Microsoft Pays Bloggers to Tout MS Slogan

Stony Stevenson writes "In an effort to inject Microsoft's latest slogan, 'People-ready business', into popular usage (and no doubt raise its Google page rank), Microsoft asked a passel of A List Bloggers to write blurbs on what this meaningless phrase means to them. Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Fred Wilson, Richard MacManus and a handful of others happily agreed to churn out some mush for Microsoft, which it later used in banner ads. What it really meant to these guys was income. Redmond paid the bloggers for every user who clicked through to the PRB microsite. That caused other bloggers, lead by Gawker chief Nick Denton, to rightfully question their ethics. A spitball war has been raging ever since."

Comments

Wait a minute...

[Macthorpe]

So Microsoft paid bloggers per click to advertise for them?

Where's the scandal here? There's no mention of Microsoft forcing these guys to say that they weren't being paid, and doing something like this is up to the personal ethics of the individual blogger, surely?

Re:Nothing unusual

[akzeac]

It's not the same. It's not a case of bloggers putting Microsoft ads in their blogs.

It's a case of getting paid for letting Microsoft quote them saying the "people ready" slogan.

See this link.

Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[ttnb]

What Microsoft did was an obvious and blatant violation of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code. The bloggers should have publicly criticized these Microsoft tactics instead of going along with them.

Re:How is it different from what Google does?

[FST777]

Whoa there. This is not a case of "M$ is ebul!!!11one", but a case of proper journalism in blogging. When respected blogger take money to blog (positively) about something, things go wrong. It's kinda the same as reading a payed-for review in a magazine: it's bound to sound positive.

Now, placing ads on your site is something completely different. It's clearly not part of the bloggers opinion, nor is it hard to distinguish it from the real news you're reading. In this case, the line is not blurred, it's simply gone.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Enderandrew]

As someone who not only took several years of marketing courses, but who also won a national medal at a DECA competition, I can assure that sales is a subset of marketing.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[KevReedUK]

Great Dilbert reference...

now where's the car analogy...? It must be here somewhere!?!