Awesome post by Joel Spolsky
December 30th, 2006Like any self-respecting geek, I have a lot of respect for Joel. He’s entertaining to read, though sometimes off his rocker, he makes sense and valid points. I was pleasantly surprised to read his latest article Bribing Bloggers, which I think is a very cool thing to do. He earned a few brownie points in increased credibility, which I think is his motive. So what about services like PayPerPost? I think you cannot stop commerce - if there is a way to make money, people will use it, sooner or later. PayPerPost makes this kind of bribing almost systematic.
Which I think, will lead to the rise of bloggers writing big-time disclosures like “I didn’t get any freebie from XYZ Co.” to hang on to their credibility. Or maybe, a separate network like 9rules which basically says “we’re clean bloggers”. Hmm. I think there is a VC-funded startup somewhere in there.