But if you look at the Marqui page you'll see it "will start out on about fifteen leading blogs, the largest direct sponsorship program the blogosphere has ever seen." Now how did they choose their blogs? Would I qualify? Well, maybe for this site, which despite its acerbic nature is actually a model of decorum (for me) but probably not for my other site (which is not). Robert Scoble, Good notes, isn't restrained by Microsoft at all. Well no, they don't have to. But I can't ever picture Microsoft picking me for the same assignments. Perhaps I should start cleaning up my act to prepare for the inevitable day I cross the line and find myself unemployed. No corporation bashing, that's right out. Being nice to Microsoft once in a while. Maybe preparing for some LMS vendor contracts by pulling back on some of my criticism. Hm?
CRLFNo, I am not questioning Good's right to do this. But I do wonder about the ripple effects. What happens, for example, if I start filtering out his Marqui links from my Edu_RSS aggregator, prefering only to harvest and display his non-commercial content - does he come back with terms and conditions for aggregating? Does Marqui? The point is: paying bloggers has ripple effects, and if we just look at the particular blog, and not the wider picture, we miss this. Sponsored blogging brings money into the picture, and while money has its uses (it lets me eat and clothe myself unfashionably) it also distorts. Let's not be blind to this.
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