Slashdot Mirror
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."
There is a distinct tendancy to view people on the internet as being the sum of their online work.
This is a big mistake. People, ordinary people, have bills to pay. Real life costs money, and if someone offers you money to do something which, lets face it in this case, is a pretty trivial and short term thing, what's the big deal?
Oh wait, its microsoft, therefore it must be bad. Oh how very sheeplike.
How many celebrities have done adverts for crap and been paid well for it, lots. It's a common event, nothing to be ashamed of, people have to live, and life costs money. And don't tell me that if someone said 'here, have lots of money and all you have to do is write some blog entries', you'd say no. Not if the money were good. I wouldn't.
Reality is that which, when we cease to believe in it, still exists. - Philip K Dick