Looks like the PayPerScamPost train wreck is coming off the rails. It seems the most-hated Web 2.0 company showed up at AlwaysOn conference in New York yesterday with an HD crew yesterday taping their clueless CEO for their self-funded reality-TV show which they are--get this--trying to get a TV station to pick up.

These videos are going to go down in history as the tipping point in the Web 2.0 bubble.

Jarvis and Weinberger were appalled--but who isn't by the idea of being deceived? This company can't run out of money too quickly.

[ Hat tip Nick Denton ]

Note: I've got dibs on PPP in the deadpool!

[ Note: please play "Happy Days Are Here Again!!!" while reading this post. ]

From the WashPost today:

• "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships."

Deception in marketing--despite the *joke* title of Seth Godin's famous book--is not only unethical it can also be illegal.

As I mentioned in my non-stop ridding of PayPerScamPost and their evil plan to "let the market work out" their deception issues, the FTC is stepping in. This, a day after Google said they would ding blogs from their index who participated in such schemes.

It's game waaaaaaaaaay over for PayPerPost. Google is smacking them down, and the FTC is on their doorstep. They will clean up their act now, and their "let the marketplace give us our ethics" has now happened. The industry (in the form of bloggers and Google) and the government (in the form of the FTC) have told PayPerPost clearly: STOP ENABLING DECEPTION.

A lot of folks, many of whom were either very young or very young to the media game, gave me a hard time about ridding of PayPerPost. They couldn't understand why I felt the need to confront them. Well, now Google and the FTC are standing next to me so I have to ask: do you get it now??!?!

Pete Wright of PayPerPost tries to defend the covert and deceptive marketing platform he is building at PayPerPost on his blog. I respond in his comments, but also wanted to post my thoughts here as well.

So folks ask me why I care and why I take such offense to people doing covert and deceptive marketing on blogs. There are a couple of reasons:

1. I love the blogosphere and everything it stands for. I love, love, love the transparency, authenticity, honesty, and passion found on blogs. It's unique in the media landscape, and as someone who's fallen in love with it and helped it grow, I feel the need to defend it from the forces of evil.

2. You have to stop cancer quickly or it spreads. Too many smart folks I know look at things like PayPerPost and say to me "oh, those losers are never going to get anywhere... why waste your time." A couple of folks I know are not going to blog about it because they are friendly with the VCs and don't want to ruin their relationships. Well, PayPerPost has raised millions of dollars from a very big name: Tim Draper. That validates them big time. They can walk into advertising agencies and brand managers offices based on Tim's name. Now, I think most marketers will laugh them right out of town, but if no one speaks up and Tim's voting for this service with his very large checkbook then these guys might get some traction. They get traction WITH THEIR CURRENT MODEL and they undermine the blogsophere. (NOTE: I'm hoping they take a stand against covert marketing and change their current "market forces" excuse).

I have to ask Tim Draper: how can you endorse deceptive marketing? This isn't the TD I know... I know you're "just and investor" and it's "the entrepreneur's company" (and all those other lame VC excuses), but you gotta step up to the plate and tell us if you condone deceptive marketing. Do you?!?!

Side Note: I'd really love to hear what smart folks like Seth Godin, Fred Wilson, Adam Curry, Mark Cuban, Esther Dyson, John Battelle, Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, Rafat Ali, Joseph Jaffe, Brian Alvey, Kevin Rose, Tim O'Reilly, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Rubel, Dan Gillmor, and Nick Denton think of covert marketing coming to the blogosphere. Heck, I'd even love to hear what Valleywag has to say! :)

----------------------------

Some quick corrections to your post.

You say: "If you go to Jason's site, you'll find, as I just did, that he 'recommends' no less than 10 products/companies on the side bar of his blog."

My response: I get paid NOTHING for those recommendations. I do them to share with my questions, comments, and concerns with my friends.

There is nothing COVERT about what I'm doing there. What PayPerPost does is enable folks to get paid for doing COVERT marketing.

No one likes to be tricked or deceived--do you?


You said: That's including the 'powered by' link, and not including the HUGE props to Netscape Video, which of course he has a financial interest in.

My response: The syndicated headlines from Netscape are voted up by users. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand. There is nothing DECEPTIVE about linking to the top 10 headlines on digg, NYTimes, Engadget, Boingboing, etc.


You said: Now, as for having 'nothing to gain' by going after PayPerPost, just wander over to Weblogs Inc and click on Marketers More Info. Now Weblogs Inc...

My response: I just looked at the sad, sad advertisers using PayPerPost. We don't sell ads to losers like this. We sell ads to the top 100 advertisers on the Internet. PayPerPosts link farm and covert marketing tools will NEVER put a dent into high-end display advertising. Advertisers like Apple, Microsoft, etc. are not so desperate that they have to pay for people to blog about them-far from it in fact. As far as I'm concerned PayPerPost can keep their loser advertising base. I don't want to-and would never--work with that level of covert marketer.


You said: WebLogs Inc markets products through blogs, so does PayPerPost. Difference? We're cheaper.

My response: No, the difference is that we don't allow deceptive advertising and you do.

All advertisement are clearly labeled as advertisements on our blogs. PayPerPost on the other hand creates the marketplace that allows people to get paid for DECEIVING their audience.

No one likes to be deceived--do you?


You said: We're a marketplace - we put advertisers in touch with bloggers. How is that deceptive?

My response: It is deceptive because you don't have any controls in your marketplace to fight deception. Google forces advertisers to carry the "Ads by Google" line for a reason. The NYTimes, Boingboing, Federated Media, Gawker, and WeblogsInc (and just about anyone with any level of integrity in this business) put systems in place to prevent COVERT and DECEPTIVE marketing. We ban advertisers who do bad things-not enable and profit from them like PayPerPost does.

You guys are making a choice to allow covert marketing. You could say on the site today that:

a) all paid posts must start with a note explaining that they are paid

and

b) be transparent on your site about the bloggers, blogs, blog posts, advertisers, and ad campaigns that are involved.

You are not doing this because we both know that you would have no advertisers left if you did.

The bottom line is that people chose their lot in life. You guys have taken the low road and you are falling back on the very lame excuse of "market forces" to determine your ethics.

You guys know in your hearts that deceptive marketing is, in fact, evil. I know there is some god in you--I can sense it. Take the high road. Sure, it's not as easy to be one of the good guys, but you will sleep better at night and you will get much further.

Ten years from now do you want to be remembered as the place were covert marketers got their claws into the blogosphere and undermined the integrity of good bloggers everywhere? Well, in the .0001% chance you succeed at what you're doing that will be the result-people will lose their faith in blogs. We spent years creating the blogosphere and educating the market of the value blogs-I'm not going to let you walk in here and destroy years of work.

You guys need to take a company retreat and think about what you want to be in life: evil, covert marketers or innovative participants in the blogosphere.

Right now you're a cancer.

I just spent an hour on other people's blogs commenting about their reactions to my PayPerPost thoughts. It hard to have the argument when folks who are getting paid by PayPerPost are doing it out of financial hardship, but I will try.

The key issue here is one of deception. PayPerPost is currently a platform for marketers to do covert and deceptive marketing. Now, you can disclose you are using the platform, but no advertiser has to date (at least according the founders who wouldn't list ONE advertiser during their interview with Mike Arrington on TalkCrunch).

The fact is no one in the world--NO ONE--wants to be covertly marketed to. Add to that the fact that PayPerPost enables people you consider your friends--or who you thought were your friends--to covertly market to you for profit. That's really evil in my book.

The fact that the investors and founders of PayPerPost will not take a stand against deceptive marketing shows what a horrible idea this is. They could easily make their process transparent. If they are so proud of what they've created (and invested in) why not list every advertiser, advertising campaign, participating blogger, and their blog posts on the PayPerPost site? I think you know the answer to that question: they would lose 99% of their advertisers. What advertiser wants to look so desperate that they have to PAY PEOPLE to COVERTLY write about them.

The best products and services in the world get written about because.. ummmm... they are the best products and services in the world. What about the average and bad products in the world you ask? Well, they either get better or they go away. No amount of marketing--covert or transparent--is gonna make people think a bad product is good.

Now, I wouldn't have half the problem--in fact I would have not problem--with PayPerPost if they did the following:

1. Made a transparent marketplace as I've described above.

2. Forced bloggers to start each PAID post with a disclaimer saying "I've been paid to write the following blog post by INSERT-ADVERTISER-NAME-HERE as part of a PayPerPost campaign. For more information on PPP and this advertiser click here."

Until PayPerPost takes a stand on deception and disclosure they, their bloggers, their investors, and their advertisers should be ostracized by the blogosphere. We should out the covert advertisers and bloggers and explain to them the mistake they are making.

I'm all for innovation in advertising and blogging, but I'm 100% against deception.

We didn't build the blogosphere to be a playground for deceptive marketers. We built the blogosphere as a place for people to share their thoughts honestly and transparently. We built it as an alternative to the shortcomings of the one-way nature of MSM (mainstream media). In fact, the currency of blogging is authenticity, and for my money the opposite of authenticity is deception.

Hold the line everyone... we're better than this and we should not give up this beautiful city that we've built just so some VCs can make a quick buck. There is NOTHING innovative about deception.

---------------

PS - Are there any lawyers out there who can speak to the legal issues around covert and deceptive marketing in other mediums?

Update 1: Peter Wright, Director of Software Development for PPP, deflects the very serious issue in a comment below. Peter: Let's have a real dialogue about this--it's important.

Update 2: PayPerPost's desperate advertisers are already being outed. PayPerPost should just end this issue and force transparency on their system. Will their system work with transparency? Well, the current advertisers--the ones who many folks think are doing it to game Google and Technorati--will run for the hills. As many folks are saying, $10 for an inbound link is $150/$250 less than SEO companies charge. PPP would have to do a LOT of hard work to make their model work transparently... however, I know exactly how to do it.

After getting an email from the PayPerPost BlogToProfit.com slimebuckets Jay Allen nails it:

Pay per post is one of the most vicious and vile economic schemes to cast its shadow over online publishing. Anyone who perpetuates such a system deserves a public stoning (even if they don't say "Jehovah"). You either pay online publishers for who and what they are, or you keep your wallet out of the game. The Internet already has enough spam; we don't need bloggers generating it for commission.
His post is spot on, and he explains that there marketing slimebuckets are NOT interested in supporting you with advertising--they are interested in using you for covert marketing.

If you're a blogger and want to keep the blogosphere pure I suggest calling these people--and the advertisers who are using them--out. Why can't we know who the advertisers are on Payperpost? Are we to stupid too know? I wish someone would just out all the disgusting marketers who use this server so we can all shame them for their covert, evil efforts.

Hold the line bloggers!

Keep the marketers out of your posts and inside the ad units!!!

It takes more work to keep your integrity, but as bloggers that is all we have--integrity. That's why we are here!