Is John Cow now John Chow???
The last week or so has seen rumors flying around the blogging arena that John Cow dot com is a different and new beast. Basically the quality of the content suddenly went up and people are guessing that a new owner / writer is driving the herd.
Some people think it may be Garry Conn and due to all of this and Garry insinuating that the whole thing is a marketing tactic an interesting friendly fight has arise between the two bloggers (Cow V Conn is on).
This fight however does not rule out Garry Conn, it could be a great marketing scheme!
The Cow is insisting that he/she has had a brain transplant a few times, with comments over at Garry Conn’s such as:
“Was the “up for sale” a scam… nope but did the blog sell for $50000… bwa hahahah.. come on now, not sure why that rumour started. You see, we are what you call a “multiple personality” and all we can say is the personality that you are accusing is no longer but thanks for stirring the controversy though. Will everyone eventually learn who we are… sure but right now we are having too much fun seeing what people are guessing at.”
So it would seem that the site did sell, although not for $50,000.
Immediately only two people come to mind. It is either Bob, and he is pretending to be someone new by switching up his style or it is Garry Conn. The third option is most likely, this is another blogger, maybe even someone that the MMO niche knows very well.
Could it be John Chow?
Using the best skills I have, all learned from the greats (Columbo and Magnum P.I) I am going to try and build a profile of this man and then maybe we can work it out together.
When did he start with John Cow dot com.
The new Cow mentioned that he had been writing for 2 weeks. Looking back on Cow’s posts I could only assume that his first post was:
The Dip… is it time to quit?
…published on 26th April.
The main reason I think this is the first is because of the sudden change of language and sudden use of multiple punctuations (…. ???) that started to populate the posts. This could be just Bob changing his writing style but I also noticed that from April 27th onwards all of John Cow’s comments have come from Windows Vista, previous to that they all came from an Apple Mac. As a Mac user I know how unlikely it is to switch to a PC, especially using VISTA!!
Hi I’m Mac…
…. and I’m PC
I asked Garry Conn, where the comments from Cow were coming from and he said the IP was Canada. It would be rude of me to ask for the actual IP from Garry but using the Cow’s old tricks this could be used with Google Maps to pin point his exact location…. I may have to ask Garry to do this later :)!!!
So looking into the language the spellings have been either British or Canadian in recent times. For example using “favour” in a comment at Garry Conn’s. An old John Cow post was titled “Do Yourself A Favor, Don’t Be A ****”. Recent use of North American sayings such as “it got our hackles up” and the spelling thing leads me to believe that we most likely are dealing with a Canadian here.
Cow has also cut back considerable on the Bovine puns, his repeated use of the 
smiley has also cut down ten fold.
Now this really does hot up the case for John Chow being the new Cow…
- Chow is from Vancouver, Canada and we all know is a very clever marketer.
- The writing style of New Cow and John Chow are very different. Such a big blogger would definitely do something like this to hide their identity.
- Chow uses a PC
- Chows uses the in every one of his posts. Not using it on Cow could be intentional to help cover himself.
- Chow has already been head to head with Shoemoney for RSS subscriptions and he lost! The competition he proposed is very similar and he may be looking for new glory.
Now one problem here is that Chow is going to Asia for a month and is looking for Guest Posts for John Chow. However we could look at this as being a way to break from Chow and concentrate on Cow.
What do you think?
Also, why would he do such a thing? He makes plenty of money already.
If Garry would be so kind to pinpoint the IP for us this could fuel the fire even more.
I would be very disappointed if it is Chow as his blog has been publishing bulls**t recently much like Cow’s was!!
So if it’s not Chow then who?
We are looking for a Canadian professional blogger / marketer. Generally a pretty nice guy/girl who has been a prior reader of Garry Conn and John Cow. He/she has a sense of humor and seems to be luring readers with good marketing strategies and pretty solid new content. She/he over uses punctuation and may have been missing from her/his own blog for a few weeks.
Any idea?
Help us solve this riddle. Comment, gather evidence and weave conspiracy theories. We can do this….
Cow was kind enough to comment… so I nabbed his IP. Turns out it comes from Calgary. However reading up on the accuracy of IP this is still not certain. It could be a proxy, the home of the ISP or just a mistake.
Of course it could also be true, so we could be looking for someone from Calgary.
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May 12th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Entertaining theories… but still wrong on all accounts… oh and we are not a college student either (insert evil smile here)
One thing we have to say though… using our images and all is fine but at least a link back for the use of them would be nice of you.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Hey Mr Cow, thanks for stopping by.
I accidentally hit publish before the article was complete so you got it before it was finished. I have added a link as requested. Obviously if you are unhappy with the use of imagery then I can always remove it.
We can only imagine that you are lying
but I do have your IP now and….. ot checks out as Calgary, still we know that these things are not always so accurate!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 10:23 am
No problem with the images but you should be careful doing that stuff, we are not that type of people but there are some that would be upset about using copyrighted work like you are.
As for you comment… no, you are pretty much wrong on your theories and everyone will find out everything soon… just not yet… and yes we have our reasons.
Also, of course you have our IP, why would we care about that… you think we did not know comments include IP’s, if it was a concern then we would have used a proxy.
One last thing… did we piss in your cornflakes or something?
May 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am
“We are looking for a Canadian professional blogger / marketer. Generally a pretty nice guy/girl who has been a prior reader of Garry Conn and John Cow. He/she has a sense of humor and seems to be luring readers with good marketing strategies and pretty solid new content. She/he over uses punctuation and may have been missing from her/his own blog for a few weeks.”
Your last paragraph sounds an awful lot like a well know blogger from Toronto who likes anime and is very well respected. If his comment is sarcastic (insert evil smile here…) I wonder if it could be Maki from Dosh Dosh.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:33 am
@Cow:I know, I should be careful with imagery….. I weighed up the pro’s and cons and thought that you might be happy with the publicity… should have asked first….
Well if you are not Cow then the 2nd part of this post comes into effect, who are you? Can we find out before you tell us?
No pissing in corn flakes, I think if you read my post I am pretty favorable to you!
As with the IP….. trust me I am not mocking your intelligence. I know you are highly intelligent. This whole marketing campaign is a brilliant idea and is ultimately win / win. Put it this way, even if you are somehow still Bob, I stopped reading JohnCow and now I am reading again.
So…… who are you? I won’t tell anybody
@Jeff, hmmmmmmm Maki, I will have to investigate.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Cool… I like you again (actually never not liked you… just wanted to let you know we are happy)
May 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Very interesting. I’ll have to check out both sites. It may be both Garry but I doubt it.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Is this the copyright nightmare month or what? lol. I haven’t heard about all of the cow vs. chow rumors, very interesting. And I didn’t know that John Chow was a fellow Canadian either, that’s cool.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
LOL @ “One last thing… did we piss in your cornflakes or something?”
That is hilarious. I too stopped reading John Cow for awhile but this has become interesting and fun again!
May 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I stopped reading John cow blog for some time but now i think it’s some new John there making good Buzz campaign, this is your blog two “John”, is it ?
May 12th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
@Mark, I don’t think it is Garry, the IP address for Cow is far to far away from Garry. He has also let on that he manages a team of 11 Employees in an Internet Marketing Company. But of course that could be a lie!
As for the IP, I checked a few other services and it is coming up as different parts of Canada. So it isn’t accurate.
However the most consistent place seems to be Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario.
Jeff Buzz mentioned Maki from Dosh Dosh. Maki lives in Toronto which is the Ontario area and goes to Uni there according to his about page. Cow left a comment along the lines of “I am not a university student (insert evil smile here).” which could insinuate that he is actually a student.
Any other ideas, then please fire away. I have a feeling all will be revealed very soon so we don’t have long….
@Christy…. I took a risk with this one knowing I was wrong. I thought I may be asked to remove them but very nicely Mr Cow let me keep them up. I am not sure what Chow wold say to his face being used though!
May 12th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Hey Columbo, what’ stopping some dude from Canada entering false details into your comments (name, mail, website) to make it seem like he is John Cow?
Also…I don’t do PPC Marketing, I have said that time and again. You will see me state that in video interviews, etc. I’m all about blogging and SEO.
And…I’m really not John. I’m more south-west geographically, and better looking.
But you get my point.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Hey there John Cow…. sorry I meant Chow. I’m guessing you are at home now but still in Ontario…. unless the IP is totally out or you are some other guy in Ontario!!!!
I guess your point is totally true, the net hides our face but you have to believe in something and have something to pursue…. so I am sticking with what I have.
See you around!
May 12th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Yeah, I understand what you are saying. I suspect it is truly John Cow too but ya never know.
My IP probably says Toronto but I’m actually in Windsor, Ontario
and of course I’m not John Chow…he’s in Shanghai or something…
Anyway, have you heard John Chow mention that he doesn’t do PPC? He says it all the time…and on the JohnCow.com site there are PPC tips…so unless John Chow has been planning this for a long time and pretending he doesn’t know PPC as an extra disguise on the JohnCow blog, I’m guessing it’s probably someone else other than Chow, maybe Bob (whoever that is) but who knows. It’s fun to participate in all the hoopla though.
Cool blog Forest…you’re a smart marketer. Later.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
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May 13th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
@ Make Money Talks, It would be sweet irony if this blog belonged to Garry Conn and Garry Conn was John Cow!! But I am just plain old Forest Parks….. you can check me out if you wish. Mind you I am in Montreal and my IP says Toronto, take from that what you wish……
@John Cow Chow. Strangely after all my bitching and involvement with all of this I don’t read John Chow. I tend to stay away from hype
but this competition has sucked me it!!
I’m confused at all the Bob comments…. makes me feel that he may be around somewhere amongst all this. I am 100% sure he is reading it all!!! So for Bob sorry I have said some horrid things about you recently. If you amazingly turned out to be still a part of Cow then please keep this new face up. If not then I look forward to any new projects.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Talk about CONTROVERSY!!! This is why I posted about “starting controversies” last week
You gain a lot from it.
I wonder what the end result of all this mayhem will be….
-Mike
May 16th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Forest,
I sent you an e-mail, please read it asap…it’s urgent
-Mike
July 20th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I say….this is truly and mystery for the blogsphere. Everyone wants to know….when will we find out?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
July 21st, 2008 at 10:24 am
@Jk, I think we are going to find out in the next 2 or 3 days….
July 21st, 2008 at 10:40 am
You think so? What makes you say that.