I’m full of donuts
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NOTE: All comments were lost when my site crashed on 7/28/07. The comment attributed below is an exact cut-and-paste from the original comment. No changes have been made.
Robert Scoble on July 25th, 2007 1:01 am Per-item disclosure in an RSS feed is NOT required. Since I only read items in RSS readers anymore not requiring disclosure per item means not disclosing at all. You guys are so full of it it’s amazing.
My mistake. I forgot that You’re the only one reading blogs. We’re all supposed to only read Your Google-Reader Shared blog. You are the filter for the entire web. I must write for You.
And, the only thing I’m full of is donuts. Mmmmm, donuts…
Snark aside, You bring up a good point (without meaning to) - knowing your audience. Many bloggers don’t do in-post disclosure, feeling that site-wide is sufficient. It’s their blogs, their prerogative, and I don’t care as a reader one way or the other. Personally, I do in-post disclosures on 99% of my paid posts. I say 99% because I’m human and might have missed one or two.
However, the audience across my blogs is different. On my poker blog, about 80% read through RSS - 235 subscribers currently. I would never dream of NOT using in-post disclosure for that blog. For all of my other blogs, however, 80% of my traffic comes from search engines, meaning they’re coming directly to the web page. An argument can be made that site-wide disclosure is sufficient for these audiences.
The larger debate is going to rage for a while, then peter out. Old-folks like me can remember when the internet first entered the public consciousness back in the early 90’s. Maybe earlier for the west coasters, but you know what I mean. I can remember lots of angst on message boards - we called them bulletin boards way back then - when the pure commercial sites began popping up. It was the bastardization of the web, and we needed to be protected from it.
Back in 2005 I was approached about placing an ad on my poker blog. I was worried. I knew bloggers HATED ads and I was afraid of being shunned. How could a blogger expect to remain objective when they take money? So, I checked around and lo and behold, ads were everywhere! While there are still a significant number of bloggers that won’t take ads even when they’re offered, they’re definitely in the minority, at least across the 200 blogs I read regularly.
So, I predict that this resistance, like the resistance to previous website-monetization models, will pass. There will be growing pains as we all feel our way forward and define the “right” way and “wrong” way to do this, but the toothpaste is out of the tube.
As for in-post vs. site-wide disclosure, I first default to “your blog, your decision”. When pressed, I say, “It depends”. Yes, I hedge too much. But, like making a decision about how to play a mediocre poker hand, it DOES depend.
What does your audience expect? That’s what should be driving your decision, assuming you write for an audience. If you write for yourself, do what you want, it’s your blog.
What do you think? Should there be a hard & fast rule about disclosure, or should you take reader expectations into account?
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