I think Peter Wright needs to look up the term "transparency". He responds to Jason Calacanis' attack on PayPerPost by saying this:

So, let's put this in perspective. Jason's company markets solutions to advertisers targeting blogs. Presumably it costs quite a lot of money to get your product on Engadget, while we can place your product pretty much anywhere you want for anything from 20 bucks up. So, nothing to gain? How about badmouthing the competition? WebLogs Inc markets products through blogs, so does PayPerPost. Difference? We're cheaper.

Hmm. Maybe Jason needs to use smaller words when he talks to Peter. Here's the difference:

Jason..... isn't.... hiding.... his.... affiliations

There, spacing the words might help Peter grasp the issue. PayPerPost pays people to say nice things about a product, but without those people revealing that they are being paid. It's not at all like what Calacanis is doing - last time I checked, it was quite obvious that he's being paid by Netscape. I'm on a smaller stage here, but hey, I'm doing the same thing - promoting Cincom Smalltalk as part of my job as Product Manager.

What PayPerPost is doing is like Product Placement in tv and movies - except the blog audience doesn't know that the products are being placed. Back when Willow opened up her Apple notebook on Buffy, we all knew that Apple was paying for that spot. With their bloggers, we don't. It's like having an acquaintance tell you to see some new movie, and finding out later that he had been slipped $20 by the studio to say nice things about it.

It's spam. Nothing more, nothing less. And it has every bit as much value.

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