Curious Competitive Intel Gathering Tactic via Facebook

Look what I found on my Facebook home page this morning:

Somebody out there appears to be soliciting information from our employees about our firm, and offering a $500 prize for the effort. I would imagine of course that they are targeting a number of other organizations as well. The Company conducting the research is GD Job Research. Anyone ever hear of this survey firm? I can't say that I'm shocked by this myself, but it my eyebrows were raised by the implications of gathering data like this in this manner. Anyone else find this tactic a bit curious?

Comment by Slouch on April 25, 2008 at 9:22am: i bet you will soon start seeing more of this.

Comment by Jennifer Trolley on April 25, 2008 at 12:28pm: I'm not shocked....although, I'm trying to think of what the other "true" survey firms do (i.e. - Vault, Watson Wyatt Data, etc.).

Comment by Ben Gotkin on April 25, 2008 at 1:07pm: Vault gets the input via direct entry from their subscribers, and by conducting surveys for client companies (like ours for example). Most vendor-generated surveys I have encountered have solicited organizations and client companies directly, often an opt-in model (i.e. if we do a survey for you, you will get access to survey data from our client base).