The Diet Coke/Mentos guys have a new video, this time with 500 liters of Diet Coke and 1,500+ Mentos and what looks like, from the credits, some corporate underwriting/sponsorship/assistance from both of those brands and an exclusive deal from Google Video. According to Geroge Strompolis of Google, “In addition to being very fun, it demonstrates another interesting application of our Sponsored Video program — this time with user-generated content. This helps producers like EepyBird earn revenue by pairing them up with our advertising partners.”
Technorati Tags: advertising, google, video
Because of some technical difficulties that were particularly perplexing to this blog’s hackery team, our RSS feed has not been picked up by FeedBurner for the past week. I think that problem has been solved. The problem probably was caused by some configuration issues on our end, not FeedBurner. However, the situation reminded me of what I don’t like about having multiple hosted features: When problems occur, there are different sets of fingers that can point in other directions.
I especially enjoy reading about how giant media companies like Time Inc. are trying to figure out what their digital future is in publications (like the Wall Street Journal today) owned by other giant media companies that could write the same articles about themselves.
Quote:
“From the introduction of color photography to the launch of People and the demise of the original Life, Time Inc. has been through upheaval before. But insiders say those changes were like pinpricks compared with the changes now under way. “Everyone is bowing before the gods of the digital future,” says one Time Inc. editor.”
I may have blogged this recently, but a few weeks ago I saw an ad for Life from the mid-1950s that said something like, “Over 5.7 million copies of Life are sold each week.” Those who study the history of these things wouldn’t describe as “a pinprick” what happened to the Life franchise over the next 15 years. My point is not to disagree with the trainwreck happening at Time, but rather to point out that the creation of radio and TV were more than pinpricks in the ever-evolving media landscape.
Technorati Tags: internet, magazines, media, timeinc
Let’s say the people who dreamed up spam set up a .ORG website that sounded very legitimate, something like Ethical Email Marketing Policy Organization, would I trust them to be the arbitrators of what legitimate spam practices are?
In much the same way, the people who dreamed up a scheme to get bloggers to make undisclosed posts for pay are now wanting us to believe they have created the good-housekeeping seal of disclosure. This is from the same folks who, before they were shamed into changing their policy, encouraged bloggers to take payment for undisclosed posts. And the new policy is merely a general disclosure, not a policy that requires bloggers to tag each post with a sponsorship tag.
Here’s all the disclosure policy one needs to be ethical. At the top of a paid post that appears to be one of the regular posts in your blog, write: “The is a sponsored post.” or “This is an advertisement.”
And another thing. The people who dreamed up this pay-per-post scheme respond to all criticism of it with the following attack: “Those who oppose us just don’t want bloggers to make money from their blogs.” That’s crap. I think that every blogger should have the right to monetize their blog in any ethical way they can. If you want to carry ads, that’s great. If you want to have sponsors who pay you to post something, that’s fine also, as long as you clearly state within that specific post: “I received payment to blog about this topic.”
rexblog flashback: A long post on why undisclosed paid posts are unethical and how clearly labeling what is paid-for is a simple solution.
Update: Scott Karp (as always) says exactly what I would if I could write as well as he does: “If you tell people in the fine print that you might deceive them, and then you go ahead and try to deceive them — well, that’s still deception….In a world of infinite media, the only asset anyone has left, whether blogger, search engine, or traditional media company, is TRUST. Deception destroys trust, and so it’s fundamentally bad for the media business.”
Technorati Tags: blogging
Over the years, Microsoft has tried many things (including an acquisition attempt that the Justice Department derailed) to compete with Intuit in the small business accounting market. Today, they have announced their next plan, a version of the popular Web 2.0 business model (based on the “shareware” model) called “freemium,” which is, basically, this: Give away a free version that is (possibly) ad-supported, and then sell premium services and upgrades when you get a large and loyal user-base.
Technorati Tags: intuit, microsoft, freeium, small business
My RSS feed from FeedBurner is “clunky,” they say. For some reason, I get a “connect time out” message whenever I try to update the Rexblog RSS feed they host. (Hey, I’m just a user — so I’m sure it’s my fault.) As I have encouraged everyone to use that feed, it is frustrating that I am running into such a difficulty. Note to self: Whenever something is free and hosted, well, you get what you pay for. I hope the FeedBurner RSS feed that I have encouraged everyone use in their newsreaders, etc., gets over being “clunky” but here are two ways to subscribe to the rexblog RSS feed:
1. The direct feed from rexblog: http://rexblog.com/?feed=rss2.
2. The FeedBurner version that currently is clunky: http://feeds.feedburner.com/rexblog_all.
Technorati Tags: feedburner, rss
I agree with Mike Arrington that the absurd sideshow of disclosure options being offered by the pay-per-post schemers is a mockery of ethics, does not address the issue and further exhibits their lack of understanding of how what they are doing is a cancer.
Rather than do something simple: Require all posts one receives direct payment (or other consideration) for to carry a clear “sponsored by” message, the pay-per-post schemers want to keep arguing that all revenue received by publishers (bloggers included) is the same, whether it be for an ad or for payment for a positive, undisclosed mentioned in a news story.
Why is this so difficult? If a post clearly says, “Sponsored post,” then, in my book, it’s ethical. In the magazineosphere, we call these “advertorials.”
Technorati Tags: ethics
