If there is one thing that will start off a firestorm in the tech blogosphere faster than you can say oh shit is the mention of a tech blogger doing a product review of just about anything. While most of the time if one provides the usual caveat that the company provided the review item and that it is a <wink><wink> for review only item and can be returned once done with. The most well known case of this is the Microsoft and Acer deal some time back that saw selected bloggers in the tech industry receiving an Acer laptop with Microsoft Vista preloaded on it.
The reaction was almost instantaneous and condemning of any of the bloggers who took part in the promotion. It didn’t matter if the blogger planned on returning the laptop afterwards or not as this was never an implied requirement of the deal. The fact was; and to a very large degree still is, that unless you were of the Walt Mossberg stature accepting any kind of product for review automatically tainted you as an untrustworthy bloggers. It’s funny though how this self-righteous attitude only seems to affect those of us in the tech sector of the blogosphere.
At least this sure seems to be the impression one could infer after reading a post this morning by Jeremiah Owyang who talked [nw] about the ongoing BlogHer conference that is happening right now. In his post he showed the same picture you see above to show what good stuff was showered on the attendees of a pre BlogHer party. One of the things that I learned from his post and reading the excellent comments that followed was that it is nothing new for the mommy bloggers to be receiving new products for them to review. For them this is a common occurrence because right now this sector of blogging is one of the hottest areas and companies and their marketers are working hard to get these mommy blogger’s attention.
The interesting thing is though that nowhere at all does one find the same condemnation of mommy bloggers accepting items to review that we do in the tech sector. As Kate Olson said in the comments on Jeremiah’s post
When we do reviews on our site, it’s with the understanding that the company has sent us something to review. We don’t get paid to write our reviews, but for a brand to approach US and request essentially free advertising, a sample of the product is mandatory, otherwise we’d simply be an ad blog. We only do reviews once per week as to not dilute our main content, but I think these posts are really beneficial to our readers as we a) don’t publish negative reviews - if we don’t like a product, we don’t write a review - so the moms are getting great tips on good products and b) we almost always do a giveaway with the review. This brings in more readers to our site benefiting us AND the company. Again, this is much the same as magazines do.
Granted there are a few bloggers of note who say that as long as you have a disclaimer and of course return the item then everything is cool. The general consensus though from what I have read whenever this comes up is for the most cases exactly the opposite. It is like unless you are some big name blogger like Walt Mossberg or the crew at Engadget or of the similar rank then doing product reviews is a dirty thing and should never be attempted by the average blogger or the consequences will be dire indeed.
So why is it okay for the mommy bloggers or the name brand tech bloggers to have all the fun but not the rest of us?
Doesn’t this really smack of hypocrisy of the highest kind?
Conversation Tags: products, reviews, ethics
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As for mommy bloggers - the main question is this: why would we dilute the content of our sites, which are supposed to be about our parenting experiences, with products? And how could we possibly return a jar of peanut butter we reviewed? How about a book? Would the publisher even WANT it back? I do have to say, though, that if we receive something for review that we can't use, we're planning on giving it to someone in need. The books I receive go to my public library when I'm done with them.
Thanks again for bringing this up and you're right, it's hypocrisy all around. Just remember, though, that we've made it clear from the beginning that we will NOT write a positive review for something if we don't like the product, we're not "pay for post". We also don't believe in bashing either - if we don't like the taste of the new kid snacks they sent us, that doesn't mean others won't, right? We maintain our integrity by having our review policy listed on our site and letting the company know that if we don't like the product we'll still do a giveaway, but won't write a review.
Hope this helps better understand us!
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