A weblog by Tom Coates concerning future media, social software and the web of data
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A quick disclaimer...

Posted August 15, 2006 6:05 PM.

In keeping with my piece on Ethical Weblogging a few days I should declare that Nokia have sent me a piece of hardware to play with that they're looking to get geek feedback upon. I'm not going to be talking about the product on this site unless it becomes completely enmeshed with my life, but anyway, that's full disclosure and you can come to your own conclusions about any subsequent posts I should make about the company. The post on Ethical Weblogging that I made the other day was in fact a direct result of being approached by Nokia for feedback and trying to work out what the appropriate response would be. Hopefully this is open and fair enough to be honourable.

Comments

Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.

I have this thought about bloggers who receive freebies. It's not just the free stuff that motivates us [I too received a 770 from Nokia, and blogged about it]... it's also because we're interested ourselves in the dynamics of marketing and commerce in the blogosphere, and we want to explore the parameters. And having a real-live product allows us to do so, without having to resort to "just theory".

→ Posted by: Hugh MacLeod at August 16, 2006 11:11 AM

You should relax Tom, take the approach that if someone wants to give you freebies, let them.

Just blog about it in a frank and honest manner (as you usually do). If the product sucks, tell us why. No one is asking you to 'review' things (and all that it entails) but just mention it off the cuff if you feel it's important.

If it's great, feel free to ramble on about it in great depth. If we're not interested, we'll just not read the post... no biggie. We'll still love ye, ya dafty!

→ Posted by: Paul Livingstone at August 16, 2006 3:55 PM

In keeping with the general theme of unethical advertising targeting bloggers, an acquaintance of mine got an email from someone claiming to be an "author representative" at Xlibris and encouraging hir to self-publish through the sender.

→ Posted by: kerrick at August 17, 2006 6:29 AM

What's the ethical thing to do with it if it doesn't become enmeshed in your life? Send it back? Sell it on Ebay and pocket the money? ...or donate it to charity? Give it to another blogger with the same view on freebies? Give it to one who hasn't got the same view?
So many choices.

→ Posted by: Paul Morriss at August 30, 2006 2:06 PM

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