Microsoft Pays Bloggers to Tout MS Slogan

Stony Stevenson writes "In an effort to inject Microsoft's latest slogan, 'People-ready business', into popular usage (and no doubt raise its Google page rank), Microsoft asked a passel of A List Bloggers to write blurbs on what this meaningless phrase means to them. Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Fred Wilson, Richard MacManus and a handful of others happily agreed to churn out some mush for Microsoft, which it later used in banner ads. What it really meant to these guys was income. Redmond paid the bloggers for every user who clicked through to the PRB microsite. That caused other bloggers, lead by Gawker chief Nick Denton, to rightfully question their ethics. A spitball war has been raging ever since."

Nothing unusual

[by Anonymous Coward]

Any blogger that supports their site through ads is making money through a marketing campaign. You can even pay Google to put other peoples' ads on your site for you. What's wrong with that?

Re:Nothing unusual

[timmarhy (659436)]

the difference, is this is a cash for comments style scandal. no harm in having banner ads, but your opinions should reflect the truth not you advertising. otherwise why would we bother listening?

Re:Nothing unusual

[br14n420 (1111329)]

I get the feeling, most bloggers would be pretty open about this. "Hey guys, look. Microsoft wants to pay for me to come up with a 30 word comment on how I feel about __________. What an awesome deal! mood: chipper status: lonely music: brittney spears"

Re:Nothing unusual

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

No, that's not what happened. If you click through TFA, you'll find they actually lathered up Microsoft's ass pretty good. "People Ready is a way of life, not a practice." was one of the blurbs they wrote.

But they weren't really "A-List" bloggers. "Michael Gaizutis" for example, who wrote the blurb above. I've never heard of him. In fact, I had to read his name closely to make sure it wasn't some gag name like "Michael Hunt" or "Dick Gazinya".

My post.

[trolltalk.com (1108067)]

Click here to get to their "post your own story" page. http://peopleready.federatedmedia.net/prpost [federatedmedia.net]

"I knew my business was people-ready the day I dumped all Microsoft products and switched to linux. No more worries about people complaining about viruses in emails or attachments, no more rebooting."

The response page:

" Thanks!

Thanks for posting! We'll give your post a quick once-over and get it up on the site shortly. "

Somehow, I'm skeptical.

Re:Nothing unusual

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

One of the biggest issues with blogging is that there is no separation between the person who is writing, and the person who is trying to make money. Most other media outlets have separate departments for those things to create a division between content and advertising.

There is always friction between the two, but it is much harder to attempt to be objective when you can sit and rationalize it to yourself. This is not to say that no one has ethics stronger than their profit motive, but it's no surprise to find that the reverse often holds true.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Jeremy_Bee (1064620)]

Your missing the point entirely here. It's not about having an agenda.

Unless one is a robot, *everyone* has multiple agendas. This is about having a hidden agenda and deceiving people into thinking you don't have an agenda when in fact you do.

It's about plain old honesty and integrity (or actually a lack of it).

Your argument, (like a shocking amount of posts here), seems to amount to "everyone does it" but as your Mother might have told you "If everyone else jumps off the bridge does that make it a good thing to do?"

Re:Nothing unusual

[misleb (129952)]

Nothing, as long as Adblock catches the ads before I have to see them.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Random BedHead Ed (602081)]

Looks like we'll need to modify Adblock's settings to filter out entire blogs. Then we'll have a true, dependable People-Ready Browser.

Re:Nothing unusual

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

Any blogger that supports their site through ads is making money through a marketing campaign.

This sort of campaign blurs the distinction between comment and advertising.

It diminishes the value of the opinions being blogged and potentially tars all tech bloggers with the same brush.

Re:Nothing unusual

[CRC'99 (96526)]

This sort of campaign blurs the distinction between comment and advertising.
It diminishes the value of the opinions being blogged and potentially tars all tech bloggers with the same brush.

Isn't this what's been happening in most magazines now for years?

Re:Nothing unusual

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

Isn't this what's been happening in most magazines now for years?

Yes, that's why bloggers were initially percieved as a breath of fresh air in an arena dominated by shills.

The honeymoon didn't last long, and now many of the journos who used to tout in the magazines have transferred their skills (and bad habits) to blogs.

Re:Nothing unusual

[pasamio (737659)]

But most magazines have the legal requirement to either mark that its an advertisement (ever seen those full page magazine articles with 'advertisement' placed somewhere on the page) or that they derived some benefit from it (e.g. an article a while back from Angus Kidman with the text "Angus Kidman travelled to Orlando as a guest of Hyperion" (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/ 04/27/1224215)).

This doesn't have that sort of marking, there in lies the issue. Its not clearly linked with a company (e.g. blogs.microsoft.com) and it is them being paid off by companies. Cash for comment. Actually illegal in Australia (see John Laws on the same subject).

Thats the issue.

Re:Nothing unusual

[akzeac (862521)]

It's not the same. It's not a case of bloggers putting Microsoft ads in their blogs.

It's a case of getting paid for letting Microsoft quote them saying the "people ready" slogan.

See this link [valleywag.com].

Easy Way To Counteract That

[geordie_loz (624942)]

Might I suggest that we all blog the term People Ready Business [ubuntu.com], and link it to www.ubuntu.com or our www.apple.com our our favourite decent provider of software, and someone who deserves the publicity. A bit like all the tags for VISTA on amazon marking it as DRM Filled, Buggy, Bad Vista etc..

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[fbjon (692006)]

Moreover, what does it mean? It seems it has to do with the latest versions of Windows and Office, but what exactly? The Microsoft site tells me that "People are your most important asset. With the right software, they'll push your business forward" (*) or somesuch. Ya sure, all the examples and marketing fluff sound great, but there has to be something concrete somewhere, right? Otherwise, why spend money marketing it, unless the whole thing is a branding campaign for manager types.

(*) $100 dollars have been transferred to your Swiss bank account. Also, it's "drive" not "push".

- Microsoft

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[indifferent children (842621)]

People are your most important asset.

Actually, it turns out that money is our most important asset. People are ninth. Carbon paper is eighth.

Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[ttnb (1121411)]

What Microsoft did was an obvious and blatant violation of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code [womma.org]. The bloggers should have publicly criticized these Microsoft tactics instead of going along with them.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[ben there... (946946)]

How bizarre that there is a "Word of Mouth Marketing Association." Isn't the whole idea of word of mouth advertising that it is not contrived by a marketing group? Reminds me of the Ministry of Truth.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[jollyreaper (513215)]

How bizarre that there is a "Word of Mouth Marketing Association." Isn't the whole idea of word of mouth advertising that it is not contrived by a marketing group? Reminds me of the Ministry of Truth.

I had a bit of a dystopian idea in a story I wrote. This is one of those futures where there's only so much work to go around, only a fraction of the population has real jobs with disposable income while the rest of society is pretty much on the dole. Because the value of human labor is so cheap, people can now be paid to perform worthless and debasing activities just to earn a little extra over their dole income. Hell, you can already see that today with people paid to stand around outside holding signs for businesses.

Anyway, you know those commercials were two people meet in a checkout line, one of them coughs and the other starts up on this spiel praising the virtues of product x? Imagine that not being a commercial anymore. Millions of independent contractors work as "product evangelists", working hard to track down the people with jobs and create situations where they might provide a personal witness of how wonderful the product is. It's a mixture of stagecraft and spycraft, dressing like and passing for a jobber, speaking the gospel without coming across like just another evangelist.

Sick, scary future, right? Well, that's already happening in trendy hotspots. Marketing scumfucks pay beautiful people to be seen talking about and enjoying new products to start a buzz.

The CIA has robot assassin drones (i.e. Predator), PRAVDA proves more accurate than the New York Times, we've got slug-hunting robots that power themselves by digesting animal flesh, you do more time for copyright violation than murder, Russian spies are getting offed with radioactive poisons, we've got thought-controlled robotic limbs, voice recognition computers, several variations on the original Metaverse concept, the environment is on the verge of collapse, the US is discredited and reviled as a world power, the White House was overtly stolen by thugs who openly laugh at the law, corporations are gathering more power than ever... as much cyberpunk as I read as a kid, I never actually expected to be living in a cyberpunk future. I wanna be a street samurai.

Everything

[Groo Wanderer (180806)]

"What's wrong with that?"

Well everything. They should have disclosed it for starters. If you see a banner, you know it is an ad, same with those noxious google and other links, there is no question that it comes from a paid source.

The bloggers are guilty of greed and ethical lapses to the point that they should be shut down. There is no excuse for doing this, period.

MS is even more guilty for paying them to do this, knowing that it was unethical to do, it is even more unethical to support. I would go on a rant about MS and unethical behavior, but that is old hat by now.

What it comes down to in the end is that MS destroyed several bloggers in a cynical attempt to subvert the journalistic process, but I am not so sure any of the blogs could be considered journalism. Those involved knew full well what they were doing, and can't hide behind any weasel words or excuses. It is greed over ethics, pure and simple.

The people who took that money can never be trusted again, they should pack up and go home. MS isn't trusted at all, and while it is wishful thinking, I hope they will pack up and go home as well for inflicting MeII on us.

As a writer myself, I would hope my boss would fire me if I ever even brought this kind of bribery up, much less did it. I am pretty sure he would which is why I work where I do (The Inquirer FWIW).

            -Charlie

Re:How is it different from what Google does?

[FST777 (913657)]

Whoa there. This is not a case of "M$ is ebul!!!11one", but a case of proper journalism in blogging. When respected blogger take money to blog (positively) about something, things go wrong. It's kinda the same as reading a payed-for review in a magazine: it's bound to sound positive.

Now, placing ads on your site is something completely different. It's clearly not part of the bloggers opinion, nor is it hard to distinguish it from the real news you're reading. In this case, the line is not blurred, it's simply gone.

Awesome slogan

[fbjon (692006)]

Good god, it's like a competition on the back of a pack of corn flakes: "Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"

In other news

[fferreres (525414)]

Sources report Slashdot was popularized a new term "Money-ready bloggers", a term coined to discredit unetical bloggers who choose topics based on money bounties.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[bateleur (814657)]

Real life costs money, and if someone offers you money to do something which, lets face it in this case, is a pretty trivial and short term thing, what's the big deal?

Have you actually read what these bloggers wrote?

Like you say, there are bills to pay. So there's no problem if Microsoft want to pay these people as writers to write pieces for them on a particular topic. The problem starts when those pieces end up as content in a place which is normally home to opinion. The value of opinion pieces all lies in their honesty. If you think you're reading opinion when you're really reading an advert, you're being misled. And that's bad.

Most of the time when celebrities do ads for money there's no conflict with their actual profession. In fact since they're often actors it's just another script to them.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Ash Vince (602485)]

I am an ordinary person, I also have bills to pay.

But I do not go to work for some bunch of scum sucking pigs just because I could earn more money than I currently do. Instead I work for a company that I find agreeable.

I know alot of people who try and pass on the responsiblity for what they do at work to management, and I tell them what a load of crap that is too. If you don't like what you do then find a better job, even if it does involve a pay cut. Otherwise you are complicit in whatever misdeeds you might be asked to perform at work.

And don't tell me that if someone said 'here, have lots of money and all you have to do is write some blog entries', you'd say no. Not if the money were good. I wouldn't.

Then you have no morals, but why do you find it so hard to believe that some of us do have a moral code which we value as such an important part of who we are that no amount of money would justify tearing it up and putting it in the bin.

And before you talk about how I have never been desperate enough, guess again. To get my current job involved me relocating a long way at considerable inconvenience to take a cut in salary.

I think I am probably in the minority in this otherwise the world would be a better place, but I am very unlikely to change in this regard. The only thing I can think of that might change my outlook would be watching my kids starve, but seeing as I have spent years in the past doing dead end jobs, I know I could return to this and still earn a not too dissimilar wage.

Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

Actually, I think the opposite is true. Since I have never been wealthy, I have never been in situation where I got used to having alot of money to spend. Once you get used to having a large amount of money at you disposal (or your wife does) it is much harder to go back to being closer to the breadline.

This also makes it easier when looking for work as my salary demands are lower. This does not mean I am bad at my job or that I value my work less. It simply means that I get other satisfaction from my job apart from just getting a monthly wage. I think it actually means I take far more pride in the code I produce. This argument should not really come as any surprise to people who use Linux as this is built and maintained on similar, non-monetary values.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Dragonslicer (991472)]

...there is a lot of people out there who view the blog as some sacred confessional that shall not be besmirched with bought-and-sold thoughts.

Yeah, and they're often called "bloggers". They're the ones that want all of the authority of legitimate journalists without any of the responsibility.

Re:Awesome slogan

[GauteL (29207)]

"Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"

It wouldn't fly, most people would have been worried about how many have gone there before them, particularly after the whole jail sentence.

Makes you think...

[oskay (932940)]

I wonder how much of this thing goes on that we *don't* hear about.

Re:

[vivaoporto (1064484)]

In my case, at least, everything of that goes, and I never hear about. The same goes for the rest of mankind, except for the tiny percentage of the population that read these blogs, tiny even if only tech savvy people is considered. Who are those bloggers and why are they considered important to deserve front page on Slashdot?

Another poster put it better a couple of posts above, this is no different from a corn flakes company creating a contest in the lines of "write an essay with the word 'crunchy' and

Looks like it worked.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

Looks like it worked - allready mentioned on slashdot!

Re:Looks like it worked.

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Looks like it worked - allready mentioned on slashdot!

Oh yea, it worked. I can totally imagine thousands of Slashdotters storming Microsoft with "damn, get me some of that people-ready business software!".

Truth is Microsoft marketing sucked for nearly 12 years now. They're totally clueless about how to advertise even their good products (such as Office 2007, which is a great piece of software*).

*Microsoft paid me $100 to post this.

Wait a minute...

[Macthorpe (960048)]

So Microsoft paid bloggers per click to advertise for them?

Where's the scandal here? There's no mention of Microsoft forcing these guys to say that they weren't being paid, and doing something like this is up to the personal ethics of the individual blogger, surely?

Re:Wait a minute...

[interiot (50685)]

Surely you realize there's a difference between organizations who pass advertisements off as their own opinion, versus organizations who clearly indicate which content is advertising and which part is editorial. Maintaining a wall between editorial and advertising has long been recognized as a part of journalism ethics, and while that wall is breached from time to time [wikipedia.org], it's something that's important enough that there can sometimes be legal repercussions [bloomberg.com] to breaching it.

In other news...

[Black Parrot (19622)]

A whore will fake an orgasm for you, if you pay for it.

Oh, and astroturf isn't real grass.

Re:

[lendude (620139)]

Get your hand off it mods - parent is a troll?: whilst using a slightly colourful metaphor, this comment is on the money.

parent is not a troll...mods wake up

[advocate_one (662832)]

the parent comment is right on the money...

Re:In other news...

[coinreturn (617535)]

Yeah, prostitution is the most people-ready business I know. Others include televangelists and the military.

Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[mwvdlee (775178)]

There's a whole profession of people writing text for advertisement.
What IS moraly wrong is presenting it as a personal opinion; that's verbal prostitution. Publishing it on the web would be indecent exposure.

MS sits back and watches

[c3ph45 (911279)]

Could this have been a part of Microsoft's plan. Seems to me that this controversy will help them much more than the original paid-for blogs.

People-ready business

[bky1701 (979071)]

To me, 'People-ready business' represents a new low in catch-phrase marketing. We all know 'can you hear me now', a stoned man saying 'dude we're getting a Dell', 'works out of the box' and the Vegemite song sucked. But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft.

For a while now, Microsoft has been looking for a way to make money. Their business has been dying down not due to competition, but due to sheer lack of anything to sell. So comes Vista. With it's color-coded file explorer, OSX ripoff interface and Vista-only-for-no-real-reason DX10, they were sure they were saved.

This was not the case.

The hotcake Vista was predicted to be turned out more to be a segway, and (while ducking from flying chairs) the marketing department had to come up with a way to sell this new steaming turd. Enter 'people-ready business'.

I am not personally sure what this is intended to mean. Are they attempting to sell a business that is ready for people to use? Doesn't Mcdonalds fall into this category? Or is it an attempt to make people ready for a business? If so, what business? Microsoft?

Has Microsoft finally admitted to being the Borg? Is the next tag line, "lower your shields and prepare to be boarded"?

Who knows. This blogger is unsure.

/Waits patently for check

Last I checked...

[jessiej (1019654)]

I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft, but last I checked they weren't having a problem with their Google page rank, so I do doubt that that was part of their "People-ready business" blog campaign.

Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[clickety6 (141178)]

Surely the Slashdot crowd has some ideas of their own as to what "people-ready business" might mean?

Business ready to fleece the people?

If we're talking Vista, maybe it means business with some people-sized holes where the customers should havebeen inserted?

People-driven business means:

[smurfsurf (892933)]

A people-driven business leverages collective synergy with a quality-driven approach that focuses on delivering key objectives. It is quite obvious, actually.

(The BS bingo blurb is courtesy of the DailyWTF)

Bloggers != Journalists

[supersnail (106701)]

Next time some blogger makes a fuss about not being treated like "real" journalists just point them to the Cringley/McKraken articles.

They will be treated like journalists when they can demonstratte some ethical and professional resposibility.

Not that all journalists are perfect but they do lose thier jobs when they get caught red handed.

Anyway all the best blogs are deeply personal, opinionated, and, do not pretend to be journalism.

Collective noun

[Threni (635302)]

> passel of A List Bloggers

I thought the collective noun was "a crock of bloggers".

PRB

[richie2000 (159732)]

I'd be happy to clarify what "people-ready business [wikipedia.org]" means to me.

Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[SgtChaireBourne (457691)]

We're seeing too much of that on Slashdot these days, not just the astroturfers posting their messages, but endless bombardment of MS-oriented slashvertisements in place of real articles. Sometimes it's several content-free articles per day apparently posted just to keep MS in the headlines. How about easing up on that and getting back to technology?

None of the negative coverage is getting through, such as a 30% return rate [itwire.com.au] for the Palladium testbed, so that suggests that Slashdot is a participant (willing or unwilling) in spreading that movement's marketing churn.

A moratorium on MS churn, whether slashvertisements or otherwise, even one day a week or one week a month would do wonders to improve Slashdot. Let's leave political parties like MS on the sideline and re-focus on technology.

Re:

[TechnoLuddite (854235)]

Actually (and tell me this isn't amusing), PRB is Microsoft Knowledge Base's acronym for Problem. Or, to put it in non-spin, "Yes, it's a bug ... but we're not fixing it."

Maybe that's the People-Related Business they're talking about.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

All the googlers who can't spell will be sent to the Wikipedia page