Transparency Versus Hypocrisy

Can­cer.

I’ve talked a lot about it on this blog of late, being breast can­cer aware­ness month and all, and given my wife’s cur­rent bat­tle. But this time, the kind of can­cer I’m refer­ring to is dif­fer­ent. And it’s shak­ing up the blo­gos­phere at its foundations.

I’m all for the small guy mak­ing it big. But when the com­pe­ti­tion, a “big guy” (owned by a For­tune 500 com­pany) starts call­ing you a can­cer on his per­sonal blog, you know that some­thing has cer­tainly gone amok.

It’s pretty con­tro­ver­sial, too. Large play­ers in the blo­gos­phere have their knick­ers in a twist about this — and I couldn’t resist talk­ing about it, and shar­ing my views.

Let’s enter the play­ground, kid­dies. Shall we?

Jason Cala­ca­nis, the cre­ator and now for­mer owner of Weblogs, Inc., who was once touted as earn­ing over a mil­lion dol­lars in Google AdSense in a year with his blogs, and who has recently sold his mega-​​successful blog net­work to Netscape (AOL/​Time Warner), has cre­ated quite a stir lately by call­ing a small-​​time competitor…

… A cancer.

Suf­fice it to say that Cala­ca­nis won his record AdSense earn­ings with the help of over 100 blog­gers on his pay­roll, paid to main­tain blogs and post con­tent. (This is impor­tant, and you’ll soon real­ize why.)

And also keep in mind that this whole ker­fuf­fle started when the news broke that this “small­time” com­peti­tor had just received $3 mil­lion in ven­cap funding.

OK, the story is this.

PayPer​Post​.com, run by geeks Ted Mur­phy and Peter Wright, is in my esti­ma­tion a fab­u­lous service.

Like eLance​.com for exam­ple, you cre­ate an account, place a req­ui­si­tion to their “net­work” for peo­ple to review your blog and post about it on their own, with a link back to your site in exchange for a small fee.

We’re talk­ing a few bucks here.

$2. $3. Maybe $5.

All in all, noth­ing to sneeze at.

But these are real blog­gers run­ning real, legit­i­mate blogs. Not junk sites or link farms or splogs (i.e., spam blogs). And most of them are not even sites mon­e­tized with pay-​​per-​​click ads.

We’ve tested this, and the results were fantastic.

We asked peo­ple to review our blog (or the blog’s topic like, say, breast can­cer), post about it on theirs, and link back to our blog. That’s about it.

Some posts were pos­i­tive. Oth­ers were not. A few were neu­tral. But the posts and linkbacks we received — links from posts by very tal­ented writ­ers whose blogs are filled with great, orig­i­nal con­tent — cre­ated some pretty impres­sive traf­fic. Noth­ing earth-​​shattering, but great results for just a few bucks, nonetheless.

Not only that, but some of the con­tent blew us away. It was fresh, it was inci­sive and a lot of it was in-​​depth; going beyond the requisition’s man­date where their posts pointed out things that indi­cated they’ve taken the time to read our blog.

Amaz­ing.

These are real blog­gers writ­ing real con­tent. Look at it this way: it’s no dif­fer­ent than hir­ing ghost­writ­ers. The ben­e­fit, from the pay-per-poster’s per­spec­tive, is that they get paid to do some­thing they love to do. And it gives them some­thing to blog about, too.

From the advertiser’s per­spec­tive, you get linkbacks to your site. Legit­i­mate links — not from splog­ging or ad-​​filled junk sites with low PR rat­ings, but from gen­uine, content-​​rich sites. We were astounded at how inno­v­a­tive, fresh and incred­i­bly infor­ma­tive some of these sites were, too.

Bot­tom line? PayPer­Post gen­er­ated traf­fic for us and link pop­u­lar­ity. The sites that are link­ing to us also have respectable rank­ings them­selves. Not only are many of them blog­gers who blog in addi­tion to the occa­sional paid post, but they also have sub­scribers and followers.

And they have writ­ten posts for us with com­men­tary of all col­ors — not hype-​​filled fluff only meant to adver­tise. Some were opinion-​​based reviews that were both good and bad, and oth­ers were sim­ple noti­fi­ca­tions that our blog exists and may be of inter­est to their readers.

OK, now here comes the rub.

Like any other net­work out there (like eLance​.com, Pay​Pal​.com or eBay​.com), there is a poten­tial for abuse. Posters are not required to dis­close that they are being paid for their “posts” (i.e., their links). And some adver­tis­ers will only accept pos­i­tive ones, which may be mis­lead­ing to a degree.

But it’s up to them. And it’s up to the poster to accept the job. And it’s also clearly dis­closed on PayPer​Post​.com, too.

In my mind, this is no dif­fer­ent than ghost­writ­ing, hir­ing some­one to write arti­cles for you, or hir­ing a ser­vice or buy­ing a soft­ware to sub­mit your arti­cles to direc­to­ries and arti­cle sites.

In other words, it’s no dif­fer­ent than, say, pay­ing a prospec­tive client’s lunch in an attempt to woo their patronage.

Cala­ca­nis was a respectable dude. And the key­word here is “was.” I used to love his blog. But now I’m ques­tion­ing his motives and tactics.

I used to love his some­times harsh opin­ions and con­tro­ver­sial stances. It’s Jason, after all, the mil­lion­aire net­work owner him­self who paid over 100 blog­gers to pro­vide AdSense-​​donned con­tent on his blogs.

But to resort to name-​​calling and bul­ly­ing tac­tics in what seems to be a disin­gen­u­ous way to drum up traf­fic to his sites — who need­less to say sport affil­i­ate ads and links, too — and hid­ing it under the smoke-​​and-​​mirrors’ guise of “ethics” and “decep­tive adver­tis­ing” is highly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, if you ask me.

The moral issue, accord­ing to Cala­ca­nis, is that PayPer­Post lacks trans­parency. Such as those dogged laws that force news­pa­pers to place “this is an adver­tise­ment” near an paid-​​for adver­to­r­ial in their pub­li­ca­tion, or “Ads by Google” links next to AdWords’ ads, he wants PayPer­Post to force posters to dis­close they are being paid for their content.

Fine.

I agree that the lack of trans­parency, which in itself is not immoral, can open the door to allow some peo­ple who are up to no good, and who can find ways around it to mis­lead, to abuse the system.

And I agree that some web­sites out there are black­hat bit­buck­ets, which thrive on junk con­tent and give the blo­gos­phere a bad name. So “trans­parency,” as Cala­ca­nis points out, is indeed an impor­tant issue that can­not be ignored.

Fine, again.

But to stir up con­tro­versy by lam­bast­ing a com­peti­tor and hid­ing it behind a thinly veiled side-​​issue of attempt­ing to “pro­tect the legit­i­macy of the blo­gos­phere” is no dif­fer­ent than both:

1. The anti-​​spamming, anti-​​marketing, social­is­tic Nazis who think that a mere link to a busi­ness site in an email is con­sid­ered spam;
2. As well as, on the other end of the spec­trum, the fraud­u­lent scam­sters and spam­mers who hide behind the anon­im­ity of the web to push their wares.

(Er, some­thing smells rot­ten in Blogoland.)

Let’s also not for­get that this is the same Jason Cala­ca­nis who, in a recent inter­view on JenSense, said the fol­low­ing about his million-​​dollar AdSense paycheck:

“JenSense: What sin­gle change do you think made the biggest leap in your AdSense income? Cala­ca­nis: 1. Tak­ing off the bor­ders around the adver­tise­ment, and 2. mak­ing the links the same color as the links on the blog.

(That’s pretty trans­par­ent, don­cha think?)

And then, to take pot­shots and call a com­peti­tor like PayPer­Post a “can­cer?” A legit­i­mate, suc­cess­ful ser­vice who’s busi­ness model is solid enough to com­mand sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion and funding?

Gimme a break.

Talk about the issue at hand. Sure.

Bring sub­stance to the table. No problem.

Voice an opin­ion and back it up with con­crete, log­i­cal and com­mon­sen­si­cal points that, while arguable, are sig­nif­i­cant enough to bring to the blogosphere’s atten­tion (and let them make a deci­sion there­after). Fine.

But don’t resort to bul­ly­ing, smallguy-​​bashing, name-​​calling and fear-​​mongering only to prop your­self up, or your traf­fic, or your own rev­enue, that only demon­strate the mere hypocrisy behind your child­ish attempts.

If you want in on what’s going on, you can read the lat­est post (one of a dread­ful many, I fear) on Cal­ca­nis’ own blog.

You will find that most of the com­ments on Jason’s blog were in favor of his “right­eous” stance. Pity. But some of them were on PayPerPost’s side. In fact, one of the most insight­ful com­ments came from Dave Tay­lor, who said (edited for brevity):

“(…) PayPer­Post is no dif­fer­ent to many other online traf­fic mon­e­tiz­ing venues, and it’s hard for me to under­stand how it’s dif­fer­ent from, say, the thou­sands of blog­gers who have their writ­ing influ­enced by the desire to attract valu­able con­tex­tual adver­tis­ing (think Google AdSense).

“The big dif­fer­ence with PPP is that Peter and his team are being *hon­est* and *straight­for­ward* about their struc­ture, rather than hid­ing it behind some sort of cur­tain or parad­ing it about as some sort of moral or eth­i­cal issue.

“(…) All PPP’s doing is cre­at­ing a mar­ket­place, just as eBay cre­ates a mar­ket­place but shouldn’t log­i­cally be held account­able for auc­tions that are really just adver­tise­ments for online stores, say.”

Right on.

Couldn’t have said it bet­ter myself. But this whole sit­u­a­tion got me irked enough that I felt com­pelled to say some­thing, too.

On PayPerPost’s Peter Wright’s blog, where a back-​​and-​​forth tirade was going on in the com­ments sec­tion with Cala­ca­nis him­self, Jason responds with this gem:

“I just looked at the sad, sad adver­tis­ers using PayPer­Post. We don’t sell ads to losers like this. We sell ads to the top 100 adver­tis­ers on the Internet.”

So Cala­ca­nis is say­ing that PayPerPost’s sole pur­pose is to allow blog­gers to “whore” them­selves for a buck. (Yes, he did say that in another post.) But hey, only accept­ing “large adver­tis­ers who have the big bucks to adver­tise and brand clout behind them” doesn’t make you a whore, right?

By Cala­ca­nis’ stan­dards, it doesn’t make you a whore. It makes you a high-​​class escort.

Or a pimp.

Any­way, this is where I felt an itch and the need to add this tidbit:

“Jason, since you are pro­mot­ing prod­ucts on the side­bar via affil­i­ate links, mean­ing you do get kick­backs from peo­ple to buy the stuff, are you trans­par­ent enough to tell peo­ple you are get­ting paid if they buy? Maybe you should put, like Google Ads, a link that says “Affil­i­ate Links” near your ads. If you want every­one else to be trans­par­ent, then you shouldn’t cast the first stone.

“Since large adver­tis­ers will only adver­tise on sites large enough and with enough traf­fic to jus­tify the invest­ment, many of them still do it covertly. And some­times, they are not paid in actual dollars.”

Ulti­mately, is it really about trans­parency? No. It smells more like snob­bery, bul­lyrag­ging, and hypocrisy to me.

PayPer­Post is a fab­u­lous ser­vice that can help put any unknown blog on the Internet’s map. Even if the posts are bad or neu­tral, they are still link­ing to your site. And link pop­u­lar­ity is what dri­ves search engine rank­ings, doesn’t it?

That said, sure there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for mis­use and abuse. But the onus is on the blog­ger accept­ing the fee to make the post, not the ser­vice itself. Just like it is on a spam­mer try­ing to phish for your Pay­Pal account, and not on Pay­Pal itself.

Speak­ing of ille­gal or immoral, this is not like Nap­ster and the whole file-​​sharing deba­cle, which is a ser­vice that, while it has some legit­i­mate uses, is mostly used for con­temptible ends. PayPer​Post​.com is a legit­i­mate ser­vice that has the poten­tial of being misused.

(And in this case, “mis­used” is defined as used for “mis­lead­ing” or “decep­tive” pur­poses. Not out­right ille­gal or crim­i­nal ones, like spam or scams.)

Speak­ing of spam, email purists might con­tend that spam has tainted email­dom. But has it stopped? No. It in fact cre­ated more oppor­tu­nity and legit­i­macy for email, and even forced “good email­ers” to find newer, more effec­tive ways to get their mes­sage accross. Such as writ­ing bet­ter copy.

(D’uh, who would have thunk?)

Like email, blog­ging is just another pub­lish­ing plat­form any­way. Legit­i­mate ser­vices like PayPer­Post doesn’t give it a bad name. It’s peo­ple like Cala­ca­nis who try to bully its smaller-​​sized com­peti­tors, and drag them out from the pubs and into the streets for some good ol’ fash­ion fisticuffs, just to attract atten­tion to itself.

Beer and pop­corn, anyone?

About the Author

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