Bloggers Battle Over Sponsored Conversations

A Forrester report released yesterday kicked off once again the debate over paying bloggers to write about products and companies. Blogging purists, new media marketing experts, and Google’s Matt Cutts have all weighed in, indicating this is hardly a debate that will soon be put to rest.

The Kmart example recalls a controversial post from new media marketing guru Chris Brogan, who accepted a
Marshall Kirkpatrick
ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick posted a
Jeremiah Owyang
Forrester senior analyst Jeremiah the righteous web” and inherent hypocrisy involved in compensated blogging, via AdWords or otherwise. Meanwhile Google’s Matt Cutts draws the line in the search index sand. You might remember Cutts tears down Forrester’s Kmart example:

"Google found multiple bloggers that violated our quality guidelines and we took corresponding action. Those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more."

Cutts once again calls for sponsorship disclosure and paid links that do not pass PageRank.

The resurgence of this conversation is interesting especially because of its odd timing.