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Sponsored blog posts sad reality

Written on

Mar 5, 2009 

Author

Edward Barrera  |

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Sponsored blog posts sad reality

ADOTAS — What is a blogger’s credibility worth?

One difference I find between the newspaper world and online is the idea that it is OK for bloggers to get money from the companies they write or may write about. It’s true that there have been print reporters caught taking money. But look what happened: outrage, dismissal. Instead, in the blogosphere, you get a lot of thumbsucking platitudes to integrity, credibility, similar to what a politician says about taking thousands of dollars of contributions from a company or industry that he might have sway over. And then, people continue to do it.

I was reminded of this after reading how a report by Forrester Research talking up paid blogs posts got Google’s attention because it left out of its guidelines that it should be disclosed and have “no follow” tags so as to not fool the Google spider.

Now we are a lean operation and have paid advertisers. I have nothing to do with them, and if my boss told me to write something nice about our advertisers, which he never has, I would say no. We’re not breaking Watergate here, so it’s not really an issue. But if it happened, it would be a problem.

I’m not talking about a beer here, a lunch there. I’m not fanatical. Maybe I should be. But when you go to an all-expense trip to Las Vegas or get hundreds of dollars to spend, do you want to cut off that funding? Are you going to be critical? I’m not talking about a company that sends you its new gadget to try; I’m talking about added perks that go up and beyond just the product.

A sponsored post wouldn’t sway me, but obviously it works. Sad really.

Tags: blogs, ethical, internet-advertising and sponsors

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