Earlier today, a co-worker of mine pinged me with a link to this column by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek about companies pulling a pay for play ... err, write ... in the blogosphere. While the first reaction that this type of article / item typically creates is one of complete and utter shock on the faces of those who believe our world is altruistic, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.
The Bad News
Let's start with the ugliness. Blogs, while they play check-and-balance for each other, don't necessarily have the internal controls that the "big media" we're all used to getting our daily dirt from have. When that kind of situation exists (not that any big mediafolk haven't written tit-for-tat in reality), you're bound to have some apples leaning towards the "bad" variety as far as journalism goes. But herein lies the argument of "is blogging journalism?" To which the response is, as it should be, "it all depends." Some bloggers may be journalists, some blogs may contain journalism, some journalists may partake in non-journalism on blogs, and whatever other combinations you can come up with, but you can't take everything you see on any blog as truth, just as we've learned that not everything we see in our newspapers or on the television as complete and utter fact. It's that some of our other media have a much higher "success" rate when it comes to reality.
So, we're faced with a loophole of sorts on the 'net, one with about 40 million sites that may or may not be on the take. Are they all on the take? Nope. Are some. Sure. What's most important is the title that Fine's item came with, that he (or his editor) added - "Polluting the Blogosphere." Which is where we get to move to the good part.
The Good News
As the title says, what was going on in this particular case is "pollution." Sure, pollution has been known to cause larger problems than just some trash on the corner, but it's not "annihiliation" by any means. The reason these business models exist is because people have seen that blog postings - especially permanent ones - have a much better long-term effect than advertising probably does, even effective text ads, at being a part of overall conversation and getting influentials to pay attention. Is this going to potentially have a negative effect on what bloggers are thinking when they read blogs where people are overly glowing of a product or service? Probably. What we should be worrying more about, probably, are the *negative* blog postings that people could potentially create to do a similar thing. Don't think a company would be slick enough to trash a competitor, because negative comments wouldn't necessarily appear as blatant?
Let's consider that the power-in-numbers situation is more than in effect here. Bloggers who appear to be on the take regularly won't be taken seriously in the long haul by "serious" bloggers and blog readers. Disclosing that you were paid to write about something (which is completely different from saying you were reached out to by the company that thought you might be interested in the product / service) purely makes it look like a textual advertisement written by the blogger in question. People *not* disclosing what they are doing are obviously "free" to do so (that whole capitalism thing and all), but it doesn't mean we will believe everything they say. The value here is more of the mention of the product / service, not necessarily what the review says. Think of what you read on most blogs as how you should consider Wikipedia - a good starting point, not necessarily THE definitive answer-giver.
Most of the bigger blogging groups / companies / teams have decent policies against such things happening, and just making sure your writers - many of whom may have never had a professional writing gig in their lives - know what the "rules" are, ethically and internally, is what makes the difference. On any given day, I'm not one to think that TechCrunch's Mike Arrington or Marshall Kirkpatrick are "on the take" and are being paid to blog about things because they've earned my trust, just as my local newspaper has. Can I say the same thing about some random blog that just appeared on the scene and is randomly writing about some restaurant chain, glowingly, here and there? Probably not, because I don't know much about who's behind it.
This is probably more of a search engine issue than it is anything else as far as ethics goes, which also leads back to the "pollution" concept. A commenter, "Jim Durbin," in the BW item seems to agree, saying that "These companies are paying for link traffic..."
In my eyes, three important things are in play here. The companies involved in this pay-for-write situation are described as "Advertisers," without the quotes, by Fine, and presumably Ted Murphy's PayPerPost.com. When the money quote in an article is "it's up to [bloggers] to be their own morality police," that tells me that everyone involved probably knows that what's going on is wrong. Or at least shady. Most importantly - this isn't just that cash is actually changing hands for people to write "about" a product or service, it's much more specific, seemingly looking for positive only (or close) or you don't get paid. If all of a sudden 50 blogs are going "You've got to do XYZ with ABC" and there's no apparent rhyme or reason for it, someone *will* start looking for answers.
This is a tough situation for public relations professionals, especially those in the "2.0" world, to be forced to contend with. A popular, and for the most part, effective, way of doing things is to reach out to a number of blog writers that you believe to have some interest or relevance regarding a product or service a client offers, and let those in the marketplace sample or have access to said product or service. Should this be considered close to the same situation? It all depends. Some bloggers who consider themselves close to the world of journalism would decline any offering of this type, but others would welcome the opportunity, similar to how those participating in a focus group or test kitchen might have access to a product, service, or activity months before others have, and they are giving their feedback in a closed situation. Here, companies are spinning the wheel, and allowing those individuals to have their say - or say nothing - on their blogs and in their circles of influence. I would argue that this will more closely reach a point of consignment, such as what much of the tech industry does with review journalists, with key members of the blogosphere. This is absolutely happening today, especially in the tech space, but there is a good chance it will widen as the need for different types of feedback or an interest in getting "buzz" out there in a timely and effective manner grows.
At the end of the day, Murphy's "per post" payola situation is one of a number of similar concepts that have been floating around the blogosphere for some time now. Whether or not they have made any headway is probably more subjective than anything. If they measure success by 1,000 more visitors to an advertiser's site, then fine. If they define success by actual sales or conversions, then that's another. In either case, we know that spam works, and we all hate that, right? This is the scheme of the moment, and while it might "pollute" some of our spaces, it's not going to be responsible for the downfall of a good thing.
On Wednesday night, our friends at photo-sharing site Flickr are having some storage issues, and the site's been down for a bit. Instead of going dark, they've got a blog entry in place detailing what is going on, and have set up a nifty contest (click image) to give you something to do to soothe your addiction while this is happening.