Nick Denton’s Valleywag reported that his pseudo-competitor John Battelle’s Federated Media might have crossed the integrity line when he got Microsoft to pay for a bunch of his roster’s so-called elite, A-list bloggers to write something that supported MSFT’s “People Ready” campaign.
Dave “no nonsense” Winer chimes in here. By the time the dust settles, a lot more will. In the few minutes since I started writing this, CNET’s jumped on board, too.
I wasn’t gonna touch this initally. Then I said “who cares,” let’s piss of some more people. Also, by way of disclosure, I “know” some of the people MSFT has sponsored, “know” in the Web blogging sense.
Anyway, my take is simple: while this is certainly questionable and in my opinion, wrong, it comes with the terrain of a new medium, ie. blogs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not prescribing to the Amanda Congdon school of “I’m not a journalist so I can do and say what I want.” Au contraire, I think this will eventually not pass at all, but as the medium grows, we’ll see this kind of stuff. Mainly, in 1, 3, 5 years, do you really think as many VCs will be blogging as do today? But more on that later.
On the one hand, I’m tired of the whole “conversational media” BS, cause blogs are anything but. Adding comments and being bombarded with spam comments is anything but conversational, it’s sycophantic in the sense that the blogger controls the conversation, thus making it a monologue, and in effect largely what traditional publications are.
The problem, of course, is that despite the obsession these days around blogs, be it Rafat Ali’s Content Next Media, Michael Arrington’s Tech Crunch, Om Malik’s GigaOmniMedia or Ashkan Karbasfrooshan’s Blogger Mojo - allrighty, scratch that last bit of shameless and delusional promotion - blog are not really publications in the strict sense that advertisers want.
Don’t get me wrong, some provide better food for thought and fodder than most venerable publications do, but they offer neither the:
- brand equity,
- audience demographic, nor
- reach
that advertisers like MSFT ask for. So savvy salesmen like John Battelle go in, pitch these “beyond the banner” ideas and elite A-list bloggers go along with it, because, well, they’re either inexperienced in traditional publishing, think they’re beyond traditional publishing rules or simply don’t see anything wrong with it. [Update: Battelle’s comments here].
Fred Wilson, I can imagine, sees nothing wrong with this because he pays his proceeds to charity. To him, the problem is yours, not his. [Update: See Fred’s comment and link to this post in the comments].
Richard McManus, who runs one of the more in-depth blogs and is a model for what blogging tools should be used for, probably could care less because his empire is growing and he welcomes the MSFT seal of approval. [Update: Read Richard’s two cents here].
Michael Arrington boasts about his conflicts of interest and this is probably on page 2 of his list of potential conflicts. [Update: just as I suspected, Arrington comes out gunning and throws a red herring at Valleywag, which makes you wonder about the validity of some of his earlier MSFT claims: “Take Time To Understand: Why Silverlight is Important“. Not surprisingly, notice how on his CrunchNotes post he suddenly calls the MSFT slogan “lame.” Class all the way. My beef with Arrington’s stance is this he’ll come out and say that he wants to be larger than CNET, implying he’s in the same category of publications etc., yet he wants to be evaluated based on a different set of rules. That’s utterly hypocritical and arrogant. When you scan the landscape of tech bloggers, you get a sense of who will stick around and be relevant in 1 or 5 years, and who won’t be. Judging by his reaction to this, you can imagine where I cast my vote on his legacy. Once in a while, humility goes a long way, but we’re wasting our breath here].
Paul Kedrosky, a very smart VC with a great concise blog’s tagline is Infectious Greed, so I doubt he cares much about our objection. [Update: Paul’s answer, here].
I am surprised to see Om Malik go along with this, with his B2.0 background and what not, I could see him passing but when someone comes to you as a writer and says MSFT wants to partner with you, how could you turn that down? Of course, he has VCs now with high expectations, and adding MSFT to his client list is too good to pass up. [Update: Om reacts in a classy way, as suspected, but we think he’s just taking it way too hard.]
Mainly, the point I’m making, is that this comes with the territory and new terrain they’re charting. We’re still experimenting with blogs, and while they’re not going to be much different than “traditional media” down the road, they are now.
Take me for example, if I’m going to write this story, I should technically email all of the parties involved and get their take (that’s what CNET, Winer and Denton, I presume did). But I can’t be bothered. I’m a PR spinster myself when I need to be, I don’t to hear such spinning from others. I’ve also worked as a VP of Sales and been in Battelle’s shoes and know it ain’t easy.
I worked for 7 years in ad sales and held some publishing and editorial duties and always sought to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, but with blogs, we sometimes think it’s different. Over time, it’s not different, and things like this to be done to incite (oh oh here I go) a conversation about whether or not it’s kosher.
Update added: All it would have required was for the bloggers to make a post on their blogs explaining what it was. It’s not, after all, like they were writing up posts about MSFT’s People Ready campaign… but once you write text for a client, you’re not really a publisher, you’re an ad agency.
While Ask.com has run some irreverent and in most people’s opinions, ineffective ads, it’s gotten people talking about what Ask.com should be stressing, effectively making the ad campaign effective, in a crazy way.
I really doubt that Battelle et al. thought this would get bloggers’ attention in a good way. Frankly, it makes me distance from MSFT, dislike Battelle’s tactic (note singular John) and distrust what the bloggers have to say.
But in the end, few of them actually blog because they need to, they blog because they like to, meaning that they really have no one to please but themselves.
All right, people, let’s move in… now we’re giving MSFT way too much credit, and promo.
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June 22nd, 2007 at 11:48 pm
[…] But today the campaign, which has been running for close to two months, brought up doubt about my editorial integrity for some of you. […]
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 am
Hey, a nicely articulated post. But…I’m still not sure where you stand on this. My beef is that this is close enough to a Pay per Post environment that it’s not fair for the elites to suggest the high road (I’m NOT a PPP blogger myself).
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:58 am
i can’t believe you think there’s anything wrong with this. it’s an ad banner connected to a landing page where we all contributed some thoughts on what “people powered business” means.
here’s my thoughts on the subject
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/06/why-is-nick-den.html
And I do care about integrity even though I give all the money from my blog to charity. I wouldn’t take money to write the “In Love With My Curve” post.
Posts are content
Ads are paid content
This is a really cool campaign that tries to make the banners a bit more interesting and relevant.
Fred
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
Fred,
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
As an ad guy, I love it.
As a publisher, I just think all of the respective bloggers should have made a post on it on their respective blogs, that really would have taken the “valleywag” out of the matter. It would have been beyond what you were obliged to do, since indeed, you were not posting it on your blog… but this is the Web, everything comes up, everything is a click away, etc.
By not disclosing, you (all of you, not you individually) sort of made it seem like you were beyond “conflicts of interest” in publishing.
I understand blogs are new, different and game-changing, but it does not mean that just cause you blog you can overlook the Church and State line between sales and publishing.
Denton has his pros and cons, but I’m of the belief that him injecting some of the rules (or reminding us of them) of traditional publishing is actually a good thing. No one has to abide by them, but if the new standard bearer is Michael Arrington, who brags about being conflicted, then yeah, let’s balance it out.
Mainstream Media is getting into blogs for the dynamic, quick pace after all, not so that they can run payola (I’m not suggesting any of you posted MSFT plugs on your site as plugs, just saying that once you write ad copy for a client, you sort of should explain what it is and why it’s for).
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:17 am
Joe, Thanks.
That’s done on purpose, some people might have had a beef cause they’re jealous. Others had a real beef because they don’t want to see church and state cross lines. I understand both sides to an argument, and this ain’t no different.
I think the idea is good, it was poorly executed on the risk side.
I’ve always been half ad sales guy, half publisher, so I can’t be blind to the objectives of one over the other…
Whenever you close an ad deal, and it involves anything other than display banners, you really need to take a step back and consider everything you need to do re: integration.
In this case, before the launch, since it is all “part of the conversation,” the bloggers should have explained what it was…
That would have engendered a healthy debate, MSFT would have gotten good press, in this case, I doubt they will… and other advertisers might shy away from taking risks, which is an overall negative.
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:59 am
Well said Ashkan:
“But in the end, few of them actually blog because they need to, they blog because they like to, meaning that they really have no one to please but themselves.”
Nothing wrong with blogging to please yourself, for circle of friends and beyond. That’s what is great about blogs. Everyone can be a publisher and reach an audience. You don’t have to care that much what other people think. You trust yourself, your own judgments. Take it or leave it. I don’t think that is how Om and some other bloggers approach their profession, how they earn their living. He is more concerned about earning the public’s trust and eliminating any perception that he takes MS’s money by actively participating in a kind of Dewar’s campaign. For example if submitted in response to the question “When did you know your company was people ready?” Om or any others said, “What I know is that People Ready is a crappy marketing slogan” would it have run in the ad? The journalism world has changed, and for the better, but there are some boundaries that should be considered.
DF
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:14 am
Dan, thanks for reading and commenting.
I agree with you, but what is amazing re: “What I know is that People Ready is a crappy marketing slogan, would they have run the campaign?”
See how TC responds in Crunch Notes:
“It isn’t a direct endorsement. Rather, it’s usually an answer to some ***lame*** slogan created by the adveriser. It makes the ad more personal and has a higher click through rate, or so we’ve been told. In the case of the Microsoft ad, we were quoted how we had become “people ready,” whatever that means.”
Nice. So it’s not lame before people call you on it, then to justify the move, unlike Om who takes the humble/classy route, he blasts Valleywag and calls the slogan “lame.”
That’s hot.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Gentlemen, it was a real stupid idea to participate in the Campaign to begin with. Non of the participants need this campaign to survive. Their names, reputation and integrity is what makes me read their blogs.
Shame on the creator of the campaign for not explaining clearly the implications of such endorsement. I for one as a reader was a bit uncomfortable reading my favorite bloggers (appearing) endorsing msft.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 pm
[…] yet another blogging controversy floating around the blogosphere, regarding Microsoft and Federated Media using several […]
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
[…] at CNet: “Why would ostensibly independent voices come across as Microsoft shills?” Here’s Ashkan Karbasfrooshan joining the discussion: “Frankly, it makes me distance from […]