White Knight’s glorious search for the Holy Grail would be rewarded by untimely and cruel death. So know this: the web is not Star Wars, and the White Knights get no guarantee for winning in the end.
Whoever thinks any different usually claims infallible insights into the future development of unbeatable SE algorithms, but Soft Warps stance cannot be based on the interpretations of fog wavering through the proverbial crystal ball.
“I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that” said Hal to the doomed astronaut in Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001. The viewers kept their breath then, when for the first time in movie history a simple decision by a stubborn comp humiliated mankind. But remember? The story did not end this way. As Hal 2000 was finally tricked by man in the movie, any Google God would probably suffer the same fate: slain by some audacious Dark Knight. Created by man, deleted by man, neither reason nor logic would indicate any other outcome.
Learn from nature
Mother Nature herself has taught us just how fine black tactics can work. Soft Warps in house pet, Araminta the tarantula, can produce about 2000 spiderlings in a single clutch. Black and hairy, swiftly and hungry they will wiggle into a universe that knows neither plan nor justice, just chance and coincidence. In nature most of Araminta’s offspring would die, but some would survive and thrive almost effortless. Not from love, but just by sheer luck. Many black hat sites are like Araminta’s children.
Purpose as solid as gravity
Search engine rankings surely are not perfectly predictable until the end of time, but there is no doubt that professional and consequential building of high quality sites with steadily growing and meaningful content will bring long term rewards. The frustrating part for the creators and optimizers of quality sites is that their growth and reward rate are very much based on the viability of the original idea for the site – and not all these ideas finally stand the test of time. This is what makes spamming so tempting: the spammer does not require much of an original idea nor a substantiated concept, but only the spontaneous location of a suitable market niche into which he can jump with the least possible effort.
From that point of view it appears quite evident to Soft Warp that white and black hats do not represent two colliding business principles, and certainly not two irreconcilable philosophies. Instead we are looking at the manifestations of two types of personalities. Both of them mostly just twist and turn facts until they have created “realities” that actually reflect and justify nothing but personal preferences. They might as well lead a heated debate if apples taste better than pears, and in which taste had become an objectifiable measure.
Apples or pears?
If your fingers get itchy as soon as there is no keyboard to hammer on, if you mistrust anything that is not here and now, and if you insist to see a short time relation between work and cash flow, you mostly likely qualify for a natural born spammer.
If you however tend to assume that the best is always yet to come, if you prefer to put concept before action, value art more than practicality and rest better on the pillow of long term achievements, you may consider yourself a typical white hat.
But in Soft Warps view all of you could happily exist in both worlds at the same time, if personal attitudes, ambitions and preferences would not obstruct the straight look at the facts. All you had to do was to put the “philosophical” approach behind you for good and go strictly technical and pragmatic: build your white hat empire into a solid future, pay your monthly bills from black hat loot. You even could set yourself a timetable for that: from the start of each month you do black until the bills are paid, for the rest of the month you play white. Try this for a year and see what worked and felt best for you.
By Kimberly July 8, 2011 - 4:55 pm
This is what became of Bumblesoft then? The writing is delectable, but what I am craving is to know who does these graphics?
The best!
Ms. blackhat
By admin July 11, 2011 - 2:51 am
Hi Kimberly.,
We’re doing all our visuals in a mixed German, American, and Indonesian team. Lots of fun. Stick around & keep in touch.
Yes this is what became of bumblesoft. SoftWarp will continue from now on with a complete re-conceptualization. As we have developed a highly improved product line with massively enhanced performance we felt that an adequate platform was warranted including a more professional approach to words and visuals. Wait until you see our first videos
Cheers
Ryan
By Lee July 8, 2011 - 6:48 pm
Thanks Ryan,
some excellent plugins here, can see my self spending the weekend just trying them out.
good luck with new venture
Lee
By admin July 11, 2011 - 2:54 am
Hi Lee,
Don’t worry, you’re whole weekend wont be consumed. You’ll find everything to be straight forward, and easy to use. You’ll still have enough time left over to get into trouble in real life.
Enjoy
Ryan
By Miftahul Anwar July 9, 2011 - 2:30 am
nice post
By geo July 9, 2011 - 4:50 am
ilmu yang dalam…maju terus dan sehatlah selalu.
By raharja July 9, 2011 - 4:54 am
unique post, i like it.
By raa July 12, 2011 - 5:05 pm
nice article
By Capaitron July 13, 2011 - 3:45 pm
Glad to see Bumble is not dead. Very cool and I dig the new vibe you got goin on here. Got a Twitter ID or Facebook fan page yet?
By admin July 15, 2011 - 8:24 am
Just set up a SoftWarp insider’s fan page, you can find us here See ya there.
By seo Miami July 15, 2011 - 4:51 am
so can past customers get an advanced preview?
By admin July 15, 2011 - 8:30 am
Certainly. Past & recent customers will be the first to know once WP Mothership launches.
By Ændrew July 24, 2011 - 8:38 pm
Interesting post; I’d argue, however, that the Internet is a collective affair — both conceptually and in practice — and spammers ultimately increase the level of noise to the Internet’s signal, in turn worsening the experience all but their target audience. Spiders don’t have societies as advanced as ours; your metaphor is faulty in this way. Similarly, the “white hats” of the Internet (to use your parlance; as somebody who studies hacker culture, the more generalized use of the terms in relation to marketing kind of makes me roll my eyes…) have a duty to produce systems that undermine the work of the “black hats”, if only to ensure everyone (sans that spam fringe audience) has an optimal experience in using this shared resource.
By admin July 25, 2011 - 3:53 am
Hi Andrew,
Beautifully written critic. As we have already stated on the first line of this page, debates over black hat vs white hat are futile for us. We are strictly commercial and will provide tools for black & white hats the same as long as we see a market there. But we can perfectly understand your point.
By Ændrew July 25, 2011 - 6:40 pm
Yes and no; while the science applied to any given technology is inherently value neutral — once that science is used in a technology, some sense of intent as to its use is important.
For instance, mailing software can be used for both legitimate marketing purposes and for spamming. However, you veer more towards “black hat” territory if you build tools that cater specifically to the spam audience and simplify spammer tasks — I.e., automated tasks for ripping email addresses from huge swaths of webpages. No legitimate business person will gather contact data in so hazardous a fashion, so it can be assumed those providing such tools are ultimately catering to a black hat audience, and are thus being black hat themselves in their implementation. Note that there’s a pragmatic aspect to this as well — as white hats become better and better at blocking spam and blacklisting spammers, you run the risk of it bouncing back and negatively effecting your business, regardless of where you are in the supply chain.
In close, just be good.
(To also clarify: I in no way am saying your software does anything black hat; I just thought the idea of black hat vs. white hat is an interesting discussion from a software development point of view)
By admin July 27, 2011 - 3:34 am
I love your style, but object to some of the content.
Let’s dive in.
You wrote “No legitimate business person will gather contact data in so hazardous a fashion”
We all know about the beautiful dream of the WWW as a worldwide brotherhood. But it is not. Nor has it ever been, or will it ever be.
We as a company don’t target a dream, but a pretty efficient clientele of internet marketeers. These people do not run one site. They run many, and rightly so. And yes, a tool like Auto Mailer certainly is debatable if used on a single site “empire”. But at a closer look selectively embedded within an empire containing a large number of sites, and used in a framework of elaborate strategy certainly enjoys a right of existence, and renders its due rewards.
We actually plan to release educational content concerning this and other topics of marketing strategies in the near future. Once these are out let us continue this debate.
By Tony Hunt July 29, 2011 - 6:03 am
Funny, I wasn’t even looking for this article, but loved it.
Here’s why: http://tonytown.com/2011/03/tonys-white-hat/
The best way to win a fight is not to get into one.
-Tony
By bambang October 8, 2011 - 6:17 pm
tthanks to admin for providing science and free plugin .. it’s very useful for me who is a beginner in building a site
once again I say thank you
(i am sorry if my English is not good)
By vany October 24, 2011 - 6:47 pm
how about grey?
is it good if we are in grey area?
By admin November 3, 2011 - 7:24 am
Hi Vany,
A little white, a dash of black, sprinkle of pink, drop of blue. There’s a rainbow of colors out there, don’t get caught up within boundaries. Enjoy them all for what they offer.
By mentari April 1, 2012 - 8:25 am
Enjoyed examining this, very good stuff, appreciate it. “Success doesn’t come to you…you go to it.” by Marva Collins.