The Inquisitr » chris brogan

The unforeseen trust built from a simple honest conversation

Steven Hodson — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:47:49 +0000

In social media we talk a lot about how important trust is. It is looked upon as a natural outgrowth of the cornerstones of social media – openness and transparency. But what if there was an even simpler and more direct way for that trust to be built. Not the trust that we think of that comes from knowing someone for a long time but a much more immediate trust that can happen within the space of literally minutes of your time.

I am prompted into this thought because of a post Chris Brogan just made to his blog about an experience that probably happened very shortly before him transcribing it to his blog. The short end of the story, and please take a minute to read the whole post as it is a few minutes you won’t regret, is that during his stay in Boston he had to take a cab and threw his suitcase into the trunk.

During the cab ride Chris and the lady driver engaged in conversation as many of us do but as he tells it there was a sharing of small life stories that when the cab ride was over left them both feeling a little better. It was after she had driven off that Chris realized that his suitcase, which also contained his Nikon D60 camera, was still in the trunk of the cab.

After trying the usual route to track down the driver and the cab Chris finally had to head into his meeting with the feeling that this was the last he would see of his camera and other belongings. That is pretty well how any one of us would have felt if we were in Chris’ shoes I would imagine.

At this point, I’m fairly sure my bag is gone. I’m reasonably sure this woman will discover the bag, and if she chooses to turn it in, will no doubt keep the camera. There’s no reason for her not to do so. And having just watched a TV news undercover report on how honest people aren’t (17 out of 17 people failed a simple test), I wasn’t feeling especially positive about my chances.

Flash forward about an hour and a half from when I realized the bag is gone. I’ve been to three appointments and lunch. I’m now standing exactly where the woman dropped me off. I am on a phone call when I look over and I see her pull up. Yes, the cab driver who has my bag has just pulled back up.

“I figured you were in a meeting, so I waited about an hour and then came back.”

I can’t believe this. There’s my bag. Completely intact. I give her a big hug, give her money equivalent to 2x the original cab ride (which probably still isn’t enough, given how much she saved me), and we part.

I have thought about this post of Chris’ and while the fact that he got his belongings back is great in of itself it got me to thinking about something. Where most of us go through our days with hundreds of little conversations much like Chris and the cab driver at what point in those conversations does honesty come into the equation?

As Chris pointed out in his post the conversation he and the lady cab driver had wasn’t the typical “how’s the weather” or “did you catch the game last night?” conversation. No, their conversation was about bits of their individual lives and spoken in such a way as to promote a sense of trust between two people who had never met before and chances are would never meet again.

If the idea of social media is to promote things like openness, transparency and trust could what happened with Chris and the lady cab driver be considered a social moment? After all there was some sort of connection made between two people totally unknown to each other that by all appearances happened within the short space of an honest conversation.

Social Media.

Social Moment.

Trust.

All within a short once in a lifetime conversation.

Amazing.

Paid Posts: Why they’re not that bad, but why you shouldn’t do them

Duncan Riley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:04:48 +0000

A lifetime ago, well a blog writing gig ago I gained a reputation as the guy who hates Izea/ PayPerPost. Nothing will change that reputation, but I have said repeatedly over the years that I don’t hate the idea, and that I’m all for new ways of monetizing blogs, even if I don’t use them myself.

It was policy in my previous role to pay out on PayPerPost because they were an easy target and any post always resulted in traffic, lots of comments and a ton of links. They were an easy target: Ted Murphy started the service on the wrong foot, not requiring disclosure and requesting positive reviews for payment. He’s since mended his ways, and I commend him for it. I found with some irony that my previous employer mended his relationship with Murphy by blaming me for the negative spin, given it was him who often ordered the posts, but that’s a tale for another day.

PayPerPost/ Izea is in the news today for a deal that saw prominent bloggers recieve $500 to buy goods at K-Mart with a request to write about the experience. Steve Hodson has some details in his previous post here. Along with Chris Brogan, Loren Feldman (1938media) and Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) also participated and have also been targeted by those who oppose the deal. Here’s my take on why it’s not that bad, but why you shouldn’t do it.

Formalizing existing relationships

There is a strong level of hypocrisy with some sites who decry the the use of services such as Izea, and yet often receive and keep goods for review.

I have always believed that Izea/ PayPerPost simply formalized a relationship that has always existed in old and new media.

Some sites and news outlets have a policy of returning all goods sent for review, but for everyone that does, there are more again that don’t. Then there’s the conference and events circuit where goods are often handed over to media attendees for the hope of a positive review. I didn’t get a chance at Macworld this year to go get my freebies, but I’ve still got a folder with at least a dozen offers of free product. Most events offer freebies from T-Shirts to actual products; for example I own a Zune because I received one at Microsoft Mix (for the record I wrote a negative review). There’s nothing wrong with media getting freebies and if you’re at the top of your game, it’s cream on the cake.

But why is this practice so much different than some of the offers from Izea?

Izea and similar services simply bring these relationships to more bloggers, and help pay the bills. Presuming no positive coverage is demanded (which it once was) there is to me very little difference between this style of promotion and media relationships that have always existed.

Why you shouldn’t do it

If you’re a small blogger who doesn’t care that much about credibility and Google ranking, go for it, but for others my recommendation is you should proceed with caution, and if in doubt, stay well away.

We don’t run paid posts at The Inquisitr, nor will we.

There’s two issues. Credibility and Google.

Chris Brogan may protest that the criticism of his participation in the K-Mart promotion is unjust (he argues it very well, and certainly I don’t feel worse of him for it) but the mere fact he has to post a defense of his decision actually goes to prove that at least in the eyes of some, he has lost some credibility.

No amount of disclosures or justification will change the perception of some that by writing a paid post (or similar such as the K-Mart promotion) makes you a sell out, and tarnishes your credibility with at least some of your readers.

I wouldn’t do a paid post anyway because I try to maintain that Chinese Wall between editorial and advertising, but this becomes doubly the case in terms of credibility: I’m not interested in testing my standing and credibility for $500 to spend at K-Mart or anywhere else for that matter. It has a far higher price than that

Second is the Google angle. Google cracked down on Izea/ PayPerPost bloggers last year, stripping their results out of search and giving most bloggers in the program a 0 page rank.

Whether you agree or disagree with Google’s decision is irrelevant: if Google says its not cool with paid posts, I’m not going to do paid posts, and I’d recommend for many reading this that you should be very careful as well. What’s more important? a quick buck or your blog in Google and the traffic that may provide you.

Conclusion

I don’t condemn any bloggers who participate in these programs, and I’d encourage you to not do so as well. As I’ve documented here at The Inquisitr many times before, making good money from blogging even in 2008 is difficult to very hard. I fully understand why some people would participate in these programs, and I sincerely hope that they are making some good money from them.

However, participation in these programs comes with risks that may damage your ability to grow in the future. You need to consider a long term picture for your blog, and while the money may be good now, it could cost you more in the future.

Social media dickwads on the hunt

Steven Hodson — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:34:47 +0000

While much of the tech blogosphere was pre-occupied with some faux bitchmeme about Paris or some such conference there was a much more interesting discussion going on elsewhere. A discussion that has some definite pros and cons with some social media dickwads acting like the world was coming to an end. All because Chris Brogan took part in a K-Mart social media experiment where they provided a select number of bloggers with a $500.00 gift card to spend in a K-Mart store (you mean there’s still some left?).

Once they had spent the money the bloggers were asked to write about their experience in a post that was to be clearly marked as Sponsored. Well Chris did just that only to find himself in the middle of a shitstorm – that I really don’t think he deserved. You can read the full post on Chris’ Dad-o-matic blog but it is plain to see that it is a Sponsored post. There is a couple of important points to keep in mind here:

Chris posted it to the Dad-o-matic blog not his own social media blog. This was a perfect fit for the post and I have no problem with that. Now if he had posted it to his social media blog I might have raised an eyebrow and asked him is he was feeling okay.
Chris might have made a mistake in believing that people were intelligent enough to make out the difference between Chris the father posting on Dad-o-matic and Chris the social media guru helping more people than you can count free of charge on his Chris Brogan blog.

Needless to say once his post hit the blogosphere the self-righteous social media experts came out in full force. It first started out on Twitter and then branched out to blogs. While a lot of the feedback was in support of Chris there were a rabid few who thought that he had done everything from sell out his brand to demean the whole social media ecosystem.

One person (Barb_G) even tried suggesting that Chris had created Dad-o-matic just for this K-Mart post

Barb_G: @jowyang Reading @chrisbrogan’s kmart post, on new blog that seems to have been created for that, has changed my mind. It does hurt cred.

1 day ago · Reply · View Tweet

Excuse me but if you are going to insult someone’s integrity don’t you think you should do some basic background. The fact is that Dad-o-matic is a collaborative blog maintained by a bunch of dads – not just Chris and has been around for awhile now. The interesting thing is that all the comments on the original K-Mart post are nothing but positive just as are the comments on the post Chris wrote on his home blog about the bullshit surrounding this.

From where I sit I don’t see how anything Chris has done is wrong or has hurt his reputation in anyway. So if you are among the idiots who think this then you really need to get a grip on reality and stop feeling so self-important.

And for those of you who think that by clearly divorcing himself from his social media guru status and writing as a father on a totally separate blog in anyway hurts social media then you are a dickwad – get over yourself.

Sarah Palin baby name generator meets new media

Duncan Riley — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:30:28 +0000

From the election that keeps on giving comes the Sarah Palin baby name generator.

Now I’m not one to judge Sarah Palin’s choice in names for her children, but others have called trailer on her selection. The question for me is how some of new media’s leading names fare in the service.

Without much ado, here’s a few new media/ web 2.0 names added to the Sarah Palin baby name generator.

Louis Gray: Duct Idaho Palin
Chris Brogan: Hose Hotrod Palin
Darren Rowse: Khaki Salmon Palin
Brian Solis: Molten Contra Palin
Chris Pirillo: Barrel McRaven Palin
Joel Comm: Hump Gizzards Palin
Michael Gray: Tarp Lazer Palin
Matt Cutts: Bullpen Cola Palin
Michael Arrington: Blowhard Conflicted Palin*
Pete Cashmore: Gamebird Kelp Palin
Om Malik: Drink Hack Palin
Mona Nomura (aka Mona N): Knife Pile Palin
Gabe Rivera: Suckhole Groupie Palin*
Zee: Snowshoe Man Palin
Loic LeMeur: Blitz Harden Palin
Kyle “night krew” Lacy: Shoulder Frontier Palin
Dave Winer: Icepick Motor Palin
Robert Scoble: Hen Waffle Palin
Loren Feldman: Beans Harpoon Palin
Steve Gillmor: Nutty Mumbles Palin*
Owen Thomas: Thump Hummer Palin

Just for the record, I’ve got the same Sarah Palin name as Pete Cashmore: Gamebird Kelp Palin, so I’m in good company.

* actual results may vary