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Comment by kellishaver | Hacker News Reader

I really don't think this is the case at all. I've known Mr. Stark for some time now and he is an honest man of integrity - a good, decent guy.

It's an experiment, exactly as he says it is. I discussed it with him the very first day he started the project.

I'll choose to believe my friend on this one.

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If that is the case, then why did the company delete its graphic of the clients? http://mobiquityinc.com/clients/

Apparently, Starbucks is a client of theirs, and Stark is a VP: Mobiquity Vice President of Application Architecture.

I can't give you a reason other than speculation. The author of the blog post states that he had to go to Google cache to find the page in the first place, so there's no telling how long ago it was removed from Mobiquity's site.

It makes no sense for them to remove the entire page when they could simply replace the Starbucks logo with that of another clients. Couple that with the fact that we have no idea when the page was changed and it sounds more like removing the client page was part of a decision regarding the overall content of their site and not an attempt to hide anything.

A past affiliation between Starbucks and Mobiquity has no bearing at all on the current situation if it is not ongoing, and still doesn't imply any personal affiliation with Mr. Stark.

Someone within the last 24 hours went in and deleted Google cache though..

You don't have to be the owner of the page to request it be removed from Google cache. Who knows, the author could have done it to lend the theory more credibility and try to generate more scandal and thus more blog traffic.

See? Un-founded accusations can work both ways.

I'm inclined to believe this was a genuine experiment too, or at least a cool viral marketing campaign that I hope to use - for a free coffee :)

Out of curiosity, is Jonathan on HN too? It would be interesting to hear out of the horse's mouth here. I see a user with an ID of "jonathanstark":

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jonathanstark

P.S. Not all Starbucks cafes accept this card/image. I tried it this morning and was told they don't accept this method of "payment."

He is and yes, that is his account. I suspect he'll chime in when he notices this.

Not all Starbucks shops accept mobile payment yet. To do it, they have to re-fit their POS computers, the roll out has been taking almost a year and it's still not complete.

Well if the professional connection really is just a coincidence, I regret the wording of the title. But do notice I stated as I posted this that I don't think this is wrong on any level really even if it were a manufactured campaign. Again, it's a cool story and very clever either way and I could see Occam's Razor going both ways on this.

pg- Feel free to edit the title if you want.

I have no reason not to believe you, especially when you add in the fact that Mr. Stark is getting a free coffee for every 15 purchased on his card.

It's win-win-win.

seconded. jon is a really good guy. very generous in every sense of the word, and in no way a sketchy human being.

put the pitchforks down please.

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