Maybe, The New York Times recently reported a story about an online glasses and contact lens merchant who purportedly garnered top search engine rankings because of negative reviews left by dissatisfied customers around the web. The online retailer bragged to his customers: "I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement."

His operation worked like this: somebody would order glasses or contact lenses from his site, he would then place an order for cheaper versions of glasses or contact lenses and have the package forwarded to the customer's shipping address. But when people complained about receiving suspiciously cheap eyewear, the owner and his henchmen fought back with alarming intimidation and threats.

I was stoked to learn that some of us from around the office (myself included) will be attending the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

It's being held from September 27-30 and there's an impressive line-up of speakers from just about every major web company from IBM, to foursquare, to Google.

We'll be sure to write about the conference in the blogs to come. In the meantime check out: web2expo.com/webexny2010