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I must say I like the bias though, its one of the things that attracts me to blogs. It adds a humanity to the medium that is engaging. I do agree that consistent repetition of a blogger pet peeve can get old and boring after a while.
a couple of points:
t is as dishonest to dump on a product because you don’t like its creator as it is to write sponsored content and not disclose that the content is sponsored.
Not "dishonest"--not even unethical. This is the kind of "pissing contests" that go on in the tech world.
Also, don't confuse what has gone on with PayPerPost and what goes on in tech blogs. Two different worlds, two different sets of rules govering them. The FTC came out with the following recommendation last year contingent on the evolving nature of word-of-mouth marketing and complaints against PPP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...
This is when disclosure became required for word of mouth marketing--and, in part because of complaints against PPP. That came out at last year's WOMMA conference as there were several ethical breeches last year in the word-of-mouth-marketing world.
Further tech writers don't have any particular obligation to leave their personal opinions out of their blogs. Their blogs are their own "homes" on the Internet--and there are differences between someone's personal blog and someone's business blog. You will find differences in these when you explore them. Furhter, there are folks out there who could argue that you shouldn't be telling the world about your personal life on you blog (yes, I've heard that a time or two.) What we should/shouldn't do on our blogs is, really, contingent on the use of our blogs. It's fine, even "ethical" if someone wants to dis someone else--who knows? by dissing smoeone, someone just might be pointing out an ethical breech somewhere (this is not in reference to Mahalo--just in general.) And if there's some belief that saying something negative is "unethical" will further civility, well, that's rather naieve and a form of censorship (which many of the "civility" arguments boil down to.)
Civility is not censorship. and dissing someone isn't "unethical" how it's done may be childish, but it isn't "unethical."
Perhaps it would have been better for me to say it's intellectually dishonest. The bottom line is that it will mislead a casual reader who isn't familiar with the backstory.
Tish, I'm familiar with the history on PPP. However, for every person who did not disclose in the beginning there were three who did. It was unfair for all the trashing and piling on to keep on and on, and the ones who suffered were the folks like us who did disclose and held ourselves to a standard of conduct that included disclosure.
Matthew, I have no problem with bias or passion, unless it's personal, which this has become.
Andrew Baron made Mahalo sound downright evil, and it's not. He may think Calacanis is evil but that shouldn't impact Mahalo, which has a lot of good people working really hard.
I don't think Andrew made Mahalo out to be "evil"--that's stretching it into a level of unnecessary hyperbole. He sees problems with it, and he gave Jason ample space to disagree, defend his product, even post links to stories about Mahalo. If Andrew thought it so evil, do you think he would have allowed it? and do you think Jason would have even bothered to take the time it took to leave those comments if that were the case?
Trashing someone also isn't intellectually dishonest--we all have our opinions on things and sometimes those opinions aren't necessarily all nice and sweet. There is nothing in any books on intellectual discourse that says we always have to play nice--in fact, sometimes being nice is inherently dishonest. The old saw of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say it at all" leads to a whole host of repressed anger and emotional dishonesty that eventually comes out in other ways....
Not to mention that saying something nice when you don't believe it, or omitting saying anything when everyone praises something to high heaven is also intellectually dishonest as well as two-faced, emotionally dishonest, misleads people to think something is great when it may be very flawed and a very bad practice overall.
Besides if we all only post nice things, then there would be no discourse. and one part of this whole medium of blogging is about opening up discourse that does not happen in the press-- not about always being nice to your buddies or if someone pays you to say nice things...
Which goes on out here, just as much as it goes on in p.r. circles....
As for PPP, please--it's got its problems, and has from the beginning. And I don't thing the FTC was unnecessarily "trashing" PPP. When the FTC has something to say about what you're doing, it's pretty serious.
My reference to 'painting Mahalo as evil' came from this statement in Andrew's post:
The "splogs" and "selfish nuisance" comments were specifically what I was referring to. If I were one of the people making those pages I would take personal offense to being labeled a splogger.
Opinions, even strongly held opinions, are not the problem here. The problems happen when those opinions really express how one feels about the person behind the product and not the product itself. At that point, they transcend opinion and become attacks.
Saying that Mahalo is similar to a "splog" is really a damaging characterization. I hate splogs. I certainly wouldn't support one when I spend part of every day getting rid of sploggy trackbacks on this blog and I definitely wouldn't give it a thumbs-up on this blog.
The discussion in the comments is pretty revealing -- links to a bunch of different positive reviews are provided and still, Baron finds a way to ignore them and stand by his original statement. That's just being intellectually dishonest, in my opinion, and it doesn't serve readers or information seekers well, because the goal is to push the agenda and not the information.
I want an honest, objective review and that's all. Not nice things about a flawed product. If it's flawed, say it's flawed and say why in the context of the technology, or whatever. Just be fair and not personal, that's all.
If you look at some of the posts here, I have no problem being passionate, but I temper that passion is tempered by factual support. In this case, it appears as though a gauntlet has been thrown and answered without acknowledgement.
Andrew's piece wasn't meant to be a review of Mahalo. It was a blog entry--and as such not in the business of not being personal.
please--not everyone who writes a blog or blogs about something's writing a product review. And "people," i.e. readers of blogs--esp. tech blogs--usually know the difference.
Tish, Andrew's post wasn't the only post I was discussing, but at any rate, he turns his post into a review of sorts when he starts making statements about it not being a service, but rather, a splog, don't you think?
I value hands-on feedback about sites more than formal PC World/Mag-like reviews. Isn't that one of the foundations of the "Web 2.0 conversation" values? They carry more weight with me, but they do need to be fair. I shouldn't have to read with my fight filter on.
Truly, if he'd have prefaced his post by saying "I really cannot stand Jason Calacanis and his self-promoting ways" I would have known how much weight to assign what followed and he could've written whatever. Disclose, disclose, disclose.
I think you are confusing blogging with a kind of marketing that blogs can be used for--which has happened in spades in the past year (I know--I'm involved in some of it). Blogs can be used for product reviews, but that was never their original intention (which predates the "Web 2.0 conversation notion) and that is not what many people use them for. Your perspective may be colored by when you came into the blogosphere and the emphasis, esp. for many mommybloggers, on making money from product reviews.
Blogs weren't meant to replace publications like PC world, and the whole idea that they can, or will, is fairly new. Even the idea of using blogs for word of mouth marketing is fairly new in the grander scheme of blogging.
Take a look at Rebecca Blood's great book "The Weblog Handbook" to understand the genesis of blogging. There's also a very good chapter in there on ethics in blogging.
And don't try to draft the new notions and ideas of word of mouth marketing onto all of blogging. Not all blogging is marketing. That notion is the same mistake that's made when some folks in journalism insist that all blogging is a form of journalism or citizen journalism, which it isn't. (and that's a debate that's gone on for years--and will continue.)
If your blogging is a form of marketing conversation, then that's fine. But other's blogs aren't forms of marketing conversation any more than they are forms of citizen journalism. So don't expect them to conform to your worldview.
My blogging is, at best, eclectic. I am definitely not a mommyblogger though I certainly do blog about my kids from time to time.
In this discussion, consider me a consumer of information. I work on the web but am not a developer. The best description of me would be a user and consumer of many different sites and services available to me. I'm a critic sometimes, and an edge case at others.
Truth be told, Andrew's post probably wouldn't have caught my attention at all, had Dave not Twittered it. But when he did, my first response was to say "wait just a minute -- *I* wrote a good review!"
If you want a user's perspective on something, you're likely to find it here. For that reason, I consider it important to keep my voice in the conversation honest with who might be reading it, because you just never know who that reader might be.
I don't view that as marketing as much as just giving someone my honest opinion. I suppose I could do that in any number of social networks, but I like having my place here.
I expect that Mr.Baron feels the same way, except that he enjoys a higher profile around this neck of the woods by virtue of his Rocketboom work, which in turns weights what he writes for that down-the-road mystery reader who might pick up what he blogged when they searched on the terms Mahalo and review. If they searched.
Anyway, this has been a good conversation, too. I think until Google figures out which blogs are marketing conversations and which are just out-loud ruminations and assigns weight accordingly, it's probably worth having it.