Writing in Web Pro News, Sharon Drew Morgan believes that blogs are are being exploited.
Her opinion of blogs and their writers is not a charitble one:
"Blogs are our current flavor of the month. Since everyone has opinions, and we all now get a chance to offer our opinions up to world-wide scrutiny, we’ve recognized that blogging offers us a way to easily achieve our 15 minutes of fame."
She has decided that those same blogs are being used for what she terms "sleaze marketing". Of course, it's treated as if the issue of questionable marketing practices was somehow born with the advent of blogging; or at least that of the internet.
She offers the following anecdotal evidence for her condemnation of bloggers:
"I’ve just learned of a company that markets itself as an internet marketing company. It hires people who have expertise in a specific area – say, video games – and hires them out as net-based stealth marketers. Here is what they do: they insinuate themselves into a blogging or chat community. They hang out in the community until they become trusted contributors and likeable personalities with some expertise. And then they ‘mention’ a product they’ve just ‘tried’. They don’t pitch it – oh no, that would be too obvious – they just mention it kindly with a bit of excitement. Just a bit."
After that surprising revelation that there are some shady business practices, operating on chat rooms and communities, she has decided to mistrust all bloggers:
"I, for one, will never trust a blogger’s recommendations again."
Talk about a blanket condemnation!
Well, for one thing, there is no evidence that a blogger is even to blame. The information was posted in a chat community. By the way, BBS's and other discussion boards predate the blogging world. Of course, we wouldn't want such trivial details ruining a perfectly good sensationalist story.
There have been shady business practices, ever since Og the caveman traded a cracked club, to Trog the caveman. The practice of viral marketing, and puffing up a product by word of mouth, is as old as trade and commerce itself.
What we have in the article is what I call the Little Jack Horner theory. named for the nursery rhyme where Jack pulls a plum out of a pie, the analogy is apt.The writer selected carefully through millions of bloggers and found a few "plums".
By the way, the Little Jack Horner nursery rhyme is a political cartoon from Henry VIII's time. It concerned the seizure by King Henry VIII of the monasteries and their vast wealth. "Jack Horner" searched and found a corrupt monastery, as instructed. It was used as a blanket example of all monasteries in England. He had found his "plum" too.
Back to our story, following that digression.
These dastardly bloggers had the audacity, to post on a chat community forum, that a product might be slightly better than its actual value. they may even have been, gasp, paid. As a matter of interest, I don't see anything being written in the article, about a wholesale condemnation and mistrust of message forums. The discussion board venue is where the action took place; not on a blog.
Only bloggers are to blame, of course, and somehow none are ever to be trusted again. Talk about a high tech lynching!
I don't know how the article author ever believes anyone about anything. Well, maybe the sources in the story, but that's different, I suppose.
Based on the flimsy evidence in Web Pro News story, the reader would conclude Ms. Morgen never buys any items on anyone's recommendation.
Or perhaps that distinction of mistrust only illogically applies to writers of blogs.
In any case, blogging got another badly reasoned and irrational hatchet job. The problem for bloggers, is the impression those unfamiliar with blogs will form, of the blogging community.
Of course, as with most things blogging related, the mainstream community may not notice. The Web Pro News article may fly under everyone's radar.
Thanks to The Blog Herald and Steve at Blogger Forum for the link.
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