In the past, blogger extraordinaire Iain Dale has commented on how he considered the UK to be maybe a year behind the US in terms of the potential impact of blogging. The question is though, as that impact grows will the anarchic anti-establishment nature of blogging, particularly policial blogging, be able to sustain itself?
In the US, where the influence of bloggers has been acknowledged, and very quickly embraced by the two main political parties, we're now seeing a number of bloggers who have, for many, "lost their integrity". Critics now see them as tools of the machine.
Personally I don't think that assessment is necessarily fair, after all, political bloggers are often obviously on one side or another. Sure, some may just be voters and not actively involved with a party and that will no doubt always be the case for many, but others are often members and activists in the real non-Internet world so it shouldn't be surprising for them to act in similar ways online.
In my view, as long as a blog remains a voluntary activity on the part of the blogger then their integrity remains intact, especially given interests are more often than not openly declared anyway. However if a blogger starts being paid to blog and fails to tell people then that is different matter.
Which leads me on to a site I've just found called PayPerPost which... errr... pays bloggers per post - assuming the post is advertising a product or linking to a particular website as per requests. This new method of product placement through the popular social media space is not particularly new in the US, but it is only just beginning to appear in the UK.
PayPerPost, along with others, has recently caused a bit of blowback in the US where bloggers have not declared that they're being paid to promote things. Whilst I'm not aware of this being massively popular in the UK yet, I wonder (if Iain is right about a year lag-time with the US), whether we shall start to see bloggers in the UK shortly using their blogs as a means of corporate advertising. The question is will the blogosphere react to it in the same manner it has in the US?
6 comments:
And about a year behind Canada too, given the influence the blogs had in exposing the Ascam scandal,
that involved and eventually lead to the downfall of the previous Liberal Government.
In this they great help from the US blog, Captains Quarters.
At least pay per post demonstrates how influential bloggers are considered to be. Although I use my blog to promote my work, I would not agree to be paid to promote a product, I prefer to maintain my objectivity.
Blogging is always open to abuse, and I'm sure it will happen a lot more in the run up to the election, that's the downside, especially if you can't stop dubious bloggers from spreading lies. I'm obviously thinking of the Sion podcast, but at least this backfired gloriously, and hopefully he will have learned his lesson.
I don't think it will catch on here. There's something intrinsically underhand about advertising cheap loans from cheaploan.co.uk
sorry about that dizzy, for some reason i thought the comment thing wasn't working. apologies.
the UK system has no credibility. Iain Dale is an A List candidate for God's sake.
How much more integrity has he got?
I don't really see what the problem is.- I've made $1,500 out of it over the past few months.
Not on my main blog though, I will agree: most of the advertisers are actually paying for Pagerank really, so they don't seem to mind.
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