Jason and I have noticed something odd about Google’s Blog Search. We can both type in the identical search query at the exact same second and get differing results. Anyone else noticed this?
Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓
Google Blog Search gives inconsistent results
October 3rd, 2007 — Search, Google, Bloggingtime('F jS, Y') ?> | Search, Google, Blogging | Kicked out by Davezilla
How much disclosure is right?
August 5th, 2007 — Blogging, Social Mediatime('F jS, Y') ?> | Blogging, Social Media | Kicked out by Davezilla
Bloggers face several ethical issues, but one that is among the most confusing is that of disclosure. Not being members of the press, most bloggers are not given a set of ethics to read and sign. Journalists do and failing to abide by them can cost them their job.
Morgan Webb, formerly of TechTV is under fire from a few loud members of the blogosphere right now for that very issue. While it seems that certain people are taking this way out of context, and blowing it out of proportion without learning all the facts, they are right to bring attention to the issue of disclosure.
Read/WriteWeb’s Josh Cantone sums it up nicely:
Disclosure is a tricky business and as a practice is still ill-defined even in the realm of traditional journalism. The general idea is that anything that might be seen as a potential conflict of interest between a writer and the subject of his story should be disclosed to the reader. If I invested in a startup I am writing about, for example, or if the CEO is my best friend, I should disclose that fact. But it’s not always so cut and dry.
Josh also points out the times when you should disclose:
- financial association
- employment
- competition
- and personal involvement
The second point, employment, is of concern to the authors of Buzz Lounge. As employees of an ad agency, we feel we must be honest and upfront about who we work for whenever we are responding to comments on other blogs. Besides, it’s so much easier to be honest, isn’t it?
