Important: Don't drink the Kool Aid

[mandy]

Blogviating is a new term that implies a blogger has accepted cash or favors to write a favorable piece on a product or company, and dressed it up as an "editorial" piece.  Read on...

It has come to this. Blogoviating has reached new pinnacles of excess that remind me of the good old days of tech trade publications, press release journalism [sounds like Auctionbytes ] , and what is generally considered fatuous reporting.[sounds like Auctionbytes  ]

If you want to read a blog entry that demonstrates much of what is currently wrong with the blogosphere, read this one about TrustedID, a new credit protection service that has raised a bunch of Silicon Valley VC money from investors whose myopia has led them to reinvent the wheel. Obviously, everybody associated with this company has drunk from the Kool Aid pitcher…and that includes the guy who wrote the piece, Michael Arrington...

full article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Young/index.php?p=14

The blog being put under the microscope and taken to task for allegedly blogviating is TechCrunch and its writer Michael Arrington.

Techcrunch Called For Blogoviating

Though it's been said that bloggers aren't held to quite the same standards as journalists, if you become a popular blogger, the crowd better see you as legit-transparency in the second evolution of the Web is becoming a survival skill. Blogging is about sticking it to the Man, and if it appears you've been bought (under a pretense of the opposite), you'll be called on your treachery.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnew...ating.html

[xppman]

No matter how you slice it.

It's all still Buzz Marketing. IMO
It's not only sites like Auctionbytesme either or self proclaimed blog gods.

Major media outlets put a spin or bias slant on things too anymore.
Many of them have all the same talking points
to support what ever political agenda they are promoting.

Hey remember that piece they did on ebay last year?

Supposedly an in-depth look at ebay.  Right.


Just more stuff and fluff.

Could you imagine if one of the "majors" actually had the
testicle fortitude to do a REAL in-depth story on ebay and paypal?  :blinkie: