I have had three or four discussions about this in the last couple days because of the event (swagapalooza.com) I'm hosting this September. The whole purpose of the event is to bribe bloggers with new and interesting products; I am trying to be as blatantly transparent as possible to avoid these ethical issues. There really does need to be an above-ground ethical way that marketers and bloggers can interact, but it's been a huge pain because of the long history of astroturfing.

I have been taking a really hardline approach by just not allowing people back to the event next year if they violate the ethics guidelines, but even still it's not very black and white. For example, you never see a NYT book review saying "disclaimer: I got this book for free at the library." In fact it's standard industry practice not to disclose even when you've done you're review based on a free promo book, because it's understood that you're paying for the product with your time. Same with DVDs. But should we go above and beyond the standard practice and make people disclose these things anyway? Then you have people feeling embarrassed by implying that their six hours or whatever it took to read the book could possibly be worth less than the 20 bucks it cost. Either way, it's kind of a tricky situation.

The problem is for the last ten years we've had all these CEOs working 90 hours a week who pretend to be potheads who just sit around playing fooseball whenever the journalists show up. Journalists love these masturbatory stories because they get tons of traffic so they are happy to go along with them. But the issue is that idolizing these actor-CEOs just creates all these myths like "people will find your product and buy it if it's good, so marketing is only for bad products." This leads to all these distorted ideas about what's ethical and what's not ethical.

There's nothing wrong with giving away free products, it's how every single business gets started. No web designer can charge 30k per site without a portfolio, because no one will buy a website unless they trust that the designer can deliver on their promises. And the only way to create these portfolio sites is by doing them for cheap or free. It's the same for products, no one will buy it unless they trust it will deliver on its promises, and you just can't create that without giving away a lot of stuff to create a 'portfolio' of people who trust you.

/rant

Getting a sample product and sponsored posts are two separate things. The product is consumable, you can't have a loaner copy like you can for a gadget. Similarly, if TechCrunch gets free access to a web app and writes about it they aren't breaking any rules about sponsored posts and Google shouldn't penalize them.

I think TC is terrible and don't visit or care what they have to say, but sample products are not sponsored posts. Paying for posts is sponsored posts.

I'm going to prove ... that TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington was romantically involved with a woman whose younger sister worked at the same cleanse product company.

...

The icing on the cake here is, Megan (who’s sister works for the cleanse company) is, according to Valleywag, the on-and-off girlfriend of Michael Arrington

Not that Valleywag is never right, but "I'm going to prove" shouldn't rely on them for evidence.

This would carry much more weight in my eye's: except it's from Michael Gray. Who's been crying for something "insider" on TechCrunch, Google and the others for years (sometimes seeing the bordering-on-abuse he throws at Matt Cutts on twitter is awful).

Seriously: he's spinning the story for his own agenda. I'd queue that right up there with sponsored posts as "unethical" ;)

Is it ironic that after going on and on about Google Guidelines on SEO, his largest ad is for TextLinkAds, the largest paid link brokers?

I don't have a problem with TLA, but you cant have your cake and eat it too.

Sorry, but this post is guilty of misleading the reader. The "proofs" offered are bogus, which completely destroys the credibility of the accuser.

If anything, the author of this post shows less ethics than TC.

The thing about playing the high horse game with these folks is that everyone is doing it from the bottom of a barrel. In a ditch. In Death Valley. After a mudslide.

Foremost, the whole Blueprint Cleanse operation just looks and sounds evil (http://www.nypress.com/article-19547-the-dirty-world-of-clea...). The owners look unhealthy and anorexic: http://meghan.nonsociety.com/lifecast/146239919-0-28, they're the two on the right doing their impression of Somalian refugees.

Why did Arrington okay on publishing a post about expensive, marketing-gimmicky, FedEx-ed, fruit and vegetable juices on TechCrunch anyways? That's a weird lapse in editorial judgment. Oh, wait, I have to be careful, I don't want to get brandished as an unter-troll. That would be bad since some British uber-troll will yell at me (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/25/nsfw-bringing-nothing-t...).

Meghan Asha and Arrington don't even speak to each other. Tying them together, and a sibling to boot, to draw up a conspiracy point is tenuous and grasping at straws.

And, really, the cleanse stuff is just a shitty--heh--distraction. What's the deal with all these trips that bloggers are going on these days?

If you want to follow the money you should see this Register article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/03/traveling_geeks). Turns out that UK Traveling Geeks Tour Sarah Lacy went to was partially funded by public money--and those Brits HATE having public money squandered!

So what did a partially public funded "tour" get in return? Well, a "sponsored" post on TechCrunch is a plus (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/17/uk-entrepreneurs-get-yo...) but the "leaked" debauchery is a minus (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/my-god-scoble-did-you-t...).

Sidenote: the "friendship" Arrington and Scoble have is so awkward; Arrington picks on and embarrasses Scoble more times than my little nephew does to kids that still play Pokemon at school. Here they are (http://www.flickr.com/photos/loiclemeur/2842387358/in/photos...) before they started sexually harassing Scoble by grabbing and lifting up his shirt in a crowded TechCrunch50 show room to point out how fat he is. Grown men. I wish Scoble would just stand up for himself instead of passive-aggressively have the both of them "spar" on Twitter--now the late night playground of clashing "titans".

TechCrunch's Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy are in Los Angeles now for something called Geeks At The Beach, put up by Lunch.com--I think it's a Yelp clone, or maybe a Waiter.com clone, or maybe it's like a recipes site, or maybe it's Food Network?--in fancy hotels (http://rebloggingns.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/julia-continuin...). I'm sure the disclosure for that will come at the end of the trip when they have space at the end of a post to publish. Though, I wouldn't put it past Julia Allison, yet another lovely blogger lady that partakes in these awkward trip deals (http://gawker.com/5266330/julia-allisons-shill+erific-sea-wo...) but doesn't talk about it, to bother with publishing content.

But what's Michael Gray disclosing? Does he have an axe to grind? He's IZEA-sponsored so he takes these "sponsored" trips too, although he's more careful at "transparency". Michael Arrington, on the other hand, hates IZEA (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/brands-beware-you-may-b...). Hmm... Just an old pro trying to keep everyone honest at the poker table?

I guess when you play the game long enough everyone gets a bit dirty.

I wonder if Micheal A would fire Sarah Lacy over something like this.

He has always been heavily against sponsored posts.

Bit of a diversion I know, but.. I'm a big TC fan (rare around here, I know) but find Lacy's posts severely lacking. Is it just me or can't she write for toffee? (Now Paul Carr, on the other hand, is excellent.)