Yet Another Bloggers Are Whores Article

Did you find that article via a search feed, B.L.? I think that's how I discovered it. The opening paragraph mentions Blog Republic, but doesn't link to it - and it describes something that sounds vaguely like what PayPerPost.com launched recently, but doesn't resemble anything I've seen at Blog Republic at all. Darren McLaughlin at Blog Republic has posted a reply to the article. I just wonder how an article with such errors could make it through the editing process.

Like you, I'm tired of hearing that business blogs are "suddenly" new, as if some watershed event somehow mystically willed them all into being. It's a gradual thing, folks!

I clicked your link and read the Armstrong article in its entirety. I am curiouis to know where you think his analysis is wrong.

Start with his basic premise: "After all, if blog culture has been about anything, it has been about sticking it to large corporations rather than taking their advertising dollars." Wrong. Blog is about more than "sticking it" to corporations. It's about calling them on dishonest pracrices, on hiding behind corporate speak, on refusing to believe that consumers have options besides reading ads. But me and many other bloggers are happy to take money from corporate advertisers. And yes, Bob, a lot of us make a living through advertising.

Jeff Jarvis was a top blogger with lots of traffic long before he started complaining about Dell. That's one of the reasons his posts had the impact they did.

"With all these opinions reaching their customers, companies felt like a boxer attacked by thousands of children - staggering from tiny blow to tiny blow, unable to hit back but sure that, at some point, damage was being done." Oh please.

"This summer, however, something changed. In June, a disgruntled Land-Rover customer called Adrian Melrose set up a site called have yoursay.com to track the company's lack of progress in dealing with a complaint about his new Discovery."

This summer Armstrong may have noticed the phenomenon, but it's far from the first time bloggers had an impact on advertising.

You could go back several years and look at Dr Pepper's Raging Cow blog incident, or the Kryptonite lock situation, for example.

I could go on, but why?