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January 4, 2007
The blogger doth protest too much, methinks...
It's all so formulaic -- big company tries to leverage the blogging world -- bloggers are indignant that their Utopian environment of free speech is tainted by the novice camper peeing in the pristine mountain stream.
The latest tinkler is Microsoft, who sent out a bunch of tricked out laptops loaded with its new Vista operating system to bloggers in the tech community. Here's an article from Bulldog Reporter that gives you the gist.
Shock of shocks, there was bloglash (sorry, folks -- couldn't resist). A blogslaught (I'll stop now) of quasi-journalists claim that Microsoft is trying to buy them off. A refreshing voice of reason on this issue is John Scalzi's post and what he thinks bloggers should do when faced with these so-called dilemmas. Worth a quick read from anyone who is interested in the ethics of corporate kids playing in the blog sandbox.
Bottom line -- if you're a company trying to market through social media, transparency and over-disclosure are the rules of the day. If you're a blogger and you're not planning to run for public office, you might want to chill a little bit and give the freebies to a neighbor if it'll help you sleep better at night.
Posted by Matt Kucharski at January 4, 2007 2:59 PM
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