I’m guessing that somehow the whole world missed my last post on this. That’s understandable, considering that less than .004% of the world’s population read my blog.
Stowe Boyd is effectively ripping Marc Canter a new one. I talked about Marc’s idea a few days ago.
Stowe goes so far as to say that Marc is a heretic and is completely on his own:
The lines seem to be pretty clearly drawn, On one side, those that contend that “pay-for-ink” is bad, because it will pollute the trust and athenticity that bloggers live by. This camp includes Jason Calcanis, David Weinberger, J Luster, and me. On the other, Marc is pretty much on his own.
Sorry guys, but no, Marc is not on his own.
The problem with all of this is that the idea isn’t new. So, it’s fair enough that Stowe might not be aware of people who are in favour of something very much like this. Here are just a few:
Wayne Hurlbert
Vinnie Garcia
Daily Candy
Stefan Geens
Blog Weblog
Just these few blogs, combined with Ensight, serve up roughly 1,200,000 pageviews a month.
Update: An astute reader notes that there are quite a few more people in favour of this, including:
Paul Scrivens
Derek Featherstone
So, total pageviews per month represented is now approaching 2,000,000.
Those are just the ones I could nail off the “Sponsored Posts” “blog” search on Google.
Now, there are obviously companies allowing just this type of service, including:
Then, of course, there is the fact that quite a few blogs already do sponsored post type things:
Fleshbot’s Advertorials
Fark’s paid posts
And the list really does go on and on.
Again, this idea isn’t new. What is, is that Marc is establishing a longer term relationship between bloggers and a single company (or set of companies). That bloggers have to blog about the company. It doesn’t have to be positive. It can be anything.
What if, for instance, the company was Microsoft? You could blog about their products, recent security vulnerabilities, posts at Slashdot, how to get a job there…
Okay, I’m sure it’s not that open ended (it’s probably a specific product group) but the reality is that if you’re expected to blog on a semi-regular basis for 3 months, there needs to be more than a “w00t this product rocks” type of discussion that happens and I’d think Marc and the company would expect that.
Getting back to Stowe. Stowe, grow up. Every other communications medium has “Advertorials” and that is all Marc is proposing. A clearly marked, paid, “in voice” set of posts from regular old bloggers like you and me. Feel free to not want to do it. But feel free to get a verbal flogging whenever you stick your neck out and say things like “Marc is pretty much on his own”.
Give. Me. A. Break.