AdverBlog

Yesterday I read an article from Economist about how internet has empowered the consumers. I think the basic points are well known: those who can access and know how to use the web have much more useful information for what can be labeled as “critical consumption”. They can compare quality, prices, have better basis for decision making, etc. Makes sense…

On interesting point in the article is mentioning blogs as one of a more trustful sources of information. This is particularly true with some blogs that gain extreme popularity and bloggers who have built a reputation and became kind of point of reference for others. Probably this is part of the “blog-excitement” trend, but it seems like it is also true to a great extend. Well, at least now, as long as blogging remains a grassroots activity.

The question which jumped in the back of my mind however was how long it will remain this way? How long it will take till bloggers will start getting paid for what they write? And how long it will take till they’ll start writing exactly what they are paid for? The article mentioned Microsoft adopting one of the celebrity bloggers “even though they are aware he can one day start writing critically about the company” and google suggest already today commercializing your blog with placing commercial (may sound pretty innocent at this point, but it is just a beginning). What is going to be next?

How long will it take advertisement agencies and PR companies to start employing bloggers in order to promote certain brands? Well, they are already doing it in a way by using forums, talkbacks, etc. Just think about how effective it would be for the cost of a single person salary to crate a point of reference for anything regarding let say cars… All you have to do is simply feed it with recommendations paid for by your consumers and you get the best PR ever. Of course it is open for feedbacks and people can and most probably will criticize bad recommendations, but the pivot will still remain biased.

So, the question is (when) will blogs become AdverBlogs?

Blog SPAM

It seems like my blog is being spammed even though it has just a few posts... On my first post i got advertisement of a dating site, on the second a blog promoting buying Iraqi Dinnars...

Is there any way to deal with this?

(BTW, what would a blog spam called in one word "spog", "blam" or "blosp"? I tihnk i like the first one...)

News abuse

Yesterday (Oct. 08) there was a terrible earthquake in South Asia. At around 20:00 Israel time, about 1700 people were reported dead in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Although it was just a tip of an iceberg compared to what we know about the scope of the tragedy today, the issue naturally caught the headlines all media.

Well, almost…

Before we continue, a footnote about the Israeli TV market. There are 3.5 major broadcast channels in Israel: State owned channel 1; privately owned channels 2 and 10 and privately owned channel 9 which is rather small since it focused on the Russian speaking community. All of them show news, actuality and entertainment programs.

Channel 2 is the leading one scoring for most eyeballs of Israeli viewers and the one which many like to criticize for a really shallow content (which really is shallow). Channel 10 is its major competitor, but it is very young (since 2002) and is still loosing money. One of the recent steps channel 10 has undertaken is buying rights for translation of many sport events, primarily soccer games, which are extremely popular in Israel.

Both channels have supposedly independent news companies, which are (not surprisingly) responsible for gathering and analysis of news. There is a firm formal separation between the channels and news companies. Everything is aimed to separate news from everything else in order to assure maximum accuracy.

Now, getting back to the question mark above, let add another one: what happens when there is a natural disaster with thousands dead and wounded and a game of Israeli national team, which has a slight chance of getting to Mondial? What item should go first? And what item should go first if the game is translated on your channel on the same night?

The news company of channel 10 is usually provides very good news in my eyes. Usually, it seems like they are trying hardier and daring more than the better established news company of channel 2. However yesterday, it looked really bizarre when they started the evening news with a 3 minutes item about the hopeless game and then easily moved talking about the death and distraction in Pakistan (interestingly enough, they also started news 2 minutes before the competitors, but it’s another story).

The news on channel 2 started as one could assume with reportage about the earthquake. I don’t know if they mentioned the game later, but this is less important. What is important in my eyes is the border that is getting crossed again and again between news and program promotions. Channel 2 has its own record of split screen with a soccer game on one half and reportage abut suicide bombing on the other and about opening the news with item about a reality shown at the same channel later that night.

So the question is: where is the red line? I think this time it was really irritating, but surprisingly got no response in other media or any public debate.


(ah, wonders of the media… this is why I find this field fascinating)