The Paid-Post Debate: Jeff Jarvis vs. Dan Rua
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Last week, I wrote an post examining the Forbes article about PayPerPost. In so doing, I found that one of PayPerpost’s critics, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com, was an investor in a competing service in the video segment of this industry, something that Dan Rua, one of PayPerpost’s investors decried as hypocrisy.
This argument/pissing match continued in the comments section of Jarvis’ post. Very interesting reading, and worth the time to understand their positions. Rua aggressively pursued the theme of hypocrisy, while Jarvis continued to stick to his guns about Black20 not being a competitor to PayPerpost, in a remarkably professional manner given the aggressiveness of the charges. Not that I’m criticizing Rua - Lord knows, I’d be WAY more aggressive than him if I had millions riding on this business model. I’m just pointing out that I’m impressed with Jarvis’ demeanor.
Also, it’s not often that I have look up terms like “talmudic discussions”, so it was an educational experience for me.
Of course, I’m in complete agreement with Rua with regards to Black20. The company is clearly being positioned to use video content in a viral advertising model, and Jarvis’ claim of not knowing how a company he invested in plans to generate revenue doesn’t pass the sniff test. Or snort test, if you will. Jarvis’ main contention currently is that paid-reviews are about SEO and nothing else, and Rua points out this is a different argument than one used by Jarvis previously, that paid-reviews basically infect editorial. Rua intimates that this shift is due to Jarvis’ investment in Black20, while Jarvis insists both arguments still stand.
If you’re interested in this industry, this has been a great debate to watch. Rua’s $100 challenge to Jarvis regarding the relevance of sponsored posts versus organic posts in search engine results is especially interesting, and I’d love to see the results of his research. Intuitively, it seems obvious, and I don’t think this genie will be put back in its bottle.
2 Comments - Show Original Post Collapse comments
VC Dan said…
Hey Tim,
I’m glad you liked it…an earlier post of yours was actually the spark.
JJ has “agreed to disagree”, but it’s still pretty funny that he claimed ignorance as to search relevance in the comments of a post that claimed the “lead” problem with sponsored posts is that they harm search relevance — go figure??
I’ll keep you posted on my sponsored vs. organic relevance research. I want to do it right with a large dataset, so I’m going to take my time.
Keep up the great blogging!
12:23 PM
Tim said…
Thanks Dan. I appreciate you dropping by and following up on this.
Tim
5:27 AM
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