You see, when blogging took off it was a way for the everyday man to have his small say but on a world stage. Anyone could do it – have your post read by some guy scratching his crotch at the other end of the world – talk about absolute power! Thousands jumped on the bandwagon. To be fair, many blogged just to a close-knit group of friends – it was a public diary to keep the group updated on what was happening in his or her life.
Then there were the others … wanna-be journalists, many without an original thought in their heads, who started creeping out from the woodwork and basking their their new-found power (hey the written word is powerful ya?).
Bloggers grumbled about everything under the sun as is their God-given right to lead of rest of us imbeciles. The so-called gossip columnists saw their hits soar with every salacious entry (never mind if you got the facts wrong – or didn’t have any facts to start off with). They had their legions of fans and as well as their detractors. Still that was fine. Nobody took it very seriously. It was all just good fun.
The dark clouds gathered when the “dedicated” bloggers (probably with too much time on their hands and egos that know no bounds) came onto the scene and started to flex their perceived “muscle”. With a few hundred, okay maybe a few thousand hits to their credit (if you keep pressing the reload button often enough the hits will go up on some counters), they were seen as the “A List” of their breed (woopie!).
Still they offered the same fare …. lots of bitching, the odd cat-fight (some of it staged), not much in the way of substance and measured alternatives … well these were few and far between. But they did have their followers and that was all that mattered. Hell, they were becoming legends in their own minds.
It all started to go downhill when companies got into the act. Hey it was a cheap form of publicity. Grab some bloggers.. invite then for an event … better still call it a PRESS even (sounds more stylo and inflates the ego) and through them, you spread the word of about your product or service or whatever for the cost of a cheap meal and some freebies (bloggers like to touch things ya?). And for the sponsors, most of the time you got good cheap, cheap publicity. And what’s wrong with that … nothing!
It is one thing offering some freebies in the hope of getting some business exposure on someone’s blog. But now we have paid bloggers – people who are willing to sell themselves for a few dollars to write a hyped-up post. Someone at the Social Media Breakfast session today (Oct 4 2008) said this is no different from newspaper journalists. “If they write bad things about us, we will pull out our ads and the editor would get into trouble with the sales director!” said one bright spark. I’m not sure which planet this moron was from but it just shows how naive these pseudo-journalists can be. Newspapers (well in Singapore at least) are not going to be held hostage to such a threat. If you want to dictate editorial, buy some advertorial space and knock yourself out – that’s what a real newspaper editor would say… sigh.
I’ve got no issues with bloggers putting paid adverts on their sites. Everyone knows these are ads. The “editorial” should still be sacrosanct (I hope in vain). But paid bloggers – writing under the guise of an honest opinion? How many I wonder would have the courage to admit that they were essentially receiving kickbacks for their entries?
Isn’t this all starting to smell… welcome people to the dark side of “Social” Media.
