Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

There's a couple of multibillion-dollar elephants in the room that you're trying to walk around. The article, in fact, doesn't impugn anyone's honesty but rather suggests that bloggers aren't thinking about money. Reading the article, in which I'm quoted, I don't see "hey a bunch of bloggers are lying!" Rather, in a business and financial context, the reporter points out that disclosure wasn't explanatory.

David, you and Dan Gillmor chose to mention potential financial compensation. The other board members did not. This does not mean -- and the article pretty much demolishes this -- that they are unethical, stupid, greedy. The article makes it very clear that the notion didn't enter their head. But it did Dan's and yours.

The fact is, with Google and Skype and two VCs investing $21 million, you have a situation in which advisers could potentially receive a good pile of money in the form of stock or options. It doesn't matter that you all hadn't discussed that -- those of us not on the advisory board don't know that. An advisory board doesn't imply or disclaim compensation.

So what you're saying is that we, as readers, should implicitly understand that "advisory board" is code for "may or maybe not be compensated beyond entangling relationship of providing advice." That's a hard code to follow.

Your reading of the article is intensely personal, but I have to ask again: if you felt it necessary to mention that you might make $0.00 to $X from your involvement, why does that omission of that fact from other advisory board blogs make the Journal article an attack?

This reminds me of the ridiculous "Forward Loking Statements" disclaimer that companies seem to be compelled to make whenever they issue a press release (examples: http://a9.com/forward%20looking%20statement) lest anyone base a stock purchase on their announcement to the exclusion of all other input.

Surely anyone who invests in the stock market should have the basic concept of due diligence mastered without having to be told.

It's all a part of the current culture of blame and litigation that requires people to be warned when they order a coffee that "coffee is typically delivered hot" and to list the precautions they need to take against mortal peril. Brace yourself for a lawsuit if someone spills and then slips on some coffee you just served them and you hadn't also covered the coffee's viscosity in your disclaimer.

... my point being that it becomes an arms race of ever-expanding disclaimers that has to stop once it gets to a point that the rest should be resonably understood.

I think it was reasonable to leave it at "board member" and not necessary to explain the implications, which to my mind are obvious to most observers.

Glenn, I am reading it differently than you, and it is of course possible that I'm reading it too personally. I've tried not to, and I've tried to keep my response focused on the content of the piece. I undoubtedly have failed. Damn humans! :)

The article's second paragraph seems to me to imply wrong-doing. The rest of it suggests that the wrong doing is a failure to disclose a conflict of interest. Thus its weakly-thought but strongly-stated comparison to Armstrong Williams. (I didn't say that the article calls us liars, and if my post misled you, that's my fault.)

If the article's point is that some or many readers don't know that boards of advisors get compensated, and bloggers who are on such boards need to spell that out, it's really not a very interesting point. I continue to read it as saying that there were conflicts of interest left undisclosed.

Why did I mention compensation? I generally don't when I disclose that I'm an advisor or consultant because I consider that to be obvious. (OTOH, I do talk about compensation for advisors on my disclosure page, but that's intended as a permanent, more complete reference.) I mentioned it this time primarily because I read Rebecca MacKinnon's post in which she mentions that Google's investment in Fon won't discourage her fierce criticism of Google. "Good point!" I thought, and added the compensation phrase because I also sometimes write about Google and Skype. Otherwise, I too would probably have assumed that announcing I'm an advisor indicates that I stand to gain if the company succeeds.

Glenn, I take seriously the possibility that I'm radically misreading the article. But I don't understand your alternative. Are you saying, as per your first paragraph, that the article's thesis is that "bloggers aren't thinking about money"? I don't get that. What do you think Rebecca Buckman's pitch to her editor was?

I think Nicholas Carr nailed one issue

"Still, this story isn't just about the personal integrity of individual bloggers. It's about a company appearing to stack its advisory board with influential bloggers and then reaping a windfall of adulatory coverage. Maybe the dots aren't connected, but it sure looks that way."

[He said it, not me!]

It seems like an outside/insider issue--if you read it as an insider who knows this milieu, it's a slap in the face. If you read it as an outsider, it's a cautionary tale.

Here's what I would guess the pitch was: "Bloggers who wrote about a new company when it received $21m in investment said they were on an advisory board, but not all disclosed that they might have a financial interest in the outcome."

I have to say as an outsider to the Fon board, "advisory board" doesn't mean "winfall" potential or otherwise to me. So when I read the Buckman story, I see an examination of whether it's possible to figure out if any of the people who didn't disclose were another Armstrong-type case or whether they're just naive.

I can't accuse David Isenberg of being naive, but I think there's a kind of pure innocence when Google and Skype invest, when the company founder has suggested but not promised compensation, and then there's a response that why should the issue of compensation and advice be separated?

Now, of course, advice is a form of bias that was clearly disclosed. From the outside, this article is trying to inform a broader business community that there can be less disclosure than they might expect from a similar source that claims journalistic independence (print or online).

If Fon were filing for an IPO, you'd have had your compensation filed in triplicate, publicly available, and you all would have disclosed it almost certainly--or been rightly castigated, not examined.

Buckman wrote: "That can be a murky issue in today's clubby blogosphere, where many people including venture capitalists, lawyers and journalists write about Web issues and companies -- and often, each other -- with little editing."

This is completely true. And the more we understand about the ties--whether of love, money, intellect, or other--the better we can factor in an understanding of the source of a particular bit of analysis or promotion and how to interpret it.

There's one more issue. Blog entries can be read entirely out of context. That's why it's important to disclose in posts when necessary and maintain disclosure pages.

Glenn, let's say you're right about the pitch, as you may well be. Why is that pitch interesting? I'm asking this naive question not to be argumentative but because it might get us to the heart of our different readings.

And of course I agree when you say "the more we understand about the ties--whether of love, money, intellect, or other--the better..." But: How much of that rich context are we required to make explicit in each post? This gets to Brent's point. We can't make it all explicit all the time. All writers have intended readers. We imagine what they know and what they care about. I spelled out WIPO in a post recently but I might not spell out "The UN" or "IP." We make judgments. We're always somewhat wrong and sometimes we're always wrong, if you know what I mean. I just don't see how that justifies a WSJ article unless there's an implication of wrong-doing.

(BTW, I'm going to say in public what you and I both know: We know each other, like each other, respect each other, and care for each other. Obviously, we don't always agree with each other...but when we don't, we have been known to learn from each other.)

So David: how much COULD you make by being on the FON board of advisors? What kind of numbers are being tossed about?

I find it puzzling that you don't think about your readers in all this, and how you might be using them.

Consider this extreme example.

A blogger has had a personal, sexual relationship with someone he or she is bashing in an article he or she has written. The blogger doesn't disclose the personal relationship. Suppose the article isn't about the personal relationship, it isn't personal at all, it's about the way the person runs his or her business, how he or she treats his or her customers. Suppose the article gets a lot of play, and becomes the top item on Daypop or Memeorandum, lots of other people jump on, suppose you yourself jump on.

Later it turns out that the original blogger was angry because he or she got dumped, and had no insight into the business practices of the person he or she trashed.

How would you feel if you were a reader of the blog, or were influenced by one of the bloggers who made a decision based on the pile-on caused by the initial post? Would you feel that something had been compromised?

How would you feel if you were the person victimized by this?

Now, David, what if you loved the blogger involved like you love the people you write about here? Why exactly would that make a difference, or should it? Is blogging about who you love, or in some sense are we trying to exchange a little information here? Are we on the Cluetrain or the Lovetrain? Is this about who you're friends with or who is doing good work or even the right thing?

I've watched you dance around this for years, and you get away with it. Now maybe you're going to have to put up with someone looking into your ethics, and you don't like it.

This time you didn't disclose something that maybe you should have. Why not just stop right there. Why does the Wall Street Journal have to be wrong, what if they're right? Maybe the blogosphere doesn't always come up with the right answer? Maybe you have to work a little harder than you have been? Maybe who you love isn't that important to the rest of us.

David: I think you have it exactly right. The real story seems to be that the reporter was digging for dirt, didn't find any, so slanted the article to imply guilt where there was in fact CLEAR disclosure. The blogosphere certainly isn't perfect, but the legacy media again falls far short in comparison. (Where was the vaunted editorial process? The story as written is just plain wrong.)

Glenn: I think you're trying to elevate your own personal preferences ("If I were to be asked to be on an advisory board, it would have to be a company outside of my typical coverage area, and I would almost certainly require an agreement in which I foreswore all compensation.") into a universal standard. If that's what works for you, great. Personally I think advisors should be paid. And, whether or not they are paid, I think the same "grain of salt" should be applied; the advising relationship itself introduces the potential for bias.

It's becoming clearer to me that if there is anything interesting about this incident, it was the ingenuous use of free bloglic relations by FON, and the harmonious echoes out of Berkman. The non-Berknoids on the board, Esther and Jerry for example, didn't find the time to publish the blog release, but the extended family -- all you wonderful people whom I admire for your insights, your talents, and the good you do with the energy you give -- you all delivered the same message:

"FON is good. Not great yet, and there are some drawbacks. I'm on an advisory board and I could make a few bucks out of the company. Or not. But we're down with Google doing no evil as they profoundly influence the little company we're advising."

Or something like that. I blogged about at my place, and I wish you'd edit out the trackback feature here since it doesn't work.

It is interesting how easy it is for us to assume that someone -- in this case, David (and the other usual suspects, of course) -- is so easily corruptible, so devoid of anything resembling character, that when some company throws them a few bucks, or even the promise of a few bucks maybe in the future sometime, that they'd immediately bend over and start shilling. If it's so easy to pic on Doc W, whose integrity credentials are, at least in my view, impeccable, what hope do other folks have of avoiding the sticky stink of the money, or just of the accusation of being whiffy?

I'm not surprised David took the suggestion of wrongdoing personally, and I sympathize (and would have gone on the warpath were it me), but it's not really about him. Accusations and dark whispers of this kind are not a commentary, justified or otherwise, on the persons under the microscope. The airing of suspicions like these speaks more about how degraded our conceptions of honour and integrity have become, and how corrosive money is to... well, everything good.

The default assumption (for good reason, perhaps, given how dirty from the dollars almost everyone seems to be, which is perhaps as it ever was everywhere but in the blog world) is that there's conflict of interest (or, in plainer language, 'whoring') happening, rather than that the person has any integrity or restraint in the face of monetary rewards.

The line is long and it's clear, and it stretches right back to Raging Cow (remember that? It'd barely turn a head these days), up through Marquis and Adsense to Google.cn, and right to this very spot.

Meh. Much ado. The article seemed to me an inuendo-laden attempt to smear blogland with a greeny "seee, they're not so hot" brush. MSM journos still like to poke at supposed blogger influence whenever possible...and in other news, dog bites man.

David, you're right and you should breathe easy. Most of us get that disclosing you're on the advisory board could in fact mean there's (at least potentially) a financial bonus in it for you at some point down the road. I don't think details are necessary.

Whatever happened to the simpler motivations in life? What of the simple heady rush of "I told ya so!" Is Esther's shrug and David's "hey, now!" evidence of Berkman voodoo or is it fluke of happenstance? Mebbe.

Whatever, I think David and co have accrued enough trust capital that this guilt-by-inuendo tack shouldn't mean an increased tax on their doubt benefits. Ifyaknowhatumsayin.

I'm surprised this hasn't been phrased as old media not fully understanding a decentralized media landscape. I read this blog everyday, and very much appreciate your insights and thoughts, but you're not the WSJ, and you won't ever be, and you shouldn't try to be. I'm glad you chose to disclose your relationship, but you didn't have to, and if you didn't the sky wouldn't have fallen. Someone probably would have pointed it out, and people may have thought less of you, or not.

The point is, you're a person, not a media source, and you have opinions, and biases, if someone follows your blog they will know what you like and dislike. I'm glad you did disclose your relationship, but to the people who think you might be influenced by money I would have to ask, have they read anything about you? The idea that it would take a stack of money to get you interested in a distributed grassroots wifi system strains credibility. Now if tomorrow you start talking about how Verizon and SBC should write more public policy I might think to follow the money trail.

To me it just seems like a bitter reporter lashing out at what they see as "journalists" "reporting" about companies at which they sit on the board. What they are missing is that you're not journalists reporting, you're people talking.

To me it just seems like a bitter reporter lashing out at what they see as "journalists" "reporting" about companies at which they sit on the board. What they are missing is that you're not journalists reporting, you're people talking.

Zigackly. I've written newspaper columns (well, trade-press columns) and I know a thin column when I see it. I'd also take issue with the anonymous commenter:

Is blogging about who you love, or in some sense are we trying to exchange a little information here? Are we on the Cluetrain or the Lovetrain? Is this about who you're friends with or who is doing good work or even the right thing?

I've watched you dance around this for years, and you get away with it.

It's a good point, but blogging is about who you love as well as about information - it's people shooting the breeze about things and people they like, not Authoritative Information from self-proclaimed Information Authorities (*gr'mph*technorati*koff*). And yes, there will be times when the same cool stuff gets plugged by the same cool kids, and for those of us who are not now and never have been cool it can get a bit wearing. But I don't think David's been 'dancing around' that issue, I think he's been negotiating it - publicly, in real time and pretty conscientiously.

On the contrary, I think it was important, necessary even, for David to reveal the connection. We've come to trust David and his expertise in certain matters. With authority and trust come responsibility. The details aren't really anyone's business, but any potential conflicts of interest must be revealed, whether it's via conversation with a trusted source, or sopped with the anglefied manna from the Guardians of Impartiality.

Most of us get that disclosing you're on the advisory board could in fact mean there's (at least potentially) a financial bonus in it for you at some point down the road. I don't think details are necessary.


I, for one, happen to think details are necessary.


Dave gets invited to be a member of an "advisory board" because, in some measure, of his visibility, his reputation, his ability to cast whatever entity he is affiliated with in a benevolent reflected light.

Dave's a "good guy" because he's espoused certain beliefs about the net and what it "means" that appeal to people. I don't happen to believe many of those are true, but they still appeal to people and that's part of Dave's appeal, part of what makes people "trust" him.

So when Dave gives an interview to Rebecca Blood and says something to the effect that he doesn't believe that blogs and bloggers should be judged on the basis of how many people read them, it sort of flies in the face of his association with Technorati that relies on making exactly those sorts of judgments.

The "Top 100" has slowly been shrinking as a feature on Technorati's home page, and they've kind of branched out into different categories of top this or that, but it's still about fostering and promoting competition and exploiting that. Something that I think is probably inevitable, but unfortunate.

Perhaps Dave thinks so too, but why does he have to lend his reputation to a company that doesn't seem to reflect his values? He's said that it's because Dave Sifry is his friend. Fine. So what's the necessity to be on the "board of advisors?" If Dave and Dave are friends, wouldn't Dave S take Dave W's phone calls anyway? Wouldn't he answer his e-mail?

No, it suggests that Dave hopes to, someday, profit from his association with Technorati. And that's the American dream, so aren't I, in fact, indicting our whole way of life? Or whatever Otter or whoever made that speech in Animal House said.

But it really suggests to me that Dave likes to suggest what he thinks the web should be about, ("it ought to be a conversation"), but that's not really an operative component of his belief system. It doesn't inform his actions when they may conflict with his self-interest.

Now Dave's perfectly within his rights to flip me the bird and tell me to fuck off, but that's the way I see this. Dave and Doc have made quite a reputation for themselves saying things that people want to hear, but those things don't really matter when it comes down to making a buck. Which is true, to one degree or another for all of us unless we happen to be independently wealthy.

The sad irony is, to my mind, that Technorati gets the better part of the deal here. They get the benefit of their association with the Cluetrain authors, the attention, the reflected glory, while the Cluetrain authors get to see their ideas devalued and their reputations compromised by the association, all for the promise of a few dollars, and some ideas about friendship that I don't really understand.

I get a different vibe off Doc S than I do from David. Locke, of course, is netherworldly in his unique vibocity. I get zilch from that fourth conductor whose name is never mentioned.

And that's pretty much as it should be. That is to say there's different nuances, shades and x,y positions in that plane of intersecting subsets. Muddy? Well it's too early.

This comes down to a difference between those who always see things thru a black-n-whitey purity filter and those who will sometimes venture to tip toe through the minefield of human contradiction.

In the end, Cluetrain was about transparency. Interconnectedness allows the crowd, in our unwashed wisdom, to better see the marketeers glittery rags for what they are. David's bared enough, I think.

Does he have capital enough to be trusted on this issue or not?

Have his "dealings" with Technorati bankrupted him?

You go your way, I'll tip toe through mines.

I get a different vibe off Doc S than I do from David.

Indeed. I might be taking a harsher line if this discussion were happening on Doc's weblog - but then, I don't think a discussion quite like this would happen on Doc's weblog. I don't always agree with David - I agree with a lot of what DaveR says - but I think he invites more flak than a lot of his peers do, & consequently cops more of it than he really deserves.

Locke, of course, is netherworldly in his unique vibocity.

No offence-by-omission to David (or Doc), but Chris Locke is a stone solid genius.

I get zilch from that fourth conductor whose name is never mentioned.

Whatever happened to him?

David's posted disclosure statement at http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/misc/disclosure.html serves as a model for others. None of this is about making money from what we love, nor about who we love, nor about personal integrity. It's a two-day wonder brewed up by a single main stream media source who has an intuitive sense regarding a dim echo she heard from a sounding board of bloggers.

I find it interesting because some of the deepest thinkers in the industry are gathered to promote simple solutions about a complex public utility marketplace, a marketplace that naturally evolves toward monopolistic concentration but paradoxically thrived in the early era of deregulation when the statutory monopoly was busted.

At what point does the deregulated environment congeal, clot, solidify again dominated at least geographically by monopolies? When will this all turn sour and spike the dreams of the "stupid network" advocates? How might we introduce reasonable regulation to keep those stupid-network dreams alive? Is asking this question beyond the pale (i.e. outside the wrought iron fence surrounding Harvard)?

Buckman gets it that there is a story in all this. She just doesn't know how to find the story. I probably don't either, but I know there's a lot more involved than a single blogger-based PR win for a small company with a big vision.

I'll add my belated $0.02 (although it's Canadian, so it's not worth as much as everyone else's $0.02):

I think this tempest in a blogs-pot reveals an interesting shift in the business ground under UCaPP conditions. Under the old paradigm and governing rules, there *must* be a fairly direct tangible, motivation (ie, close-to-direct compensation) for contributing to a business's success where the the contributor has a nominal arms-length relationship with the business. The WSJ - not as a member of old-media but as a member of old-business - understands the world according to this paradigm. Hence, the so-called influential bloggers (an accusation with which I wouldn't disagree) must have a pecuniary interest somewhere - it's just a matter for the mud-diggers to find.

As I perceive the changes occurring under UCaPP conditions, the nature of compensation becomes far more subtle and nuanced, and far more indirect. Much of it has to do with reputation as convertible currency. In this case, for example, if David is seen as being an advisor to a company that creates a surfeit of beneficial effects throughout its total environment (eg. creates a greater good in society, is respectful of its people, becomes fiscally sound and profitable, enables other companies to create equally beneficial effects) then David's reputation increases, as does his ultimate economic value in the things he does to pay his own bills - irrespective of whether or not he actually receives direct, or once-removed, compensation from his advising that company. David's own success as a network enterprise (in Manual Castells's terms) is dependent on that greater reputation.

The WSJ has not yet adapted and adopted to the changes in the business environment so created by UCaPP - they're still in the instrumentality and functionality phase, as are almost every other business, institution and organization.

(Note to David: Yes, this theme is part of my thesis research.)

lets be honest: FON knew what they were getting when they signed up these boggers, free publicity. And it makes sense for a start-up, 'hire' well known folks for nothing, they blog about 'how great the idea is' money comes in, they get paid. Very simple transaction, they are lobbyist. Paid (in the future) to speak.

I am ex Gartner and now help CIOs evaluate technologies

Buyers know

Print media gets vendor ads
Gartner gets vendor revenue
Wall Street analysts allow their banking colleagues to earn fees

Most buyers rely on a variety of sources - and increasingly on peers for input. A blogger is another datapoint. Let's not kids ourselves of our influence - or feel overly guilty if we get comped by a vendor or two.

It is good form to disclose, though. But let's be realistic. Do you know what IBM pays Information week, Oracle pays Gartner or IBM pays Morgan Stanley?

I have heard of reputable publications assigning stories and asking a journalist to come up with, or hint strongly at, a conclusion. I can’t disclose details, but this WSJ article sure smells like one of those situations. David: I think you’re right to defend your friends in this non-story.

David: (I've been thinking about this for a while, btw) in general, I think it'd be relevant for your disclosure to say, when applicable:

Disclosure: Because I am an advisor to this company, personal relationships and other factors (including potential or actual financial compensation) may be influencing my point of view on this topic.

Your disclosure about fon was pretty clear to me, but it took me a while to recognize that there might be some "influence" with regards to your writing on topics relevant to other companies you advise (e.g., Technorati, Socialtext).

Personally, I don't see these "influences" as undermining the authority or value of your writing / posts (which, IMHO, have a consistent and noticalbe integrity). Your disclosure just helps remind me to read your writing critically with regards to the source of your enthusiasm for your topic, e.g., that, in these cases where you are an advisor, it can no longer be seen as "pure enthusiasm".

Very well organized site. I particularly liked the resources section.
Will use it to plan my next trip to NWT. See you soon.

Is FON going public?

The company is just getting started. IMO it's a long way away from going public, if it ever does.