Denton and Calcanis Propose Blog Ethic Organization

Nick Denton proposed the establishment of a blog ethics committee and Jason Calcanis has responded by registering BlogEthics.org

Says Denton, "The guidelines would cover questions such as photo copyright, freebies, pay-to-post deals, editorial tie-ins, paid text links. They would be voluntary. But sites that adhered to them would be able to indicate that they met certain blog ethics standards."

Calcanis responds, "Who doesn’t want to know if a blogger is getting paid to write about something? Who doesn’t want to see advertisements clearly labeled and outside of the content space? I can’t think of one reader of blogs who wants to be deceived. Nor do I know a reader who wants to be high-alert trying to spot the ads in the content, let alone waste their brain cycles on figuring out the hidden agenda.

Sure, there are interesting things we can do with advertisers on blogs, and I’m all for it. However, there do need to be standards, and I’d love to be involved in helping define them."

Calcanis also rants about the ethics of Word of Mouth marketing organizations like BzzAgent. Frankly, I think his reasoning on this one is ridiculous. BzzAgents are not paid. They are volunteers. The rewards they get are minor and would not justify the time spent. BzzAgent is a PR tool. It is NOT evil.

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Posted by: Jason at December 5, 2004 4:07 PM

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