[mdlug] Is MS bribing bloggers?

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:28:16 -0500, Wolfger <wolfger at gmail.com> wrote:

>So what is the difference between paying a blogger to say something
>(anything) about your product, and paying an actor to say something
>(that your marketing department wrote) about your product?
Actually, in the payola cases, the record companies wrote a lot of the
copy. In some of the cases, the marketing departments weren't even aware 
of what was going on until the deeds were done. Only when the playlists
were compared with on-air behavior did folks in marketing actually get
roused enough to do anything, if they were involved in the solution at
all.

>I'd rather see the former than the latter, and not just because I have
>dreams Microsoft will buy me a laptop....

Oh, maybe. For whom to we have higher expectations?

Some of us also beleive that it's unethical for Microsoft to give 
bloggers anything with any quid pro quo, and in fact the whole business
is so shady they oughtta stiuck to producing a product that gets raves
withot any "gift giving" whatsoever. Anything that even has the appearence
of unethical behavior is best avoided to keep the reputation of the 
organization unsullied. <cough>

I'm not a blogger, but if I was, my answer to such an offer would be 
"no thanks".

>...It only becomes unethical if the bloggers try to conceal what
>Microsoft has done to curry their favor.
Going back to the payola cases, that is part of what transpired in
those cases. No DJ's (that I know of) went on the air to say...
"...and XYZ records paid me 500 bucks to spin this new tune for you!"

So how do we know how many blogger have NOT disclosed their gifts
from Redmond? This raises some real trust issues, true?

						Regards,
						---> RGB <---