by Bill Ives
March 3, 2009 at 8:30 pm
· Filed under FASTforward'09
On Monday Steve Rubel posted that Forrester Says Paying Bloggers is OK Provided There are Disclosures. This is good news. So I guess we can continue here. As we have discussed in the past (see Are Us Bloggers to be Trusted?) the bloggers here at FastForward are paid as journalist bloggers to write about enterprise 2.0. We are not even asked to write about our sponsor, only the broad market space. I do it occasionally on my own just because they are a part of this space.
However, we do not make the same as bailout bankers so I take part in this blog more for the fun and the chance to interact with a good group of fellow bloggers and the audience. It continues to be an interesting experiment and experience. Participating in FastForward 09 in Vegas this past month was very worthwhile. I also learned the ins and outs of Twitter from my fellow bloggers.
We are aligned with the suggestions from Forrester and there is complete freedom to write what we want as long as it is on topic. Even that is broadly defined and no one has ever complained about anything we write, except the odd reader. So I am pleased to receive the Forrester blessing through Steve Rubel but in the end it is you guys who decide if we are providing useful and authentic content.
Post Script- Here is another thoughtful comment on the Forrester report from Valerie Maltoni.
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You folks are doing just fine and FF won't be leaving my aggregator unless you drastically change what you're doing.
Bill, you might want to read (and perhaps address) the reactions to Forrester on this subject, most of which haven't exactly been positive. You can see a collection of such reactions on Techmeme: http://www.techmeme.com/090302/p111#a090302p111 — in particular, this article on ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/forrester_is...
Daniel _ Thanks for the link. I am not surprised with the reaction. – I liked Jeremiah Owyang's post http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/03/02/how... Now he is a Forrester blogger but I think he was balanced and open. As he said it can be a very intense topic. There have been many mistakes in how firms engage with bloggers, especially when there is not full disclosure. I do want to be clear that we are not doing what Forrester describes and what ReadWrite Web argues against . http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/forrester_is... I am sure that ReadWriteWeb does not object to making a business use of blogs judging by all the ads on their site. I also generally like their stuff. However, we are not getting paid to blog about our sponsors which is what ReadWriteWeb objects to. We are blogging about the broader market space with complete freedom to write what we want and are operating with full disclosure. If the sponsor does a blog post then it is identified. I remain pleased to be involved with this experiment and have great respect for my fellow bloggers. In the end it is the readers who decide about the blog and that is great thing about blogs.
Bill, you might want to read (and perhaps address) the reactions to Forrester on this subject, most of which haven't exactly been positive. You can see a collection of such reactions on : Techmeme.
Harold – Thanks for your confidence. We will try to keep you reading. Bill
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