Isn’t this a little bit of an oxymoron if considered in the future tense? Some 15 supposedly “independent bloggers” will be paid $800 a month and sales-lead-based commissions to mention Marqui‘s hosted communications management services. I want to find out more about this rent-a-blogger effort–and I don’t mean for the purposes of selling out to Marqui.
Advertising in blogs is fine. And I myself plead guilty to mentions of, say, Open Reader or, gasp, TeleRead–this is, after all, the TeleRead blog, and if you’re going to preach in favor of well-stocked national digital libraries, you might as well contaminate yourself with open-standards advocacy at the same time. But paid mentions, systematically planted? That’s the last thing the Blogosphere needs when ignorant journalists and librarians are eagerly badmouthing blogs.
Interestingly, PR man Steve Rubel, author of the Micro Persuasion blog, believes that the paid-mention approach is tainted. Let’s hope that enough others in PR and elsewhere feel the same. An advisor hired for the paid-plug experiment is Marc Canter who cofounded Macromedia and is now working on the laudable OurMedia project. Let’s hope that he has second thoughts. “This is a stupid idea,” says a skeptic who apparently moves around in the same circles as Canter. “Remind me to smack Marc next time I see him.”
Related: Bloggers & Affiliate Marketing – They’re Calling it “Product Placement,” found at Threadwatch.
