I was wondering what was going on this weekend - getting little bits and pieces of information about Federated Media and Blog Advertising - some conflict … and I even noticed a post from Howard Rheingold on Smartmobs (where i also post to once or twice a week) titled No conversational marketing on smartmobs.com"

"… like Federated Media. We make enough money on ads here to pay for the server and to buy our bloggers a gift certificate every few months. But nobody is going to chat up our sponsors here. As Jarvis said, it's up to us bloggers to set the limits. So I am sticking with FM, which is a smart outfit that I am proud to be associated with, but no conversational marketing will take place on this site."

But outside of that .. I did not know much of the storm going on - being more focused on the wonderful weather this weekend in NYC plus Cezanne’s Back Yard on Saturday and a very demanding client whose work I needed to focus on this weekend, mainly on Sunday - that left me little bandwidth to post anything till now.

So what happened this weekend?  I read Andy Beals summary - BlogStorm - Bloggers Criticized for Microsoft "Spokesblogging" Ads and it's clearer.

"…Some well known bloggers provided quotes for Microsoft ads run by Federated Media. Valleywag jumped on the opportunity to question the ethics of said bloggers. Some bloggers, such as Om Malik, apologized, while others stood their ground. Federated Media’s John Battelle apparently tried to explain his actions and apologize, which annoyed the heck out of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

There’s so much more to this story, but it’s Sunday evening and, well, it would take a huge post to summarize everything. I’ve not read every detail, but here’s what I’m thinking."

My guess, and the details will come out in more detail on Monday - is the line between editorial and advertising is blurry on Blogs - or, at least, as Andy Beal mentioned, it can be blurry in some cases (but not all). 

Honestly, I did not see the ads but I do know that when Know More Media takes on a client - we have to clearly say it's a "sponsored listing".  We try to avoid the kind of thing where your mixing editorial with advertising - readers need to know that both are different things.

Personally, when I have done sponsored reviews I try to find a way to express my own real opinion and I avoid taking on clients that I don't believe in.  When I have had doubts, I work it though first, coming to a decision.   But I don't think advertising and editorial should be mixed together - I think most media operates that way in principal (even if it's not the case in reality).

And if we look back and think about it - it makes perfect sense - editorial needs to be free of paid advertisers or else an opinion can be bought … when people are looking to bloggers to speak their mind … the idea that it's an "honest" opinion is the most important thing a blogger can impart.  If the "honesty" of the opinion is in doubt, the blogger has lost the ability to be effective.

But when the lines between editorial and advertising are blurry, mistakes can be made (will be made) and if someone made a mistake - they should just own up to it, apologize and make corrections, as they can … which sounds to me like what's been happening.  But we'll hear more on Monday, so I'm told.

Anyway - there's a lot of information flowing into TechMeme right now - in case you want to read more about Conversational Marketing, Microsoft and Federated Media and how they all play in the Blogstorm that happened this weekend.