Let me know when someone creates the YouTube parody video of this comment thread. I can see one (or many) actors playing all the different roles of people in this thread — the beginning of the thread was amazing, kind of dropped my interest mid-way.

I agree with #25 Bob — this truly was better than reality TV. Here’s an idea for some comedian(s)/actor(s) — Someone should start creating video “interpretations” of comment threads from the tech world (on digg posts, on TC, etc) — who needs rockstartup when you could have the best comment threads re-enacted as comedy.

Went to see the new Bond movie last weekend, and I had to sit through a 5 second shot of a SONY ERRICSON phone…words showing…they made sure that we knew that Coca-Cola was shown…it’s part of life…it’s now moved to the blogosphere…

Mike…you can’t wait for the founder to go to jail??? Tacky man…just tacky.
Joke or no joke, with the tone of the article, it sure didn’t read like a joke…and like I tell my kids, if you have to explain something is a joke, it’s not funny.

Hello all. I see we are back to the PPP thing again. In the past I’ve debated the pros or cons of the idea, but now I am a SOLID believer and I will tell you exactly why.

I was reading some of the people’s blogs who actually use PayPerPost and I came across something that I haven’t seen before and most people seem to not realize … the people who are making money from this site are doing things with it that most of us couldn’t or wouldn’t even begin to imagine.

One woman is a widow and is supplimenting her McDonald’s income with it.
One woman is paying for her child’s preschool with PayPerPost.
Another is buying Christmas presents with her PayPerPost money instead of using credit card debt.
There is a college student buying books with the money and paying his own way home to see his parents for the holidays.

I could go on, but any reasonable person can see where I’m going with this. I doubt that most of us (including myself) have spent much time trying to find out all the good that this income is doing for people and families across the U.S.

Sure, PayPerPost is a commercial venture but so is Techcrunch. The “Posties” are making money just like you are Michael, but it’s obviously money that the Posties are using to better their lives and who may not have had that opportunity if it weren’t for PayPerPost.

As a newspaper reader for years. I tend to read the editorial stories and avoid the advertorial. The same may apply to the blogoshere in due time. Its all about credibility in connecting with readers. The moment you become an advertiser’s tool, you are no longer on our side.

It’s that simple. Everyday people aren’t stupid.

“It’s that simple. Everyday people aren’t stupid.”

Thank you. That summarizes what most of the PPP Posties think too.

And thank you Steve. I am one of those people who is using her PPP money to pay off medical bills. We are not scum of the earth as many of you are led to believe.

Judge Barry - well, if you would have done your research, you could have chosen which blogs you wanted your reviews on. I see many opps with requirements such as pagerank, disclosure, and only certain types of blogs.

Steve, people do all sorts of things in order to afford necessities–that doesn’t make the activity itself “good”.

Seth Wagoner hit the nail on the head, in my opinion.

What bothers me is the fact that I can’t trust anyone’s “opinion” because I have no idea where content stops and paid endorsement/opposition noise (they are the same as Seth points out) begins.

oye! The moment you start talking morals and personal views, anarchy takes over. Lesson: stick to objective reviews. Let the political bloggers deal with the other crap.
Mike, if I were you, I would start a sepate blog for just editorials. And don’t pay anyone to post on it

This coming from the guy with count it 9 ADS on his blog!!!

9 ADS!!!

Tell me who’s selling out again?

This constant rant makes you look SOOOOO bad.

I read this somewhere on the net:

There’s no such thing as bad publicity. As long as they spell the name right.

nothanks: We aren’t talking about selling drugs or doing anything illegal … it’s a legitimate way to suppliment income - so how can you argue it’s bad or hurtful to people in general? Society would have to strip out all advertising in order to make that argument and we all know that’s not reality.

Let their Posties make their money. Neither you or I are being harmed in any direct or even indirect way. Neither is the blogosphere. If that were the case (as many people have argued), then we would have seen it by now. So far the world hasn’t come to an end and the blogosphere hasn’t imploded. I’m fairly sure that we are all safe from calamity.

It’s been good for debate and discussion and for making some decent people a few extra dollars to help pay bills.

However, I’d like to take it to the next level. I directly challenge anyone or everyone on here - including Michael Arrington - that feels PayPerPost is a negative to do their part to turn it to a positive. Although I doubt that anyone will accept my challenge … here it goes … to all the nay-sayers, I challenge you to use PayPerPost to generate money and then take that money and donate it to your favorite charity.

This is your chance to show what you are really made of. Anyone up to the challenge?

Steve, What I want to say to you is - You are great and wise too! Majority of us PayPerPost posties are decent people who write well about a product/service we are paid for. Some of my posts not only entertain my regular blog readers, they provide them a new gadget/service to think about. Plus I had gotten a few of the sponsored posts right on the first page of search results and one of them even got dugg.

To the other naysayers - you want to talk about moral uprighteousness? Why not go clean the net of porns, spams and stuffs like that instead of harping on this issue on and on?

no thanks #106 - Our readers have brains, they know when we are writing for paid posts and we the posties of PayPerPost do disclose that on our site. So, get over it already! Not like you are going to suck up to everything you see, read, hear on TV, newspapers and etc, right?

Michael,

[Please. Seriously. Explain to me how being paid to pimp something you don’t believe in is ok.]

I understand your frustration, it’s hard to trust stuff written on the internet these days: phishing, google bombs, typo URL’s, flogs, adware, trolls, flame wars… I get it, you want things to be pure and good, but I don’t think you can lay the blame at PayPerPost’s doorstep. I think they creatively solved a problem, letting people get the word out on the blogosphere – a relatively new communication medium, which lacked a system or rules (which I know you desire) to do so.

It is hard when you say “Is there anyone who can come up with an argument in favor of PPP that isn’t “I like it because I get money”.

What is the argument for Best Buy or Coca Cola? Businesses are not like non-profits, they don’t all cure cancer or feed hungry children (well, I guess PayPerPost probably does actually help a few Posties with the latter). Most businesses create value by their business structure, PayPerPost has created a dynamic marketplace where average bloggers can get paid to write about subjects that interest them. Likewise, for an incredibly reasonable amount of money, a small business can successfully promote itself on the internet (How do companies such as Proctor and Gamble stay on top? -because they can buy large quantities of media with efficiencies and skill the small business owner can’t match, which stifles industry creativity and innovation. Now PayPerPost is helping both sides of the market. Less money spent on marketing to get the word out, means more can be spent on quality, or product development, or lowering price points –ALL GOOD THINGS.

I think you really like PayPerPost and I think you see that they are trying to evolve the ethics that should be applied to this medium (just look at what they have done by pushing bloggers to have a disclosure policy, which, by the way, covers things like free gifts, incentives, tickets to shows, etc. that have been a problem influencing the blogger world for long before PayPerPost was around).

The question you should be asking yourself is: Would the internet be a better place without them. Would it be a clean, self-policing environment without the phishing, bombs, wares and wars? If your answer is “no” then how can you hang all those requirements around their head?

Your challenge Michael is how do you graciously back down. As Sean Connery said to Wesley Snipes in the movie Rising Sun “The secret is in letting your opponent save face”. I don’t think you want to be the enemy of the “average blogger”. Instead of rooting for PayPerPost to fail or go to jail, why don’t you support them and refocus your comments to ideas or suggestions to help them.

Things could always be better, I can’t think of a single presidency or government that couldn’t be ridiculed on any number of fronts. It is very, very easy to stand on the sidelines and throw rocks at anything. Be a man, admit the positives (like structure and standards being developed for bloggers on all levels, not to mention more revenue coming into the blogosphere helps grow the medium), recognize that PayPerPost is trying the best one small, growing company can to help, and then join in and add positive ideas.

Rather than losing face Michael, your audience will appreciate your integrity and coming out of the ivory tower with shirt sleeves rolled up to work side-by-side with the rest of the blogging community.

Steve, my point was that you can’t judge anything based on the way people are using the money they’ve made from whatever that thing is. For instance, think of all the wonderful ways that poor people have used the money they’ve made from SPAMMING. Are you a proponent of SPAM because it helped someone put food on the table? What about a good old fashioned pyramid scheme? I bet there have been a few people who have purchased diapers with that money.

In my opinion, PPP just generates a new breed of SPLOGGING.

Unfortunately my posts keep getting deleted by TC because they don’t like when I ask them the same type of ethical questions that TC asks of PPP.

Interesting…

lilian, I’m not suggesting that all of the content produced in this way is bad. My point is that I won’t be able to tell the difference between ‘truth’ and ‘purchased noise’. While your paid posts may very well ‘truth’, this system makes it even more difficult for me to identify it as such.

And, I know when a television commercial starts. I can tell the difference between a billboard and a traffic sign.

nothanks: I think you missed my point. It was more to say that no harm has come from advertisements on blogs. They’ve been around for years and will still be there years from now. It doesn’t matter if they are within a blog or on the sidebar of the blog or a pop-up window. This blog has ads on it. They are displayed differently, but they aren’t going away.

I can understand if you personally think it’s not a good idea. After months of debate, I can tell you that my opinion is that PayPerPost is not and will not ruin, pollute or otherwise harm the blogosphere - in other the short or long term.

A side bar … I do find it interesting that no one has mentioned my charity challenge.

Everyone’s got to make money somehow, and there are far worse ways than this - but anyone who thinks PPP are the good guys because they’ve invented a new way for the otherwise unemployed to make money really needs to get a clue.

The moral equivalence card that several of you seem to be playing just won’t wash here. Mr Arrington’s Advertising is obviously exactly that, there is no real danger that we’d mistake it for honest unbiased endorsement. The thing Mike has a problem with, as he has stated, are posts that do not acknowledge they are tainted, because essentially they’re low grade poison polluting the blogosphere. And he *particularly* has a problem with the people who are promoting this little paid polution plan - ie, PayPerPost.

The PPP response to Mike’s concerns was apparently telling their Posties “we’ll pay you $10 if you support our dodgy disclosure deal”, and In practice, this is saying “We’ll pay you $10 if you’ll put up a sign on your lawn that says “I dispose of garbage thoughtfully” knowing full well that most people with that sign up throw their garbage out the window into the river.

Look, as it stands the PPP model is “Paying People to Pollute”, and there is no getting around that. The fact that they encourage people to dress up their garbage and make it look pretty before they chuck it in the river, does not make it OK. The fact that they also occasionally pay people to add good honest clean water to the river doesn’t somehow make their pollution practice more acceptable.

The real worry is people like “WhosYourDaddy” above, who could probably get a job as a political staffer - in fact, I suspect he’s a paid PR person on the PPP payroll. He’s trying to make the Posties watching this thread believe that their Dodgy Disclosure Policy makes it all ok, and that there’s already so much garbage in the river anyway that their distributed garbage disposal system really won’t make any difference to water quality. I happen to disagree.

The obviousness of an advert or explicit disclosure is necessary in any form of media. I think most people agree about that.

If you’re going to fault PPP for not enforcing disclosure, then you should also fault PodTech for not making it obvious which of their podcasts are directly supported by advertising dolllars. They gingerly blend the content together to make the advertising indistinguishable.

“… no harm has come from advertisements on blogs… It doesn’t matter if they are within a blog or on the sidebar of the blog or a pop-up window.”

I completely disagree. In fact, this makes all the difference in the world. It is the red sock in an otherwise off-white load of laundry.

Seth, again I agree with you completely. Excellent comment.

Raj, if that’s what they’re doing, then yes, I fault them. But I haven’t listened to PodTech more than once or twice so I can’t really comment. Nothanks, you’re welcome I like your red sock/off-white laundry analogy, and I think we’re very much in agreement about the merit of PayPersPlog.

The bottom line is, guys: readers (aka, not us) do not like thinking something’s real that’s really advertorial or promotional in some underlying way.

It’s coming from them, not from us.

I think the main point of complaining about PPP constantly (or any other company for that matter) is simply to create controversey and get people to your website.

Congratulations, many people who never heard of you before will now visit this site and MAKE YOU MONEY by supporting your multiples forms of advertising.

I meant multiple. I added the “s” accidentally.

Wait, I also meant to write “controversy” correctly. The “e” was a mistype.

Now, were those honest mistakes or did I want to write three times just to draw more attention to myself? Isn’t that how the game is played online these days?

It seems to work for this blog. Get the whole Internet buzzing and clamoring to read the latest PPP rant right here on this site.

Enough is enough. Move on to something more productive.

It’s spin baby!! It’s ALL spin! 100% of advertisment is S-P-I-N!! Do any of us really believe that just because Charmin says that they are the worlds best toilet tissue–they are??—NO!!! Why—-Because it’s advertising! Saturday morning cartoons are geared for KIDS and getting them to beg their parents for everything–it’s not necessarily all true!! Many of the toys we’ve bought the kids are crap–but the commercial made it look so cool and so real. What’s the difference between seeing a product claim to be the worlds best–and a blogger sharing their views on a product — true or not? It reminds me of the scene on ELF–when Will Farrell walks in to the diner and congratulates the people on having the “Worlds Greatest Cup Of Coffee!” Then he takes his girl there, and asks her what she’s drinking and she replies, “Bad Coffee”. SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN!! Get your heads out of your arse and get a freakin’ life!! And no—–I don’t blog!!!

Who remembers when there was absolutely no advertising on the Internet — i.e. before the Web and browsers came along. When they did come along, people complained about how advertising was going to ruin the whole thing…sounds a little bit like all the jumping up and down about blogs and paid posts.

Mike asked - “Is there anyone who can come up with an argument in favor of PPP that isn’t “I like it because I get money”? Preferably someone who isn’t on their payroll would make this argument. ”

I’m not an employee, just a freelance blogger that posts for them, so I guess you can say I’m not on their payroll - right?

Mike also said - “What I don’t understand is how you and others are ok with writing about a product without disclosure, for money, and the post has to be positive. That’s the use case I have an ethical problem with.”

I’ve looked into this issue since it was first raised, and I usually migrate to where it is discussed and read the debates and I’m confused by one thing. Someone up there (sorry, a LOT to read, I’m not reading it again to find the comment numbers) someone said that Google does not care - well, why should they? I’m starting to think that they are the only ones other than me that has bothered to read the FTC and BBB rules on media advertising - that also apply to the Internet.

The FTC and the BBB both clearly state that there is no need to disclose either payment amount or even the fact that there was a payment provided:

1) you do not have a pecuniary interest in the product/service/whatever being advertised - that’s what got the Wal-Mart guy in trouble, remember?

2) You are honest about your opinion - which is why it is counter productive to advertisers to require a positive posting on things.

3) You are not a recognized name that would sway a reasonable percentage of your readership to do as the ad says. So for example a well known blogger for computer software would have to say they was paid by Microsoft to plug the latest Windows version - even if they really like it and want people to buy it for their own reasons. They have enough influence to get a reasonable percent of their readers buying it based on their recommendation alone - so they have to let their readership know they were paid.

Little peon bloggers like me, that talk about the cat scared of the thermometer in the window, about the latest urinal she had to duck, about how many words I managed to get wrote on what I hope is my next best seller… we’re not looked up to, not that I know of at least. That is why I back up PayPerPost and sites like them. The people that write for them don’t have to disclose, we’re a small insignificant little Suzie Homemaker advice column on page 550 million of the blog-paper of cyberspace.

When my blog about my diet efforts becomes the number one resource for dieters - then I will have to disclose every instance of payment for anything I post, until then, the FTC and BBB say that I am not important enough to have an effect on anyone’s buying or investment or whatever tendencies so I am free to say or not say as long as I am expressing my honest point of view on the advertised product/service/whatever.

I just used PayPerPost for the first time. Unfortunately, it was a HUGE disappointment. I tried one blogger as an experiment. I required that my tracking link be used. The blogger did not use my link. He used his own. Also, the blog was made entirely to make money from PPP. There’s no real content there.

Look, I’m just saying that A-list bloggers are constantly being induced with freebies, none of which they disclose. I think PayPerPost is going about it the right way, trying to encourage bloggers to have a disclosure policy similar to TechCrunch’s short but acceptable Disclosure policy found here (http://www.techcrunch.com/about-techcrunch/), even though I note it says nothing about how much Mr. Arrington makes from advertising, speaking engagements, free tickets, paid travel, or “loaned” merchandise. Take a look at what A-list bloggers are being given in the articles below and I think you will agree that at least PayPerPost is trying to move things in the right direction.

[ The evolving corporate focus on "blog placement" is part of an intensifying trend, with elite bloggers receiving gifts like show tickets and bottles of Champagne.

Intel, the chip maker, doled out free laptops to six well-known bloggers who were invited to muse about blogging over a six-week period.

There is a video circulating online that pictures four German bloggers careening around a racetrack in a shiny red Opel Astra. All of them received free use of the Astra cars for four weeks plus allowances as part of blogging project for Opel.

In recent months, the gifts and invitations have multiplied, according to an Italian blogger, Luca Conti, who lists himself as a "conversational media consultant."

On his Web site, Pandemia, he tallied the booty: a mobile telephone, several subsidized conferences and a fully paid trip to Paris this weekend, compliments of France 24, the new French International broadcaster.

To promote its debut, the channel is flying in 12 bloggers whose early invitations also included bottles of Moët & Chandon Champagne. The guests will also get to pose questions by video to a prime news source: José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

"For every one of these conferences, I have received reimbursement for travel expenses and sometimes for overnight lodging," Conti wrote in his blog, inviting debate the issue. ] –Full article: http://www.iht.com/articles/20.....s/ad04.php

Here is another example of an A-list blogger getting a free laptop in “exchange” for reviewing microsoft’s Zune on his blog.
http://gigaom.com/2006/11/15/zuned/

Michael,
something to consider is that most PPP bloggers aren’t deceiving their readers, because they simply don’t have readers.

Take my blog for instance. I get almost 600 visits per day (not much I know), but the vast majority are just coming from Google for a specific post. They’re not returning daily to hear my latest insights. They won’t be deceived into thinking that I’m endorsing some product I don’t believe in, because chances are they don’t care about that post…

Any publicity is good publicity. Now more people know of payperpost, to a small extent because of this article. BTW, payperpost now requires paid bloggers to disclose that their posts are bing sponsored. So there you go.

All you folks getting paid for blogging are doing, is running your credibility into the ground.

I’ll be happy when disclosure is enforced by law, so folks can see how cheaply you sell yourselves for a buck.

tha t s incredible