Real Time Collaboration and Web 2.0 tools, tips, and reviews

Diane: you might want to try the service before getting important parts wrong -- in full view of your audience no less. Your statement "What is wrong is that the posts are heavily reviewed and can be denied, obviously only glowing reviews are going to be accepted." is just wrong. In fact, the example Stowe presented shows a perfect example of "tone = neutral" which allows bloggers to go negative, positive or neutral -- and get paid regardless. There is also no extra payment for click-thrus (ala AdSense) so there is no incentive to deceive.

In fact, there is an ad opp right now that asks for your opinion on PPP, paying for any tone. You might want to try it and then share whether you, as the blogger, were in control of picking opps that fit you and your audience. The resulting research results you could share with your audience would be a valid/valuable contribution to the blogosphere...

Are the authors paid by the companies who make the products/services they review? If not, I don't see the problem with getting paid to write a review, journalist do it all the time.

Sometimes it's the manufacturer, sometimes its an interactive marketing agency and sometimes its a retailer looking for review/awareness of products they carry from various manufacturers (i.e. I saw one ad opp for hard drive reviews that was paid by a sponsoring etailer). Bloggers are free to choose any opp they want and if getting paid by the manufacturer concerned a particular blogger they could pass for other opps -- in fact, they can click a button to say they don't want to see opps from that advertiser going forward.

The experience I've seen is that bloggers are less focused on who is paying and more focused on whether they can provide an honest opinion. If they own the product or can review it, and they feel it's right for their audience then they blog about it and help cover their expenses with something they felt was bloggable anyway.

But they should disclose that they are being paid to blog about it. Otherwise, all positive blog reviews become suspect.

Dan - could you post some examples of blog posts where the blogger didn't like the product and was paid to blog about it? An unsatisfactory product is just as bloggable as a fabulous one.