Behold the Spirit of Scrooge
Posted by Karoli in Blogging, Web November 30th, 2007
Crunching away on those less fortunate than he. But just like hypocritical Ebenezer Scrooge, this modern-day lookalike does exactly the same thing that he criticizes others for doing: he posts page rank passing links inside posts thanking his sponsors. Co-dependent Google doesn’t penalize him and goes so far as to recommend his blogs in their new “recommendations” feature on Google Reader.
To you folks who don’t understand why I’m ranting about this, let me explain: I really love the PPP community. It’s rare that you land in a community of interesting, committed, talented and compassionate people, particularly inside of a competitive environment. It really drives me crazy to see them slammed over and over again, and that is what happened tonight. I have no vested interest in defending them beyond the fact that I invest the time to read some of their blogs and resent the mischaracterization that constantly pervades the blogosphere about them. I also hate the personal attacks like the one Arrington blasted out there tonight.
That, and I really cannot stand bullies. Michael Arrington should apologize to Elizabeth, the blogger he bloggy-slammed tonight, and pick on someone his own size.
Technorati Tags: izea, payperpost, techcrunch, bullying, cyberbullying, Michael Arrington
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…living life in 19/7 time 
As always, great post Karoli!
I have also discovered a wonderful warmth among the PPP Posties, and been amazed at their gifts and talents.
As your post has pointed out there is an amazing amount of hyprocacy in the knocking of posties who always clearly define they are making paid posts while maintaining quality regular content.
Contemporary media exists due to advertorial content, but it appears small blogger are knocked for doing the same.
That Google Reader thing is unbelievable. “Thank you to your sponsors”, followed by a sponsored post link about Wallhogs? How is that ANY different from my sponsored posts? What a hypocrite. And thank you Karoli, for coming to my defense, even though we both know that Arrington could care less about hurting my feelings.
I don’t believe anything i read on TechCrunch. IMHO, that is one of the worst, spammy, junk blogs out there. Arrington is a total liar and fraud and it’s quite amusing that you’ve outed him like this here. Congrats
[...] funny that Mike Arrington complain on these bloggers since he is obviously in the very same boat (TechChunch so called lovely sponsors) . It’s seems like little Mike not only pissed of people who do paid posts, but also his own [...]
That’s the point, isn’t it? You can rest assured that Google wants to keep those that generate it money. They want to force websites to use Google instead of using other services.
I think search engines are such a needed educational resource and that educational tools shouldn’t be monopolized. There is no reason why a company should monopolize it and then use that muscle to force people to use its other products.
I think there are the beginnings of case to break up Google.