Reportedly started by a pair of heavy Digg users who were tired of landing stories they promoted to the front page and not getting paid for it, BuzzTemple PR is looking to recruit heavy users of social services from Digg to Facebook, AIM to Second Life. While the site promises "We are not and will never be 'Pay Per Post,'" the jobs on offer basically amount to shilling for clients online, and words like "disclosure" don't appear on the site. But then Edelman flack Steve Rubel's job is shilling for clients online, and that firm has paid for coverage. So, yeah, sounds like yet another PR agency.
After the line to get into PureVolume Ranch hit capacity around 2 a.m., the RVIP Lounge played host to a raucously geeky afterparty. As we idled outside the Hilton, this fellow from Pay Per Post, a company even Arrington thinks is evil, tried — and failed — to board. Party maestro Jonathan Grubb denied him. The grounds? Part of the fun of owning an RV is that you can decide who not to share it with. The dude's response, after pouting that he "wasn't interested in [Grubb's] RV anyway"? Slinking out of his Pay Per Post t-shirt and attempt to sneak in later. I snapped this photo of him hovering in the doorway, mid-fail, for your pleasure.
TiVo has cancelled a Pay Per Post advertising campaign promoting its new TiVo HD digital video recorder. One wonders: Was it because of concerns expressed here and elsewhere? Or was it because Pay Per Post, a startup which pays bloggers to tout customers' wares in posts and videos, isn't actually that effective? Regardless, TiVo's effort appears to be an experiment gone wrong. Even though TiVo embraced a spirit of disclosure — each paid video was supposed to include a five-second "bumper" segment explaining that it was a paid post promoting TiVo's "Hook Up with TiVo" campaign — the mere fact of working with Pay Per Post may have ruined TiVo's good intentions.
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TiVo's latest advertising campaign, "Hook Up with TiVo," personifies the new Tivo HD as seeking personal companionship. The taste is questionable; the feel, desperate. Could it be that TiVo's marketers are realizing that the company's buzz is fading? The ads themselves, featuring Chris Harrison, host of ABC's "The Bachelor," to select the perfect match for the device, are bad enough. But it gets, unbelievably, sleazier than Harrison.
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Latest by Trackback: TiVo has pulled the plug on their advertising relationship with PayPerPost. Following this forum thread, it appears that TiVo did more »
Saul Hansell of the New York Times was surprised when numerous blogs chastised him for his coverage of search engine/electronic retailer Accoona and the questionable history of its founder, a felon sometimes known as Armand Rousso, as a stamp dealer and stock promoter. Why would anyone bother to defend such a questionable man and such a negligible company? Because they're apparently getting paid to do so. Most of the blog entries openly label themselves as paid posts — a practice that is itself highly controversial. What's even more controversial is who is footing the bill for these sponsored testimonials. Regardless, Accoona is likely to pay for them in the end.
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Pay Per Post, the sleazy blog payola network backed by DFJ, continues to try to sell its human side via its web-based reality show RockStartup. This time with the even more human than human outtake reel. It's quaint to see people tripping, or flubbing a line, or ordering too much swag with that VC green. On the other hand, most businesses wouldn't be proud to show their Chief of Sales telling a woman that she "could make a lot of money stripping" or Ted Murphy, the company's founder and CEO, recycling Borat's ubiquitous "It's niiice" when asked about a woman taking off her jacket at their conference.
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Whatever our differences with Jason Calacanis, we're foursquare on his side when it comes to the ickiness of Pay Per Post. PPP's Ted Murphy has been on a tear vs. Calacanis lately as part of a continuing campaign to prove the worthiness of PPP as a business. Certainly Murphy must be making money, but that doesn't make his business any less off-putting. The problem with PPP isn't that it's not effective, assuming it is effective versus other kinds of product promotion. The problem is that it's sleazy manipulation, pure and simple.
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Former Microsoft evangelist turned Intel pitchman Robert Scoble last week announced a new gig: keynoting Postiecon, a conference promoting the ideals of heinous blog-shill outfit Pay Per Post. Scoble casually mentioned that Pay Per Post was not only fronting his travel expenses, but also forking over an honorarium — which Scoble bizarrely characterized as Pay Per Post "paying my salary," as the cash was to be filtered through check to Podtech, Scoble's employer. But does disclosing make it all fine and dandy?
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Valleywag
great moments in pr
epic fail
followup
accoona
pay per post
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robert scoble
