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November 28, 2005
Truth in Advertising (and Blogging) in the Blogosphere:
Something I've been thinking about for quite some time is that the time has come for us, in the Blogosphere, to take it upon ourselves to offer some degree of "truth in advertising" in our blogging. That is to say, when we find ourselves shamelessly self-promoting or hawking a product and/or service, let's reveal tag our true intentions.
Since the launch of my Blog in 2003, I have sometimes used it to promote one of my upcoming conferences. And while I may think that my motivations are pure and my purpose is quite obvious when I plug the events I produce in this manner, from this point forward I intend to include an "advertisement" tag when using my blog to directly promote such activities.
Most of the time, I, however, use my blog to share my passion for quite a number of unrelated products and services and websites simply because I believe in them, as well as my passion for poker and baseball and most enabling technologies. And there are times when I use my blog as a platform to share my position on a public policy issue and again there is no hidden agenda there, just a voice and an opinion on a given topic.
Of course, there are times where I use my blog to provide information and updates that relate directly to some of my business interests, mostly in cases where I am a primary source for such information. And while this is a bit of a grey area, most of my blog posts of that nature are informational and not intended as advertisements.
Going into 2006, I would like to see other bloggers subscribe to the concept of flagging their own blog posts that are really ads.
How about you?
Tags: voip, advertising
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Posted by jeff on November 28, 2005 08:32 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Drink Pepsi!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Posted by: smartaz at November 29, 2005 01:44 PM
Advertising is the wrong tag to use here. It's good to reveal conflcits of interest, but there are many classes of self-promotion. When a company announces a new product, I think that's news. When they tell me about their old product again and again that's boring. When they pay somebody else to push their old product again and again, that's advertising.
One of the most popular blogs is the Google blog, where about half the posts announce new Google products, and people want to see those. I don't think anybody would think of it as advertising and it would be a mistake to tag it that way.
Posted by: Brad Templeton at November 28, 2005 02:55 PM
Hi Jeff!
My blog is for me to promote my point of view. I've used it repeatedly to promote ideas that are important to iotum's business, but also a bunch of other ideas. I'm passionate about these things! If I wasn't passionate about my business, then I wouldn't be in it.
For the stuff that's blatantly iotum promotion, however, we created a separate iotum blog called Simply Relevant.
All of which is to say that I am not sure which posts I would take as advertisement. Some are clearly opinion, and some are informational. But which are ads?
A
Posted by: Alec Saunders at November 28, 2005 11:34 AM