DISQUS

True, I think Jason is destructive to lots of people and organizations which is why I dont care for him, but to the point about Mahalo which continues to be overlooked in all the noise, I think its a flawed product.

Its only purpose is to make money for Jason.

And now, the reason why Im interested, is simply because he is using videoblogging as a marketing tool.

Its very interesting to me personally to see a videoblog that is created to be an advertisement.

Thus, #1, the videoblog will likely be informed by marketing decisions and #2, it may be difficult because the kinds of people who watch videoblogging right now, tend to be the kind of audience that would now show interest in about.com-like sites.

Business-wise, if the video is designed as an ad to drive traffic to Mahalo, Mahalo may spend more bandwidth and production costs on the video then they will make from a click through. They may need to put ads on the vido ads.

Cheers, Drew

Pretty. In addition to social bookmarking like del.icio.us, there is also the aspect of democratic "crowdsourcing" like digg (voting!), reddit and wikipedia, etc. which depend on user input in groups to generate sum values.

"It was clearly NOT a product review."

I disagree on this. Even though the words themselves did not say "I love and endorse People Ready" as they were just words about life in general, when I'm out surfing around and I see a quote like that from a blogger like that, I assume it's a quote lifted from an article about the product. Its not the words in this case, its the context of the **kind** of ad it is. Just like I know Leo's ads are paid ads even though he talks about it, because I am familiar with the tradition of this style.

Just like I know Dave's ad's were not paid for.

This FM case hijacked the traditional use and mislead people because it would be too easy to have the kind of experience I had, which is that ultimately, the blogger had something nice to say on their own will about the product, and the company was proud of it and that I should be too.

Robert, I think you are almost always spot on, but this time you are missing this main point; Michael A. is missing this too, neither of you acknowledge:

The ads were presented in a way that made it seem like the text was from a product review that the bloggers wrote for the company on their blogs on their own will, but then were paid for later by the company. Kinda like Dave Winer has quotes on his blog from people who have written stuff about him that he likes and wants to feature.

** Its a problem of context **

It's not just about finding the best story on time, it's also how you tell it.

Rocketboom was there because we were interested in enabling John Edwards to have control over the media himself, just like all of us. See more about this here: http://www.dembot.com/010661.html

Given the opportunity to turn the camera on himself, able to say anything at all, what does he want to say?

This will be the first election where it will be possible to use the powerful medium of video (and all other mediums for that matter) in full.

So that's one way.

I also thought Robert's coverage was ideal because you knew going into it that he was there to give his own perspective, not John Edwards and it was what it was; Scobleized.

It sounds like we both came to the same conclusion: it's cool John Edwards has opened the doors for all to see himself however they like, his way and theirs.

Good point on engagement. This is the part of the conversation that breaks out of the traditional CPM model (or ups the cpm cost depending on how you break it down); each eyeball has half a mouth. :)

I believe product placement can work in some shows when the content is more on the entertainment side - you know all those soaps and sitcoms just try to mess with your psychology as part of the fun anyway - but when it comes to producing information with integrity, it's more important, I think, to separate the hidden messages.

Your post is a perfect example of why. As Chris points out above, you can be sure that we dont do product placement in Rocketboom. If I was not willing to make that claim, or didn't say one way or another, people would continue to question our intent and soon wonder if its really what we wanted or if its just what we needed. I dont think its good to have your audience always wondering about your own intent.

Hey Chris, just wanted to say thanks for putting this all together. I think it's too late for anything to go bad now :)

I would suggest that while we are transitioning over the next few years, most of the mainstream does not use the computer to the extent we all do. In other-words, beyond scouring for a picture of Suri, the MSM audiences are not out there yet taking action.

I can't tell you how amazed I am regularly when people I talk to have never heard of BoingBoing.

Though this is ok. Froth is made up of lots of little bubbles. You don't really need VC money to make it and you don't need for it to grow into a million dollar business, ever.

So there is no need to bring it all together into Google and Yahoo, you just need an original idea that people respond to.

If I didn't have greater aspirations, I could run Rocketboom off of t-shirt sales.

Micro-payment is the new macro.