Blogging for Dollars

On my way in to work this morning on the train, I was reading an article that I saw through Slashdot - they were pointing out that a collection of bloggers had taken money in the form of revenue from an ad campaign in return for suppyling quotes to a web site for Microsoft's "People Ready" marketing campaign. [note: I won't be linking to any of these sites, and you all know how to find the Slashdot articles].

I'm not going to join the debate on whether I think those bloggers did anything unethical as I don't feel as though I have enough background information to make any judgements. Plus, it's not like me to pass judgement even if I do have enough information. This also brings to mind the other recent "Blogging for Dollars" controversy where Microsoft sent a few bloggers some "Ferrari" laptops. I don't think there was anything overtly stated by Microsoft about the purpose of the laptop, but you don't have to squint very hard to read between the lines and see that favors in the form of favorable blog postings were expected in return.

So let's take a step back and take a look at the culture that is making this kind of thing possible. Everyone wants to make money - that's a given and there's certainly nothing wrong with making money. Advertising is a legitimate means to that end - you assault people with your branding and you figure if 1% of the assaultees buy what you're selling because your jingle is so catchy they can't sleep, you have a cute mascot, or your commercials were genuinely useful - you win. Everyone knows these rules, and we're all aware of them. If you're watching a commercial, you know that the commercial is trying to sell you something, and you know that the commercial is not going to provide you with alternate, potentially competing viewpoints, nor will it give you a list of cheaper or higher quality alternatives to the products being sold. This is just an unspoken rule that we are all aware of - we lay no blame at the foot of the advertisers for doing this because it is their job, and they're playing by the rules.

Where the line blurs is when commercials pretend to be informative, objective analysis. This is exactly what gave rise to the rule that required "Infomercials" to periodically flash text indicating that you were watching a paid advertisement, not an objective talk show of some kind. If the consumer doesn't know that they're being fed slanted commercialism instead of objective analysis because the consumer is being deliberately deceived, then we're dealing with the ugly underbelly. It started with infomercials before the Internet became so ridiculously popular. Now, you have some incredibly devious tactics:

• Forum [censored]s - These people are typically paid. Their job is to go through forums that might be discussing the product for which they are responsible and respond to negative posts and otherwise spin a positive light on their product. I have no qualms with them doing this, I have a serious problem with them pretending to be an impartial member of the "community" when they are nothing more than a shill.
• Wikipimps - These people are basically paid to make sure their product and/or service has a favorable representation on Wikipedia and other online, public locations. Wikipimps and Forum [censored]s are often the same people.
• Blogging for Dollars - A blog becomes quite popular, and a large volume of internet readers move in response to the opinions expressed by a particular blogger. That blogger then is contacted by various people, agencies, and/or manufacturers to do blog posts that appear to be the legitimate opinion of the blogger but are, in fact, little more than scripts handed to the blogger by the manufacturer. Favors ranging from free goodies to cold hard cash have been known to change hands in these situations.
• Game and Game Hardware Reviews and Review Sites - don't even get me started on this one. Sure, there are legitimate sites, but they have to work twice as hard to maintain a good name when surrounded by so many people selling their reviews for money, hardware, or free games.

There are all manner of other schemes, many of which are extremely intricate and tax my pathetic ability at understanding things economical. My understanding of economics is as follows: I give debit card to people selling goodies I want, people give me goodies. Yum!

So, where does that leave the unsuspecting innocent consumer? I'm not talking about the extremely well-informed people that know what's really going on and can spot a "pimped" article, I'm talking about people like my mother, non-geeks, and the huge mass of people that go online to check e-mail, browse the web, and poke around and do what they think is some really well-informed comparison shopping.

The bottom line is that the Internet is at once a dark, dirty, ugly place and the single greatest geek playground of all time. It makes me a bit cynical, as someone who remembers when the "Internet" was actually a hodgepodge collection of scientific publications accessible through this funky thing called HTTP with a terminal application called Lynx and there were no ".com" domains, to think that this kind of thing is going on. My only advice is the same advice that people have been saying for years:

• Just because it's on TV doesn't make it true
• Just because you read it in the newspaper doesn't make it true
• Just because you read it on a blog doesn't make it an opinion that wasn't bought and paid for with goods or services.

Oh, and:

• Beware the Ides of March

And that's all I've got to say about that.

tags: blogosphere  blogs  advertising  money  

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