So Google Blogoscoped asked some of the most well known bloggers what their most popular post was, garnering answers from Mike Arrington, Om Malik, Chris Pirillo, Nick Denton and Darren Rowse.

There were a few things that made their most popular posts stand out — and I think its worth recognizing for all of us in the z-list jonsing for some blog traffic / recognition / validation.

1) Breaking real news (or rumours that become news): From Om Malik’s breaking of the Six Apart acquisition, Nial Kennedy’s cracking of the Google reader API, to Mike Arrington covering the rumour that would become the Google acquisition fact, the unfortunate fact is that many of their best posts are ones where they are covering real news. I saw “unfortunate” because not many of us are in the position, or have the contacts, within an industry to scoop news before major outlets. Nor do many of us have the technical expertise to discover something new like Mr. Kennedy.

Not sure if there’s much to add here, really. (more…)

That’s the fundamental question asked by Mr. Peter Sheer, the Excutive Director of the California First Amendment Coalition (a non-profit organization promoting free speech) put forth yesterday in the San Francisco Gate.

He makes the argument that without the free content put forth by reputable news organization, “news”, as we know it would be relegated to the digital “fishwrap” of blogs, news aggregators, and so on. Newspapers are having a hard time with monetizing their traffic — many are doing abysmally compared to their newsprint analogues — therefore, it would be wise to remind everyone of the true value of newspapers, and the value of the free information that is given away.

So, what’s his solution?

A “temporary embargo”, as he puts it. In his own words:

What to do? Here’s my proposal: Newspapers and wire services need to figure out a way, without running afoul of antitrust laws, to agree to embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period — say, 24 hours — after it is made available to paying customers. The point is not to remove content from the Internet, but to delay its free release in that venue.

A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals — Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN — with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from “mainstream” media and blogosphere musings on yesterday’s news. Digital fish wrap. And the portals know from unhappy experience (most recently in the case of Yahoo) just how difficult it is to create original and timely news content themselves.

Well, this is laughable for so many reasons both theoretical and practical; but what Mr. Sheer is effectively proposing is that all online news sources should band together and withhold a particular service so that they can all bargain for better conditions for themselves.

Doesn’t that sound like unionizing? (more…)

In our semi regular segment “Brass Balls”, we look at bloggers who have shown exceptional gumption, chutzpah and otherwise plain ol’ balls. In the past, we said Chris Pirillo had “Brass Balls” for getting a company to sponsor his Alaskan vacation, for example, under the guise of a podcast sponsorship.

Today, we’re honoring Andrew “Rocketboom” Baron. No matter what side you take in the ZeFrank / Rocketboom metrics match, he’s showing big brass one’s for flipping Microsoft bird on what looks like to be a sponsorship deal, where Microsoft wanted to post the Zune logo as part of their rollout on Rocketbom.

Well, dissing Big M is no big tricks, but turning down huge sacks of cash is.

Andrew Baron has big brass ones for flipping the bird and showing some bloggers aren’t for sale, and for some bloggers, their integrity is non-negotiable. It would be different if it was a pro-Microsoft blog, but clearly that’s not what Rocketboom is about, and its great to see that Mr. Baron is taking a stand on this one.

[Alternatively, Mr. Baron has such a hate-on for Microsoft he couldn't bear not giving them a kick every now and again -- even if it does mean he has to forgo mountains of money]

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but I can only speculate that he probably turned down sums that would make ReviewMe’s paltry sums absolutely parsimonious. In fact, i think its notable in so far as that so many significant bloggers decided to sell their blogging soul shill take ReviewMe up on a modest sum of cash, but also for the chance to win $25 000 [thanks franky]. And Andrew Baron probably decided to turn down a sum of money that is probably in that range — again, not a chance for that cash money — but right before it landed in his chequing account.

The guy has big brass ones, and deserves a salute for standing up for his principles.

After all, for some, integrity just isn’t for sale.

So with the pay-per-post reformation happening as we speak, spreading to all four corners of the blogosphere, some of you might still feel uncomfortable shilling for a company, even if you do disclose your shilling sugar daddy. If that’s the case, there may be a service that you can get involved with that can sooth your blogging conscience: GetThemBlogging.com

It was brought to my attention yesterday, and perhaps yours, if you hiked your pants and waded into the comments of my posts section, particularly the one on ReviewMe.com
As far as I can tell, it acts as a go-between companies and PR firms who want to create Buzz for products or services, by getting bloggers to blog about their products. Like ReviewMe.com it doesn’t put stipulations on what you write, so you’re welcome to write positive, negative, or neutral reviews. However, unlike companies such as ReviewMe or PayPerPost, bloggers get no financial compensation. What they do get is a chance to review and test products they otherwise wouldn’t (swag per post?)

The process for bloggers involve signing up and filling out a fairly lengthy survey (lengthy for me anyway — its about 3 pages), so that GetThemBlogging.com can compile a database that PR companies and businesses can select from.

What happens after that?

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Many thanks to John “Dot com Mogul”, and fellow Canadian, Chow who took my whiny braying to heart, and decided to do some investigative blogging to sort out why ReviewMe was giving me the metaphorical middle finger.

It turns out that their method of vetting sites is about as good as their method of assigning dollar values to the per-post cost of each blogger’s shill review.

Check out John’s assessment, but basically, its broken imperfect on a number of levels.  It imperfectly reads the number of technorati inbound links, which gave him a lame-duck value of $100, when in fact, it should probably be closer to the $250 mark; he’s got more than 1000 inbound links which should probably put in him in the rank of 1000’s with Technorati.  On the other hand, he says he’s got problems claiming his blog, which may be the real source of that problem (and Technorati’s ability to respond to email is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish).

The other thing he found was more helpful:

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[UPDATE 2: Seems like I'm not the only one who has this opinion about ReviewMe. Check out Yardley's better and fleshed out opinion (the disintermediation of ReviewMe?) and Scott Karp's opinion of ReviewMe as an influence marketplace.]

So ReviewMe debuted a few nights ago, and I posted my own attempt at reviewing which was met with very limited results (as I wasn’t accepted). But, with its $25 000 contest, all of the bloggers who have now come out of the blogosphere to grab their “fair share”, it got me thinking about the Real Benefit for advertisers who go with ReviewMe and its ilk.

The Obvious Benefit is the review. Advertisers are paying for buzz. “But”, you might say “ReviewMe doesn’t necessitate that its reviewers write positive reviews” — and this is good, because no company wants to be branded with buying cheap buzz.

The Real Benefit is actually related to optimizing search, and has less to do with “reviews” or “advertorials” than it does with ReviewMe’s parent (or partner) company Text-Link-Ads.com.

How? Consider this.

At one point, buying text-links could you boost your google juice because even though they were ads, they were still links with presumable anchor links back to your page. You could, essentially, PURCHASE in bound links — the currency that Google deals in. For businesses, no more begging for reciprocal links; they could set aside money to buy them. And for the right price, you could buy links from very high ranking blogs or sites for really great investment.

This is how ReviewMe.com REALLY works.

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Well, as soon as ReviewMe opened up this evening, I had planned to sign up and test it out. ReviewMe is another service, like PayPerPost, that allows advertisers to match up with bloggers so that they can get blogospheric coverage — at a price. However, the prospect of a PayPerPost competitor is intriguing — especially one that:

a) forces its bloggers to disclose

b) has an open marketplace for advertisers to pick up bloggers to post for their product

c) is potentially much more lucrative for bloggers

d) the bloggers can post what they like about the product

Apparently, it uses an engine to try and determine a blog’s “worth”, and assign the dollar amount that advertisers have to pay per post. Fascinating!

At any rate, I was stoked to try it out and let you all know what I thought about it (perhaps winning $25k in the process?).

Unfortunately, the temporary blog that I set up was denied because there wasn’t enough inbound links and traffic.

Fine – I decided to submit THIS blog — and lo and behold … Denied again!

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