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Blog ethics
More and more people get aware of the power of blogging. Especially the bloggers them selves.
Google bombs are pretty often started by bloggers. An easy call, as their readers, very often other bloggers, can easily reproduce the call on their blog.
A well known google bombs by Belgian blogger Maarten Schenk: Dell Hell, resulted in what it intended: get on the first place in google.
But how harmful is this to a company and how little has to be done to get this result?
Some days ago n00.be wrote down a complaint on Konijnenberg. (No google bomb, be aware), John wrote on Metatale and some other bloggers, I wrote a post on Microsoft, ...
What do you think about it?
Is one opinion that gets blown up representative for everything this company does?
Do you base your opinion on what another blogger writes?
Does a blogger need ethics?
Or is all this 'influential' stuff pretty relative, and doesn't it matter anyway as 'bloggers only reach bloggers'?
I really think about it when posting something on 'things I don't like'
A rather long time ago Pietel launched a complaint on another photo service around, and in this example he also didn't link straight away to the service. I pretty often don't either. And I do care not to write a black and white perspective. I always have been allergic to it. (Except for my El Al story :) )
I don't have the answers. But I do think it is something we [bloggers] have to be aware of and care about.
And I guess it is one of the main difference between bloggers and journalists: writing a short post on something you dislike, or making that a researched item is a total different case.
Technorati Tags: blog, ethics, google bombs
Posted on May 27, 2007
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Comments (3)
Comments
I think it's about educating the audience, really. It doesn't matter much if it's a blogpost or an article in the newspaper or a news item on television, the reader has to be critical of it and make up his own mind.
Lots of people are too lazy about this. Maybe everyone is lazy about it once in a while.
It's in the blogger's interest to think before blogging something positive, and think twice or three times before blogging something negative.
As an aside, I am personally convinced that if something really annoys you, it's better to ignore it as much as possible. That probably means: not blogging about it at all. Who said "there's no such thing as bad publicity"?
Posted by kristof | May 27, 2007 2:46 PMIf the conclusion of your next post on 'internet critics' is true (according to the graph presented in one of the links it has even been proved that online recommendations and reviews do have an influence on the reader), that they do matter, than bloggers should indeed be aware of what they post, and not only for a negative post on this company or that service.
Posted by sven | May 27, 2007 8:32 PMAnd if that conclusion is not true, than it doesn't matter what you post (in theory). But that raises the question, why should one even bother to invest time in writing posts?
If you have a bad experience with something, I think you should always present it as your personal experience and not generalize it. It was maybe due to coincidence, human mistake,...give it the benefit of the doubt or just point out that something maybe is wrong with that company or service. Readers can always add their own experiences or opinions to put things more in perspective.
But I agree with Kristof that people are sometimes lazy and don't look/research further than a first hit. Personally, I never rely on one opinion (wether it's on- or offline).
Influencial bloggers should use common sense as rule of ethics, a code of conduct is maybe a step too far?
I believe negativism will backlash you. When you use a blog to punish people or companies, it won't take long before people will get you back.
Criticism is ok, positive and negative. You can use social media to point out incorrect practices by shops or unethical behavious by people.
But you have to shop, work and live yourselve, so don't insult to many people without reason.
Posted by Pietel | May 27, 2007 10:56 PM