{"id":192,"date":"2006-10-20T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2006\/10\/edelman-affairs-silver-lining.html"},"modified":"2006-10-20T11:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-20T18:51:00","slug":"edelman-affairs-silver-lining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/edelman-affairs-silver-lining\/","title":{"rendered":"Edelman affair's silver lining"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now Edelman has admitted that it’s been operating two other fake blogs (or “flogs” – I love it!) on behalf of Wal-Mart. The incident has become a huge embarrassment for a PR firm that has tried to position itself as being on the leading edge of Web 2.0 marketing. You can read the details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s no question these bogus blogs were a dumb idea, particularly for a firm as progressive as Edelman. There is a silver lining to this whole affair, though: the incident has exposed how seriously bloggers take the transparency issue. Consider that it was only about a year ago that Forbes published Attack of the Blogs<\/a>, a vicious account of the blogosphere that started “Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.” That was a popular view of bloggers a year ago, so think of how far the medium has come when a deception like Edelman’s draws this much condemnation from that very same “lynch mob.”<\/p>\n

In researching the culture of social media this year, I’ve been struck again and again with how effectively bloggers are organizing themselves around a set of very admirable principles. The premium is on fairness, honesty and openness and the blogosphere is rapidly developing a system of governance that insures that these values are upheld. The speed at which the community has responded to the Edelman gaffe is a tribute to bloggers’ commitment to transparency. This whole thing will blow over quickly and I expect we’ll all be better off for having had a chance to test the blogosphere’s ability to police itself.

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now Edelman has admitted that it’s been operating two other fake blogs (or “flogs” – I love it!) on behalf of Wal-Mart. The incident has become a huge embarrassment for a PR firm that has tried to position itself as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-36","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}