Pay Per Post Model Moves To Twitter
from the things-that-shouldn't-surprise-you dept
The Federal Trade Commission recently said it was looking into how it could require disclosure when bloggers are being paid to write about a product, the latest move in a long-running flap over the potential abuse of word-of-mouth marketing. A big driver behind this flap was the emergence a few years ago of a company called PayPerPost, which (as its name indicates) paid bloggers to write nice things about its customers' products. PayPerPost raised a lot of questions about deceptive advertising, in particular, who should be held responsible for it: the blogger or the company paying the blogger. As Mike noted at the time, focusing on one platform misses the larger point that deceptive advertising is deceptive advertising, regardless of where it appears. With that in mind, it shouldn't be at all surprising to see the company behind PayPerPost -- which has since changed its name to Izea -- is now paying folks to post its customers' messages to their Twitter account. Seeing as how Twitter only allows messages of 140 characters or less, there's not a lot of room for disclosure there. These sorts of efforts will continue to spread to new platforms as they emerge, particularly when they grab new users in the way Twitter has. Perhaps the only saving grace is that as these shady marketing efforts grow, people will become more and more skeptical about product recommendations from untrusted sources online, undermining the value of paid placements for companies. This sort of microshilling doesn't seem like it will have a long shelf life -- especially if the FTC decides to get involved.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: pay per post
Companies: izea, twitter
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I think most people are already (and have always been) skeptical of product recommendations from unknown sources. People aren't stupid, they know to take into account the possibility that someone is getting paid (or somehow benefiting) to recommend something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Things like metacritic are also gamed to the point if its not a blizzard game its not worth reading the reviews.
Best way to go is sneeker net, generaly that works a lot better.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Easy Peasy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Easy Peasy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whatcha gonna do?
If a major company engages in the practice it will eventually come to light and be an embarrassment. Small companies will probably be the ones who try it. If they have a bad product, then they are going to have a lot more unsatisfied customers than they can afford to pay, so they will lose, too.
A lot of young people have grown up online. My kids seem to have a sixth sense, and they notice things before I do. This kind of thing might work for a while, but I think it is probably not going to be a long-term problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Disclosure Legislation, etc.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]