"Two new services that are similar to the controversial PayPerPost have announced their launch in the last few days: ReviewMe and CreamAid. PayPerPost, a marketplace for advertisers to pay bloggers to write about products (with our without disclosure), recently gained additional attention when they announced a $3 million round of venture financing.
The PayPerPost model brings up memories of payola in the music industry, something the FCC and state attorney generals are still trying to eliminate or control. Given the distributed and unlicensed nature of the blogosphere, controlling payoffs to bloggers will be exponentially more difficult.
Our position on these pay-to-shill services is clear: they are a natural result of the growth in size and influence of the blogosphere, but they undermine the credibility of the entire ecosystem and mislead readers.
My hope is that PayPerPost quickly requires disclosure by bloggers and eliminates the ability for advertisers to require positive reviews. It’s clear that simply stating we don’t like these services isn’t going to make them go away. VCs are now involved and PayPerPost has a large number of bloggers on their payroll that are willing to attack anyone that says it’s a bad idea. Given the very low likelihood of government involvement similar to the effort to eliminate payola in the radio industry, I’m not really sure what can be done to reverse the trend. In the end, individual bloggers will have to establish and maintain their own credibility. " by TechCrunch.com
Ahhh, TC's credibility lies on the way they bashed out other websites. Unimaginable crap!
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