Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I myself have just recently been approached by an online store asking me to link to their wares. (More accurately, I'd been linking to some items on Amazon and they wanted me to link to them on their store instead.) They offered me a gift to do it. I said yes, telling them that I'd review the item on my blog and that I would publicly disclose the nature of our relationship so there would be no confusion.

Sure, it's kind of whorish, but so is going to work every day.

How about every person who's talking up Technorati seems to be connected to it in some way (cough cough). Most people find the service terribly slow and that it misses tons of stuff.

That seems to me to muddy the water, Damien. I use technorati not because they give me something for free (other than the free service, of course), and I mention it when appropriate not because they've asked me to or promised me rewards. I almost always (using my judgment) note my relationship. Plus, check my disclosure statement button in the left-hand column.

The problem is that my real relationship to technorati is that I'm friends with people who work there. It's very hard to avoid being affected by friendship. But buzz marketing is not about friendship.

Scott, I'm not sure what work you do, but when I get up in the morning and go to work, I don't consider it "whorish."

Bzzagent reads to me like an obvious scam. They bribe people to plug products they may or may not like or trust. We have no way of knowing what they genuinely think of the products they are plugging. We are expected to take what they say at face value. Would you trust anything a Bzzagent tells you? I wouldn't and I also don't think the blogiverse can be gamed so easily. When people write something down, it is incredibly transparent whether what they have written is something they believe in or whether they are just spouting it to, for example, earn advantage in some weird cult-like organization like Bzzagent.

What I am scared of is that somene buzzes my blog. Quite a few people read it because they get varied and unbiased info - I'd hate to think that someone wrote about a product because they had anb ulteria motive.

P

Just to clarify my own situation: I have nothing to do with bzzagent. I maintain a wish list of things I would like to have. An online reseller asked if I would link to his store for those items on my list that he carries. He has offered me a gift for doing so and I said I would take it. The whole agreement is on my site for all to see.

While the arrangement is certainly different than having no agreement with the people that I link to, it's also different than simply plugging things that I don't necessarily believe in. These are products that I really want and the reseller is a company that I have bought from before.

The technorati comparison is relevant I think. I've seen at least 2 other big time bloggers who reference them a lot, and they have "advisory" roles to Technorati.

If I want a bunch of bloggers generating buzz about my offerings, is it ethical to start handing out "advisory" titles and benefits to the well read bloggers? That's what I see Technorati doing. I guess its ethical, the relationships are stated. But for some reason I trust them and the people who write about them a little less, mostly because I find Technorati sucks too much to have the buzz the has.

But I might just take the same tactic myself someday soon for my own projects. It appears to work.