Let’s put aside for a second that Fake Steve Jobs is neither funny nor witty, and ask ourselves why we should believe the shrill outrage of the author of a blog that is *purported* to be funny and witty.

{I could also ask why the technosphere engaged in such extravagant and indulgent navel gazing as to wonder who exactly FSJ is — but I’ll chalk it up the fact that, heck, its the summer. And we’re all looking for things “fun” things to do I suppose.}

Yes, sir, it seems like CNet is once again dredging up the issue over here, about the efforts of some to unmask FSJ. And if you go to FSJ’s own blog he makes some allusions to the exact issue with some seemingly out of character “back off or I’ll sue you” type of tenor, as those as-yet-unnamed individuals may have crossed a “fake line” in trying to find out the “fake Steve.”

First of all, let’s get some things out of the way.

• Those as-yet-unnamed individuals are the gents at Sitening, a web design and search marketing company in Nashville.
• The exact details are featured on Sitening’s blog, where they executed a pretty slick trick to nail his IP address (involving a unique URL and the knowledge that Steve uses Yahoo mail).
• From that point they were able to pinpoint what part of the world the FSJ was writing from, and lo and behold, its from Boston.
• Who is the leading FSJ candidate from Boston? Andy Ihnatko, whose blog is over here.

See? Its nice when we use details, rather than vagaries and hand-waving.

My biggest beef with the whole thing — you know, besides the fact that FSJ isn’t funny — is the possibility that the ‘outrage’ from FSJ is real.

Hey, I get it. Andy might get in trouble if his bosses found out about his writings. Or maybe Andy might directly. Maybe he has friends who are Mac-heads. Or he does business with mac books. Or something. But for a real example for a blog who was “outed” look at what happened to Dead2.0, when the author was supposedly outed there. Quick exit, stage left [apparently he worked for a VC backed company by day and was satirizing the same industry at night -- or something like that]  VC company that was funding companies in an industry that Dead 2.0 was publicly ridiculing]

But come on.

If the whole dead2.0 thing taught us anything — heck, if BLOGGING teaches you anything — its that the blogosphere has an insatiable appetite for what is perceived at is real. We read blogs and we write blogs because we believe that we are reading some kernel — or writing about — some kernel of truth. Blogs are “different” that way from the mainstream media and, on another note, its exactly why bloggers get so riled up about conflicts of interest.

That desire for wanting things to be “real”, and to be keeping it “real” extends right to the authors. Especially if the content is interesting enough to demand it. People ask me if its important that we know who is writing our favourite blogs. Would it matter if the people *behind* the blogs were fake? Or that it was ghost-written?

Some of have said that the only thing that should matter is the content.

That’s partially true.

On the other hand, I think that part of what makes a blog a blog is your connection with the author of that blog — and that connection ceases to be real if you’d ever found out that their identity turned out to be a lie.

Which is all a round-about way of saying that the identity of who is actually blogging Does Actually Matter to people who read your blog, and if you’re deliberately hiding it, people will want to find out [and in fact, there could be a bunch of reasons for wanting to, and I'm sure that one of them includes "for no other reason than I could"].

Heck, if you want to flog a metaphor, here you go: if you play with Fake, expect to be Found – especially if your blog is as “good” or “funny” as FSJ’s.

And that’s the thing.

I think that Andy should know this. Or whomever is really behind FSJ. And maybe that’s why the outrage is really fake. Or, rather, that I hope it is. Because FSJ should really *not* be surprised that people want to find out his real identity. And if he was *truly* and *genuinely* worried, FSJ should have stopped a long time ago, perhaps when the first rumours about who his / her / its identity really was.

I mean, otherwise, its just sheer idiocy to think that someone, somewhere, isn’t going to try and find out.

And FSJ might not be funny, but surely he’s not an idiot.

… right?

Some exquisite whining going on at Valleywag yesterday, with an anonymous Facebook developer going on and on about how he and his crew had diverted precious resources to developing a Facebook application — only to get the proverbial rug pulled out from below their feet.

Specifically, there is some first class whinging about how the first set of developers had an ‘unfair advantage’ because of how Facebook had structured the viral component of their applications. One of these components involved being able to blast all your friends with notifications that you had a new application set up. Now, you’re not able to do more than 10 friends a day.

What’s worst is that the developer starts going on “in paranoia extremus” about how this was perhaps planned out, and that they knew that that initial apps were going to explode, and hey — isn’t that Zuckerman’s girlfriend’s roommate’s second cousin twice removed’s uncle helping develop one of those first sweet apps … and doesn’t he, like, secretly own 60% of Facebook through that famous and little known “IOU” that Mark Zuckerman ran up that one time? You know, because he was caught doing that thing on campus when no one was looking? You know! That thing with the pants.

Right. And the FBI is using Facebook to spy on us all.

Look, I sympathize with *wanting* a “level playing field”. I’m all for being equal. But, I also realize that when you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox, you play by their rules. If they want to change them, tough noog’s — you’re S.O.L. and you know what? You should have prepared for that AND any future changes. Like Facebook suddenly switching off their API, or even charging you for it.

Furthermore, do you really think that its a conspiracy that is driving the changes at Facebook? How about looking at it from a user’s point of view. I thought being able to spam all of your friends was annoying both from an installer of of applications, but also from being on the “shared” point of view as well.

And if I’m annoyed by it, *maybe* Facebook was getting some negative feedback on it and wanted to get down on the issue quickly before it became a firestorm of controversy. I can see it now “Facebook 2.0 allows Spam! Please Digg this!” You know. Like the last one. Around privacy? You know — how it reached the mainstream media as well?

Yeah, I bet Zuckerman wants a repeat of those shennanigans.

Lastly, it looks like Liz Ganes at GigaOM has the scoop with some thoughts and interviews with another Facebook developer, and she shares the same sentiments: Facebook developers don’t have the “right” to do anything, least of all spam users.

At the end of the day this is nothing more than a classic case of sour grapes. iLike had a “first mover advantage” in a way that every developer is green with envy / kicking themselves with. The rules have changed? Boo freakin’ hoo. Time to get back to work about making an application that is so useful people will actually *want* to share it with their friends.

Valleywag has decided to initiate a “conversation” about a marketing vehicle that’s been going on for months, that involves many, many, A-listers, such as Om Malik and Mike Arrington, who use Federated Media to help serve ads. I’ll be honest — I noticed it months ago, but until Valleywag’s recent piece, I didn’t really put some of the dots together.

In a pinch, Federated Media has gotten their A-list roster to talk about, or participate in a “conversation” around topics that their advertisers sponsor. Case in point: Microsoft sponsoring a “conversation” around how “People Ready”, or Cisco sponsoring a “conversation” around “Human Network”. So, whats’s the “conversation” now?

• Valleywag alleges that this is no different than getting high paid actors to shill for companies or their products — and in this case, Big Bad Micro$oft.
• Neil Chase, of Federated Media, simply calls this the “birth” of Conversational Marketing, and congratulates himself (and Federated Media) in the smuggest way possible, by saying outright that “marketers to want to join the conversation … It can be done in ethical, responsible ways, and FM’s authors are among the first to figure out how to do it.”
• Om Malik finds that the questioning of his integrity is too sensitive an issue to be bandied about, and has simply dropped Federated Media advertising, and has apologized.
• Mike Arrington on the other hand, isn’t focusing on the conversational site, but how banner ads have now been served up with his quotes about the conversation. What’s wrong with banner ads, he asks — and chides Om Malik for backing down to Valleywag’s bullying.
• Fred Wilson (whose site also uses Federated Media), feels like this is a new world, and that he’s just happy to be participating in something new. Which somehow absolves him of any ethical actions (or inactions) he’s making. Right.

Well, this is all well and good.

I think none of them are getting the point, however.

At the heart of the matter isn’t the nuts and bolts of clicking, *nor* the fact, that, for example, any the A-listers are doing any outright shilling. You will not find, for example, Mike Arrington saying that “I love Microsoft”, or that “I made TechCrunch a Microsoft business”. Or, even, how their blogs will probably cover Microsoft.

(probably not consciously anyway).

And so, Valleywag is wrong in this way.

But its as Dave Winer has gotten out of John Batelle — Conversational Marketing … “its more nuanced” — and in fact, more insidious, I think.

Here’s why.

The conversations that Federated Marketing wants to host? Those are conversations around certain, specific, terms. In another time and place we’d call them “slogans”. What’s important, however, is that the companies which are sponsoring these A-listers to do off-blog “conversations”, are trying to “own” these slogans.

You can think of it as a branding exercise.

Microsoft wants to “own” the phrase, “People Powered”.

When you think of “People Powered”, Microsoft wants you to think of … well, Microsoft.

Its the same story with Cisco. It wants to own the phrase “The Human Network”, because it wants to associate it with all those feel-good qualities. When you hear “The Human Network”, it wants *you* to think of Cisco.

“Top of mind” qualities and all that.

The insidious part comes in next — that is, what Fred Wilson doesn’t seem to get, what Om Malik seems to be worried about implicitly without perhaps understanding why, and what Mike Arrington doesn’t seem to be focusing on.

(and perhaps what Neil Chase is so damn smug about).

Can I digress for a second?

Blogs are extensions of their blog owners and the bloggers who write there. I’ve often been asked about what I think about the buying and selling of blogs. Well, its an interesting business, but I think its terribly hard to separate the blog owner from the blog itself. When you buy a blog, unless the original author is coming with it, its hard to tell if the audience will continue because they were only reading for the blog author in the first place. Sure content is important, but so is his or her voice. Their style of doing things. Stuff only that they might know. And in that way, blogs are intimately related to their blog authors.

Back to the conversation at hand.

What’s insidious about things is that Federated Media feels good about hosting a “conversation” about a topic that is trying to be owned by a company. Bloggers might feel that since they’re not actually talking about it on their blogs, it somehow removes them from the connection. But it doesn’t. Especially if you talk about your blogging company as part of the conversation.

Yes, conversational marketing is ‘new’, but it has its roots in exactly what Nick Denton is clumsily alluding to.

Bloggers are not shilling outright for General Wallington’s Tincture of Rattlesnake (good for all of your ills), but what they are doing is indirectly lending their persona’s and their brands towards a concept — an idea and *phrase* — that another company is *trying* to own.

What’s the problem in that?

Only that if that these bloggers weren’t somehow compensated to do so, none of these bloggers would have initiated, or willingly participated in such an artificial conversation.

So, its almost like a company has come along and sponsored a conversation, right?

In principle, this is nothing different than PayPerPost.

Of course, the nuts and bolts are totally different. With PayPerPost, you are supposed to write an article *on* your site, and yes, there’s the whole bugaboo of having the article be positive, in-post disclosure and all of that.

Needless details.

At the end of the day, PayPerPost sells itself to its advertisers as being able to generate Buzz. All of the paid posting sites do. The fact you also get inbound links is a bit of a “secondary” benefit (that isn’t directly or primarily) sold [although its a great one from an SEO point of view]. With PayPerPost, or ReviewMe, advertisers can, essentially, buy blogs to try and initiate buzz.

Which is really what conversations are.

At its heart, the advertiser here is Microsoft. The want to create a conversation, not around its site, or around a product, but around a more nebulous concept. A phrase. A term. The Microsoft brand. So, it hosts a conversation, and pays, in a round about way, bloggers to write about that concept.

And in so doing, those bloggers are lending a part of themselves, a little bit of their authority, which is implicitly manifested in what they know, how they’ve gotten to be successful — but explicitly manifested by their blogs — to that idea.

Its more nuanced, for sure.

But its also more insidious.

Because I’ll wager that *none* of those bloggers even know what their contribution to a sponsored conversation even *means* (although I suspect that Om Malik might know): that A-list bloggers have a price. It is possible to pay for them to not only serve your ad, but to start a conversation *around* an idea. An idea that you’re trying to own.

They might not be explicitly endorsing that idea, but that very fact — that you can, in fact, purchase a conversation with the biggest players in the industry around an idea that you are trying to own — is the whole point. That they’re not doing it on their own blogs is immaterial, because they *are* their blogs, and when they lend their name and their idea to the conversation, its only bolstering that fact when they mention their experiences WITH their own blogs.
John Batelle’s right. Its not black and white. And for Federated Media, this is smart. Look at how much Buzz they’re getting.

On the other hand, I do think that, in principle, this is really no different than PayPerPost — as a purchasable tool to promote buzz. I’ve said for a long time that I’ve felt ambivalent about the issue, except where the future is for this kind of phenomenon.

Mike Arrington and now, Fred Wilson, and in the past, vapidly, by Amanda Congdon — they all agree on one thing. Blogging is “new”, and they feel that bloggers are not accountable to the same kind of standards that normal journalists are because its a different medium. Perhaps a self correcting one. One where the conversation is important, and not, perhaps, the connections *behind* the conversation. Or that they’re more important, but that as long as you’re willing disclose all should be forgiven.

Well, the funny thing is that it is exactly the spirit of being different is exactly what’s driving the paid posting phenomenon. And paid buzz to another degree. Mashable asked me what my 5 predictions for 2007 were? Its that the paid posting phenomonon was only going to go on the increase. And I stick to that position half way into the year, but I’ll broaden it to mean “paid posting as a means to generate buzz”. Paid buzz is something that is clearly expanding, and its something that’s so insidious that the folks who are involved with it, I think, don’t even know what they’re actually doing.

And as a parting shot, do *I* think there’s anything wrong with it?

Not really.

But if you’re going to do it, you should know about the association, the connection, that’s made in your readers mind about what you’re doing. When you are compensated, in a round about way, to participate in a conversation about a topic that another company is trying to own — in a conversation that you would never otherwise participate in? There’s a connection there. Its not as flagrantly obvious as you shilling for their products or services. John Batelle is right that way.

But there is a connection nonetheless.

And a judgement.

That your opinions — at least your ability to *start* a conversation (and what are blogs, but conversations) have a price. And that’s not such a bad thing, necessarily.

Just don’t castigate other bloggers or other industries when they try and do the same thing, but in a different way.