'Best' Fake Blog of 2006 Awarded

schwaang writes "Advertising is an integral part of the Web, and its revenues make the likes of Google possible for all of us. But when PR firms promote products by pretending to be real bloggers, some think it crosses the line into unethical 'astroturf'. The Consumerist held a contest for best 'Flog' of 2006. And the winner is... Sony for it's fake all-I-want-for-Xmas PSP blog (which Slashdot readers will no doubt remember). Runners up included Walmart and McDonald's. And the award itself? Well, it's something you might find on on a fake lawn."

Comments

tasty cake?

[piotru]

ehem, what was the dominant opinion on Slashdot in the matter of a proposed legislation to force payed bloggers to register? eat your cake now... :( (not a flamebait)

Re:tasty cake?

[suckmysav]

hehe, You gotta love the monkeys with mod points on /. don't you?

Marking a first post as Redundant indeed.

Re:tasty cake?

[dangitman]

ehem, what was the dominant opinion on Slashdot in the matter of a proposed legislation to force payed bloggers to register?

I don't know, what was the dominant opinion? It seemed pretty divided. Anyway, what does making poilitical lobbyists register have to do with fake blogs for marketing purposes?

Foot-shooting fun

[Nullav]

I don't really see why people try this (fake blogs to promote their products). How can the chance at getting a few thousand people to think "Hey, that looks like a decent product." when they also risk alienating countless more if their plans were to come to light?

Re:Facing Foreclosure

[Tx]

With every update, I find myself asking, "This can't be for real. Nobody is dumb enough to be $2.2M in debt, unemployed, penniless, and sign up for $52/year roadside assistance just because the offer showed up in the mail."

Which would you rather be:
a) $2,200,000 in debt, and broken down in the middle of nowhere with no breakdown cover
b) $2,000,052 in debt, having a cold one while your car gets recovered

See, he's not so dumb ;)

Re:Facing Foreclosure

[alphaseven]

He was interviewed on NPR a few weeks ago, so surely they did some research to see if he's legit.

James Frey was a bestselling writer who had appeared Oprah and had done tons of interviews and a movie deal before anyone did the slightest bit of research to see if his memoir was legit. It's certainly within the realm of possibility of being fake.

not much different

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of main stream news "tech articles" are the same thing, rehashes of corporate and academic press releases. So if you link to some big company that has a summary and rehash, it's news, but if it is some guy's blog..it's what? Both have ads to support them. Most of the time the main stream news, yes even including the large syndicates, don't provide any external links at all, and they try even harder to make it look like their reporter just dug the stuff up him or herself. Go to google news, click on one of the links that have all the references to a single story-you'll see most of them are near identical, and that's because they all reference one source for the most part, and when it comes to tech news-it is the press releases mostly. Not all the time, but mostly.

Re:Microsoft's attemp in Brazil

[Jugalator]

Well, contrary to popular opinion on Slashdot, Windows fans do exist (you'll find throngs of them on popular sites like Neowin) and do believe Windows Vista is better than both OS X and Linux, so I think you'll need to provide something more than someone liking MS technologies to say it's about Microsoft themselves. It's like saying an Ubuntu hacker is automatically an Ubuntu developer.