DISQUS

Good points Roger & Matt...thanks for the data-driven perspective!

Hey Tac, good commentary and thanks for the "good guy" nod.

I have so many posts stacked up on this topic as I work on FAS157 valuations. They'll prolly get published once it no longer matters -- that's fine, you and others are doing a great job of covering all sides.

You and I disagree on "Most bloggers are not journalist, but people have come to trust them like they are." I think a well-worded poll, delivered to a diverse group could put that concept to bed pretty quickly.

That said, there remains an opportunity to help audiences appreciate the goals/conflicts/context of any site they visit, whether publishers claim to be entertainer, journalist, free-pass conference promoter, enthusiast, loaner tech reviewer, photographer, affiliate marketer, personal diarist etc. It feels like a Disclosure Policy framework (like Privacy Policies; see IZEA's http://www.DisclosurePolicy.org/ ), could go a long way in that effort. When you have so many varied expectations between publishers and readers, such a system needs a framework to help everyone match expectations.

Any help you can provide improving that framework or spreading the word appreciated...things like only marketing with blogs that carry a Disclosure Policy, can go a long way to a long-term solution.

Hey Jim! You've got some catching up to do...I saw the comment glitch over the weekend. Your commenters/tweeters have pretty good odds of winning so far!

Thanks for taking part and giving back to your readers in the process...have a super holiday!!

I love your take on this Steve -- thanks for helping so many daily and working with Sears/IZEA to help more this holiday!

great job Matt -- I like it and blogged it. LMK any ways I can help. We should prolly discuss VCFAQ idea sometime...

good move...

great review Andy -- sounds familiar to our previous discussions. Adding "syndicated post of the day" would be nice semi-automated service (draft mode, allowing approval). Alwa

I look forward to trying it out...

Glad to hear it Robert!

I just used the Seagate competitor as one example. There are a variety of scenarios where you might blog or converse with a spectrum of conflict involved, including financial and non-financial gain/loss. In fact, the Disclosure Policy at your blog is a great one-stop place for readers to learn about your conflicts and disclosure practices across a variety of services. Imagine including in your DP how you intend to disclose on your blog, comments elsewhere, Twitter, FriendFeed and others with less real estate involved -- the emergence of such a cross-service standard would move the whole transparency topic into the post-blog era.

I care less about what your specific policy is -- that's a personal decision. I do, however, believe that posting a DP and linking from every page with anchor text "Disclosure Policy" will help users -- and possibly encourage other social media early adopters to do the same.

Therefore, my follow-up question is: Did you intend your comment above "I plan to disclose every bias I have." to be your Disclosure Policy or do you plan to create a specific Disclosure Policy page, linking it from your footer or sidebars? My suggestion was the latter...

Given your integration of blogs, twitter, friendfeed and the like in this redesign; I'd love to highlight your Disclosure Policy as one example of how to increase transparency across services.

Hey Robert,

Congrats on the redesign. It's a perfect opportunity to add a "Disclosure Policy" link to the bottom/side of your blog, linking to a brief statement of any conflicts and you policy of disclosing them for readers.

For example, if you blog about a Seagate competitor, do you plan to remind the reader that Seagate is a sponsor of yours? What if you blog about a competitor to FastCompany, who isn't a cash sponsor of yours but you definitely have the potential for financial gain from FastCompany success?

It's easy to think that everyone already knows your interests/conflicts/policy, but the reality is new people stumble across your blog daily and have no idea. Like Privacy Policy links, a Disclosure Policy link on every page provides old/new readers a standard phrase to look for and build trust with the publisher they are reading.

You can create a basic DP at http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/ or you can create your own. Whaddya say?

@WelcomeBackRosenthal: Don't worry, IZEA is the pioneer as others come around to the vision. It's taken some time, but the http://www.SocialSpark.com/ advertiser social network is the right platform at the right time.

Hey Mark,

Nice coverage. I'm in the alpha and have enjoyed the AJAXify you reference -- so long as it scales.

As a member of most of the sponsored blogging networks and someone who has blogged, advertised and invested in PayPerPost, I think your Google reference missed a critical differentiator in SocialSpark.

GOOG's stated concern was with paid, pagerank-passing links. That position affects text link ads, sponsored links, affiliate links and even blatant thank-my-sponsor posts like those only recently no-followed by TechCrunch to preserve TC pagerank.

SocialSpark, however, is the first and only sponsored blogging network to require/verify 100% no-follow on sponsored links and 100% in-post disclosure. SocialSpark doesn't just require disclosure, it actually provides the industry's only disclosure auditing platform to ensure disclosure happens every time. This is great news for bloggers who haven't considered sponsored blogging before due to Google/disclosure fears, bloggers who fear GOOG penalty with other sponsored blogging companies like SponsoredReview/ReviewMe/PayU2Blog and advertisers who were missing tools to implement corporate/industry disclosure guidelines such as those proposed by Dell or WOMMA.

SocialSpark is the only social marketing network offering Google-approved and WOMMA-approved guidelines to sponsored posts. In fact, SocialSpark has private alpha keys welcoming those organizations to verify compliance.

great post Ben -- the distinction between taking steps to chain people to their chairs vs. reward/inspire them is an important one!

As always, great post Karoli!

Robert:

I think you've missed the whole point of this content-based swipe (note that blogs without sponsored posts were impacted). GOOG's latest move isn't about disclosure or search relevance. IZEA's launch of http://www.SocialSpark.com (prior to this GOOG move) with mandatory disclosure, transparent RealRank, no-follow links, and face-based analytics positions IZEA to lead on transparency and convert even more bloggers from AdSense to sponsored social media.

Make no mistake Robert, this is about GOOGopoly power in search being applied to stifle competition in online advertising. Given your advocacy for transparency, I hope you will join IZEA's efforts to replace industry reliance upon secret, mysterious PageRank formulas with fully transparent, analytics-based RealRank. RealRank won't start perfect, but will be transparent and improve with your input and support. More detail here: http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/11/what-is-...

Thanks for the input to date and keep it coming...

this is big Jim...very big...the first social network for advertisers, for engagement across all social media, with real demographics and ROI built-in...

I saw that panel as well and watching Cuban talk about blog monetization right now. Nice post...

Vlad & Aaron:

I've requested greater reporting beyond "pending" and I know the team is working on a variety of site/affiliate enhancements. At the end of the day PPP is paying for active referrals (not just curious signups), but just getting more granularity than "pending" would help understand status and allow affiliates to encourage conversion themselves.

I'm intrigued by your focus/expertise on referrals (as opposed to PPP's core business) and would love to get your prioritized top 5-10 suggestions for making PPP affiliate programs better. If interested, shoot me your thoughts at dan*at*inflexionvc*d0t*com. And, yes, Andy I'd love yours too for an affiliate expert triumverate of input. No promises, but I'm interested in the wisdom...

yeah, sorry about that Vlad. I'm playing wih some other siglink anchor text periodically.

I will definitely share this feedback. Ted and I have discussed RMP many times and the conversions need to be streamlined. No arguments there. There is a lot of opportunity on the PPP affiliate side and feedback is being heard.

I was surprised about your take on the opps side though. PPP has the most advertisers in the industry, and even if you didn't like marketplace opps that's no reason to give away 100% markups on your Advertise page. PPP Direct doesn't require you to remove yourself from other marketplaces, but makes the process more trusted/efficient for you and sponsors. Give the PPP Direct widget a try, even if just side-by-side with others...

Vlad,

I'm curious whether this feedback is due to low RMP conversions (just one of PPP's affiliate programs) or because of quantity of opps available thru PPP's marketplace vs. elsewhere. There are plenty of ways RMP could improve, but I currently see 150+ opps in my qualified list (and 200+ overall). Are you seeing more elsewhere?

I also noticed you're not using PPP Direct on your Advertise page. Any feedback why you'd give up 100% markups for essentially a direct deal instead of PPP Direct's 10%?

All thoughts appreciated...

I'm a blogger, advertiser and investor with PPP and I'm sorry to hear about your experience. It sounds like some of the bloggers you hired didn't follow the TOS and should have been flagged. I'm glad to hear PPP responded by giving you additional posts with new bloggers.

I know from experience that segmentation by quality (tack rating) improves your results in PPP's marketplace -- just as buying from eBay sellers with high feedback scores in eBay's marketplace improves the buying experience. I'd recommend segmenting for 4-5 tacks, but like all market systems, there is a tradeoff between cost and segmentation.

Even better, any campaigns less than 20 posts should probably utilize PPP Direct -- a system that allows for direct selection of bloggers of your choosing (and it's even cheaper).

Thanks for trying PPP and I hope they can win you back...

Thanks for the coverage Nick...keep up the great blogging!

I'm confused...I think PPP's F8 app provides functionality for existing/new PPP members. Are you already a Postie deciding whether to try the app or is this just linkbait? ;-)

Come on Robert. You know people pick their battles and Mike's abuse of Ted Murphy/PPP makes this an easy target for hypocrisy. Valleywag even put Arrington and PPP pictures at the header of this flip-flop post: http://valleywag.com/tech/flip-flop/michael-arr...

Throw in the fact that Mike doesn't take it as well as Murphy (see "pound sand", "I'm now pissed off" and even deleting comments about Battelle and Disclosure Policies here http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=410 ) and you have an easy glass-house story.

Mike will live and learn from this. Battelle's agreement with you ( http://www.federatedmedia.net/blog/archives/200... ) could yield a good outcome for all conversation marketing audiences:

"But no matter what, I think the key, as Scoble says, is to disclose. Our draft principles say:

Appearing in Ads: If you lend your voice or name to copy in an ad unit (for instance, “My dream search engine would operate on my spoken word,”) disclose that fact and your relationship with the advertiser, if any, in a post or on a disclosure page. "

You know PPP has championed a Disclosure Policy framework via http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/ for some time now because it's so extensible for this changing/experimenting space.

Arrington's post for MS was on a site that encouraged user contributions, leaving organic and sponsored content unclear. For example, Mike's post ends with "Posted by Mike Arrington at 03:35:30 PM", looking very similar to Mike Watson's "Posted by Mike Watson at 12:04:01 PM".

That ambiguity could have been covered with a linked Disclosure Policy on Mike's site (as Battelle suggests) and a Disclosure Policy at the FM site. In fact, such DP detail is relevant for readers of the next Microsoft product review on TechCrunch.

I'm still hoping to see a "Disclosure Policy" link from every page of your blog...readers will benefit from such transparency and standard linking on the blogs they read (like "Privacy Policy" on ecommerce sites).

Great post Andy.

Just a terminology suggestion. I believe PPP is using the term "directory" instead of "marketplace" for their advertiser-selects-blogger listings. The PPP Marketplace remains as the place full of advertiser opps; whereas the Directory is full of blogger descriptions. Make sense?

Thanks for the coverage!

nice quick lesson Andy. I've been using HaloScan, but see room for more cross-platform automated options...