sirjesse

While A is true, B is not.

A: This comes back to my original point.

To remain consistent, you’d also have to require people who recieve samples to disclose, people who review an advertiser to disclose, and so on.

The best people (see someone like Arrington) already do so, voluntarily. My guess is he would not accept advertising that required (or even gently suggested) he do anything else. And, using PayPerPost, the posters have the option of not taking jobs that disallow disclosure.

Again, we are back to “do you trust the writer?”

And we are at that point whether the blogger accepts advertising, uses PayPerPost, recommends products using affiliate programs or wants to impress the A list.

B: My understanding of PayPerPost is that this is false. You can use PayPerPost and indicate that you do not care whether the review is positive or negative.

I don’t accept advertising on my blog- I don’t hold any AdSense/etc accounts.  I also agree that people may artificially give a product a positive review in order to suck-up (I said so above).

I’m also not against advertising (as I said above).

To be really clear: The two issues with PayPerPost are a) you don’t have to disclose your posts, or that you just participate in the program generally and b) you don’t get paid unless you give a POSITIVE review (er, hello!!!)

When I bring up accepting advertising = influence w/my web 2.0 friends, they instantly say that just because you have an advertiser doesn’t mean you will write good things about them. Fair enough.

Just like when someone uses PayPerPost and specifies that the opinion can be anything (I think they call it “neutral”). Oh, but wait a minute … the people taking ads don’t see it that way. Somehow they are immune to the influence while PayPerPost users are not.

Elitist BS.

I say that, in the end, it comes down to this question: DO YOU TRUST THE PERSON DOING THE WRITING?

One person could be swayed by an advertiser, while another may not. And it is up to you and the conversation in the blogosphere to determine who is who.

Mike Arrington, who I disagree with plenty and respect enormously, could accept as an advertiser every company he recommends. AND I would still trust him to be fair in his reviews on TechCrunch. There are other major blogs who even when they don’t have a company they review as an advertiser … I believe they are whoring themselves to try and ATTRACT them as an advertiser.

It all comes down to CONVERSATION and TRUST.

Rutledge, I agree that Hugh has not disputed that there is a hidden hand of influence that encourages bloggers to artificially “puff up” products like Stormhoek.

Bottom line is that people gift samples to influence reviews. This is nothing new, it has been done in all media since the dawn of time. My gripe is people railing against PayPerPost while the simultaneously a) accept advertising from the people their sites review, and b) don’t acknowledge that sampling (or preferential treatment … or links … or a chance to be part of the in-crowd) is any less of compensation.

Only when the bloggers who are against PayPerPost renounce an advertising model (like Consumer Reports, for example) do they have a leg to stand on when talking about PayPerPost. As it currently is, they are pointing at the obvious example (PayPerPost) in the hopes that no one realizes they have an equal potential for being “bought and paid for.”

Let’s see one of the Web 2.0 pundits drop an advertising model in favor of a subscription model——then, and only then, can the criticize without being the pot calling the kettle black.