It’s been a little over two weeks since the FTC announced they were going to start watching blogs. Since then, there’s been healthy discussion and debate. Bloggers have had pretty much the same reaction as advertisers did when the FTC first came after unscrupulous ads. It’s great. It’s a sign that social media is coming [...]
Category Archives: Ethics
On FTC’s blogging guidelines, ‘clearly and conspicuously’ is what everyone should be talking about
Also posted in Public Relations, Social Media, Technology 2 Comments
On shilling: Where the “everyone does it” sleaze mentality comes from
TechCrunch recently covered an example of shilling, where interns were paid to post fake reviews on Apple’s App Store. The sleazy PR firm in question this time was Reverb Communications, based out of California. TechCrunch’s article pulls up a lot of great points, even going as far to post an e-mail from Reverb in which [...]
Also posted in Public Relations 1 Comment
Having a code of ethics, in and of itself, is meaningless
Some organizations treat the topic of ethics as though it were something on a checklist. “We have an ethics page on our site; therefore we are ethical.”
The word ethics leaves a lot of room for this type of behavior. In the end, being ethical simply means consistently following a set of rules. But the rules [...]
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Digg’s short URL fiasco and what we can learn from it
When Digg first came out with their short URL service, they saw tons of usage right off the bat, regardless of the fact that they were attaching their patently annoying Digg bar to every page instead of using a real redirect.
Thousands and thousands of people used it, but some hated it. I personally never went [...]
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The price of being sleazy: Three hundred thousand dollars
The New York Times reported Tuesday on a cosmetic surgery company that was faking reviews online. The cost? $300,000. And of course a New York Times article outing them as sleazebags.
I wonder if they used the “But everybody’s doing it!” defense.
The article was particularly surprising to me because I know that some PR and communication [...]
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United breaks a sweat over breaking guitars
If you’re a big fan of PR debacles, then you’ve probably already heard about the United Breaks Guitars music video on Youtube.
If you haven’t, here’s a summary: Guy watches guitar get broken by baggage handlers. Guy gets nowhere with customer service. Guy makes suspiciously-high-production-value music video on Youtube complaining about his treatment.
And the crowd goes [...]
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Shills down my spine: 3 ways to kick off the fight against online marketing evil-doers
There seems to be an accepted reality in online marketing: Writing fake, positive reviews for products is something everyone does. It’s the only way to be competitive.
Does this smell like bullshit to anyone else?
I’ve looked around the net for statistics on just how many online, on-site (i.e. sites like Amazon or Newegg) reviews are real, [...]
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