Oi, Dentonienne, hasn't at least one of these fine A-listers ripped PayPerPost for asking them to do what they just did for Microsoft? Oh the hip-pocket-cracy.

@Blackjack: ah, good point. Any commenter with time on their hands to go through their archives?

Nick,

Welcome to the birth of conversational marketing.

It's making people like you and me, who came from the world of traditional newspapers, have to learn about three-way conversations. We have already witnessed the evolution of the two-way conversation among authors and readers that is replacing old-fashioned one-way journalism. Even our old employers (yours at the Financial Times, mine at The New York Times) are now actively bringing their readers into two-way conversations.

So the next step, naturally, is for marketers to want to join the conversation. It can be done in ethical, responsible ways, and FM's authors are among the first to figure out how to do it.

In the case of this Microsoft campaign, the marketers asked if our writers would join a discussion around their "people ready" theme. Microsoft is an advertiser on our authors' sites, but it's paying them only based on the number of ad impressions delivered. There was no payment for joining the conversation and they were not required to do it. They're not writing about this on their blogs, and of course several of them have been known to be pretty hard on Microsoft at times as reporters. They're talking about the topic, and readers joined that conversation.

We're carefully expanding conversational marketing based on all kinds of new ideas that are coming from authors, marketers and our sales reps. We're drafting a set of principles for conversational marketing that will help everyone, inside FM and across the industry, frame the discussion about how we do this the right way. And we're taking care at every step of the process to make sure we don't compromise the editorial integrity of our authors. Because our authors are in constant conversation with their readers, they know how their audience feels. If a reader feels an author has crossed a line or betrayed the reader's trust, that author will hear about it quickly.

You're right to be skeptical; we should all be watching carefully to make sure we do this right. We certainly are.

Best,
Neil Chase
Vice President
Federated Media Publishing

I've got some time to research this because if it's as you report the hypocrisy is blinding.

Even though I've avoided PPP at my own blogs, I've often found myself arguing at both TechCrunch and Searchblog that their case against PPP is *mildly* hypocritical because they themselves are bloggers that take in advertising revenues.

This new Federated version of pay for posting would seem to make their arguments *blindingly* hypocritical but I want to hear from those guys first.

This is not the first one FM has done. They started with the Cisco campaign: [humannetwork.federatedmedia.net] with the bloggers shilling their definitions. Then currently they have one for Hakia, the alternative search engine no one cares about, except the bloggers in the FM coterie. See this: [searchforbettersearch.hakia.com]

I think you need to give more evidence to backup your headline that "Microsoft pays star writers". Are you aware of financial transactions between the authors posting a "people ready" quote and Microsoft? I'll give you points for an eye-catching headline.

As for the Microsoft/FM campaign, I can't say I think it's "slick". I don't know what Microsoft wants me to buy other than today's catch phrase. The site didn't do anything for me. At least if it were PayPerPost, I would know the product or service being pitched.

I suspect as the earlier reader states, some of these authors did complain of PayPerPost. If I'm not mistaken, there have been two phases per se. When PPP first came out, readers did not know authors were getting paid. I think this is where most of the controversy started and the "A list" people objected. I think now, they require authors to state it is a paid review. And no, I've not gone to cross reference their opinions of PPP as I really don't think its as big an issue as you state.

While I think it's good you state your passions, I suspect your "dispassions" (is that a word?) include some of the people you've mentioned in this story.

I did think it was ironic that the picture that posted under the story was a Gawker Artist that showed a person holding a sign stating "Stop Crying". I also suspect Battelle's team is hoping your article takes off to draw more attention to the campaign. I say let's move on.

Haven't these exact same ads been running for months? Why is it only a big deal now? I think this shows who's been reading Valleywag on a Friday afternoon

I have a lot of respect for Nick. He's built a great media business in Gawker Media using blogs as the platform. Valleywag is one of my ten must reads every day. My girls tell me that Jezebel, Gawker's new women's gossip blog, is fantastic. If you don't read Lifehacker, you should.

I'm not a big fan of Vallywag's gossip, but if anyone needs any evidence for this headline, it's on Arringtons blog where he's attempting to shoot the messenger:

[www.crunchnotes.com]

"The ads go up, we get paid"

It's not in the same league as PPP, but it's definitely a commercial endorsement. "People Ready" is not a common expression, it's a Microsoft marketing slogan, and the writers are being payed to use it. The provocative language aside, Valleywag is right on the money on this one.

Yesterday afternoon I got an email from Dave Winer, pointing to this valleywag post and asking if I had any info. I'd taken the day off and was standing in my kitchen working on what turned out to be a very nice vegetable braise, if you subtract out the mess I made with my attempt at dumplings.

While the controversy here is interesting and shows the intense competition in 'the valley' for who is on top in the tech blog world, there really is no story here. At least for techcrunch, it is glaringly obvious that the right side of the page is advertisements and paid content, while the left is for actual honest content. PPP offers the opportunity for companies to get favorable "left side" content. Apples and oranges.

btw, is it me or does "prodport" sound like a certain blogger with the initials MA?

Federated Media stepped in it with their latest campaign, getting some of its bloggers to issue not so bon mots on behalf of a not so bon advertiser, Microsoft.

@kraptek: This controversy has nothing to do with the labeling of advertising. That is entirely clear on all the sites which participated in the "people-ready" campaign. I don't even have a problem with marketers buying reprint rights to favorable coverage: for instance, an Apple campaign which pulled positive quotes from Gizmodo, and ran those testimonials as advertising on the site. Here's the issue: Michael Arrington and others allowed words to be put in their mouths, for money. If the Techcrunch publisher really went around talking about Microsoft's wonderful "people-ready" software, that would be one thing. But he obviously doesn't -- unless he's paid to do so.

What surprised me was not that Arrington would do this -- of course, but that Fred Wilson would as well, and then go on the offensive about this. Fred is just plain wrong, and should admit that there are some 'old media values' worth preserving, particularly your integrity.

FM can try to christen this scheme as "conversational marketing" but I think most observers will adopt a much less dizzying and much more familiar label: payola.

I say this whole thing is just a giant step backward for disclosure in blogging. What were these guys thinking?

And, as the previous commenter calls out, it's a stupid campaign to begin with. I'm so sick of seeing those meaningless, ill-inspired ads everywhere that I could puke. And now we're subjected to this?

@nchase: What you say isn't particularly plausible, and Arrington himself makes clear you are spinning like a top<....

It is not a conversation when you and your minions write some text and ask others to say it. Further, it sounds like there *is*, contrary to your statement, additional payment: these ads apparently get higher click-throughs.

This is only "conversational" in the sense that a chat with Tony Snow about Bush's record is a conversation: only technically. What you're doing is creating the false appearance of conversation to make money.

If you want an actual conversation, then help your advertisers to start blogs. With real people saying true, interesting things in authentic voices. Then we'll talk with them.

The good news, though, is that you're clearly hearing that you've crossed a line. Hopefully you'll do something about it.

I agree with Nick. This kind of thing feels a tad too sleazy, even if the authors are fiercely independent. The authors should know better, and MSFT/FM should know better because it damages the vehicles for their advertising messages, imho.

Federated Media, the advertising network created by John Battelle, the A-list blogger and Google book author, has hit back at accusations that its top web site publishers have become "sell-outs."

• Campbell Brown announces her pregnancy on Sunday’s Weekend Today. ABC’s Good Morning America to respond with a two-hour special in which Diane Sawyer weeps openly, and announces that her “biological clock is ticking.” • Rupert Murdoch is on the brink of closing...

uh-oh. a parody website - [www.wipeready.com]

There's been a (mostly boring) conversation going between some blogs over the past few days regarding the line between editorial and advertising. Largely, this is a case of the same silly-meme-into-faux-fact path that I tried to document yesterday.

No guff. Our intelligence team did some digging around, snooping through phone records and email accounts, and they managed to find out the truth. It was obvious to us that this guy couldn't be buying an iPhone for himself. At first we thought maybe some rich dude had hired him to wait on line.

I have rarely seen a marketing slogan as empty as this one, exampt perhaps the Zune "social" thing.

On the other hand, perhaps I'm not in the target audience. And that may explain why - despite awful campaigns - Microsoft reigns supreme. As long as they can convince business executives to stick with Microsoft, they will survive.

Is there a trend in my post yesterday about the deal former Hollywood execs Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman struck with Pepsi to make original online content that the entertainment and marketing arm of the beverage giant will have a chance to fund and sponsor?

I spent much of last week away from the Web 2-point yawn crowd. Instead, I was at my favorite conference, New Communications Forum held this year in Sonoma county. I was speaking on two panels, the second one included Neil Chase, VP of Author Services at Federated Media (FM) Publishing.