Archeologists working on a dig (actually, a kitchen remodel) at a Greek restaurant on El Camino in Palo Alto recently unearthed this long-lost dialog that fills out Socratic canon and touches on the recent hoopla (no, that's not a kind of Thracian soldier) about pay-for-post blogging.
The scene. The courtyard of Tweeto's villa in the Los Altos hills.
Persons of the Dialog
Socrates
Tweeto, a wealthy landowner and venture capitalist
Flakoles, a partner in a PR firm
Glaucon, a junior employee of Flakoles
Hackaun, a programmer
Interns
SOCRATES. Greetings, friends. I am surprised to discover you outside now, for though the day is fair, and the sun graces us with her warmth, yet I know by habit you prefer to linger indoors, hunched over your Macs.
FLAKOLES. The Internet's down.
SOCRATES. That explains your glum aspect. Entering now, I wasn't sure if I was beholding my dear friends or a motley of actors in some final, dreadful scene by one of our tragedians. Do none of you get good 3G reception?
FLAKOLES. Yon fair hills, whose tawny grassy ripples like the flank of an anxious stallion stamping before a race, do block all our coverage as surely as a stone wall.
SOCRATES. Ah, Flakoles, I know you make your living in PR, but your remarks show you to have been an English major. So none of you have network access. But where is Flippanes?
HACKAUN. Flippanes is the sole exception. He had the good sense to sell all his CountryWide stock in 2005, so he's sitting in his Porsche, dialed up over his satellite phone.
SOCRATES. Flippanes is a man who is, if not wise, at least shrewd. But come, Glaucon, why do you, more than the others, blubber so? Surely a few minutes or even a few hours without network access could not reduce a man to such a disconsolate state? Your cheeks are red, and I can that you have rent your toga in one or two places, which, I might add, has not improved the lines of the garment. As well, I can see that your chest has not been out in the sun in many months.
FLAKOLES. Be gentle with our friend Glaucon, Socrates. He has had a miserable week. He spent Monday pitching pay-for-post blogging to all his accounts, and now they either shun him entirely or send him nasty emails whose language would even make great Bacchus blush.
SOCRATES. It would seem, Glaucon, that you have misunderstood the nature of blogging, or perhaps we should say that you and the community have differing conceptions of blogging. Perhaps it would be worthwhile, as long as we are sitting here waiting for—which ISP?
TWEETO. SBC
SOCRATES. Very good; waiting for SBC to get their act together, to ponder the nature of blogging. Shall we begin? Wait, where's Plato?
PLATO. I'm over here, sir. Strictly speaking, you shouldn't be mentioning me.
SOCRATES. That is our custom, I agree, but shouldn't you be taking notes? How are you going to immortalize my thinking in one of your little dialogs?
PLATO. I'm recording everything in my netbook. Then this afternoon I'll have it transcribed using one of Amazon's Mechanical Turk services.
SOCRATES. The engineering of our western colonies never ceases to amaze me. And this transcription will be one hundred percent accurate?
PLATO. Absoglubely.
SOCRATES. Excellent. Let us begin. It would seem that the cause of Glaucon's misfortunes lies in some confusion regarding the nature of a blog.
Glaucon, perhaps abetted by the recent Forrester report on the subject, has believed a blog, or rather a blog post, to be one thing, and his clients have understood it to be something else. Perhaps it would serve us well to identify the true nature of a blog.
TWEETO. That's pretty obvious. The name blog comes from the term weblog, which suggests a series of entries posted in serial form on the World Wide Web.
HACKAUN. It's posted using special software that is usually configured to accept comments, so I think part of
a blog involves the idea of commentary and dialog.
SOCRATES. Excellent. Who writes blogs?
HACKAUN. Everyone these days. From independent bloggers to programmers to mothers who knit.
FLAKOLES. Many of our clients now have blogs. And we blog ourselves. I've been posting about best practices in PR, for example.
SOCRATES. Now we are getting closer to the matter at hand. First, it is evident that commercial entities, such as Tweeto's firm and your firm, too, Flakoles, have blogs. Let us also point out—which may offer young Glaucon some comfort—that a blog is a written form of communication, and that in many other circumstances, commercial entities expect to pay for written forms of communication that promote their products and services. I am thinking of press releases—which our friend Flakoles here writes so fluently—and white papers, case studies, Web copy, and so on. So I do not think Glaucon's error lies is assuming that companies should pay for promotional writing. They often do, and no one reproves them for it. (No one attacks Cisco or Oracle, for example, for publishing white papers.) No, the backlash, which has crushed our poor friend as mightily as the frothiest wave at Stinson and left him draped over the stone bench there like so much dried kelp, has to do with some other sense of violation. There are other types of writing that treat commercial products and services; trade journalism, for example. It would be offensive, I think we can agree, if Glaucon were offering to pose as a journalist and turn out pixelated prose, measured by the board foot, and adorned, no doubt, with all manner of banner ads and interstitials. We have all seen such so-called news sites, with their gushing prose and their click-through geegaws, and we can all agree, I think, that these sites deserve our opprobrium. But Glaucon wasn't offering to pretend to be such a journalist, from what I understand. He was simply offering to write as himself.
HACKAUN. All bloggers write as themselves. That's what makes blogs so opinionated!
SOCRATES. An astute observation, Hackaun.
A blog, unlike many other types of writing, even commercial writing, is written in a personal voice. Can we agree, at least provisionally, that individual authorship and a personal voice are essential elements of a blog?
TWEETO. The personal aspect is what differentiates a blog from the other writing on a Web site.
FLAKOLES. That, and the timeliness. The sense of writing on occasion, reacting to news in the marketplace or even something that has happened in one's household.
HACKAUN. It's the spontaneity makes blogs so interesting, or sometimes so annoying. They offer personal voices, people's real opinions. Even if someone's writing for a company, there's often a disclaimer that their views do not necessarily represent those of the company.
TWEETO. That's a legal disclaimer, of course. Our lawyers insist on it.
HACKAUN. But it also makes the blog more interesting than all the other marketing fluff on a site. Blogs are edgier. Because even if the author works for a big company like Microsoft or SAP, you get the sense that you're reading their genuine thoughts and opinions.
They're straight talk.
FLAKOLES. Hackaun is right. And all the blogs from mothers who knit and guys who hang-glide reinforce that idea. You're hearing authentic voices, at least when they're not just link-baiting.
SOCRATES. So Glaucon's error may have been in offering to be authentic for pay. That, truly, would have people wagging there tongues in the polis, or if not the polis, at Stanford Mall.
FLAKOLES. I should say, Socrates, in young Glaucon's defense, that people expect a company's own bloggers to say encouraging things about their products. And though Glaucon is not an employee of any of these companies, he is genuinely excited about their products. He even uses some of them. The speed-dating Web site didn't quite turned out as planned, but he genuinely likes the other products and services he was offering to blog about. He wasn't being insincere. He wasn't offering to fake his enthusiasm. He was simply offering to capture it in writing, which of course would benefit the companies he writes about. I could ask, taking his side for a moment, if he writes something, and it benefits a company, why shouldn't he be paid for it?
HACKAUN. He can be paid for it, there's no law against it, but it violates the sense of trust that readers extend to the authors of blogs. It's fine to put sell your point of view in a white paper; just don't it in a blog. It's the wrong medium.
SOCRATES. Excellent, Hackaun. So we can say that
a blog, which originated as a personal medium, retains that personal nature even when it enters the marketplace. And though some blogs, even news blogs, are sometimes shill pieces, promoting companies to which the author serves as an advisor, for example, still we expect the medium to present authentic voices.
Can we say that we expect bloggers, enjoying the liberty that circumstances have afford them for spontaneous discussion, to select their own subject matter?
TWEETO. Yes, Socrates.
SOCRATES. Then let me offer the following story, which may illuminate the remaining dark corners of this issue. Our host Tweeto is famous for the wonderful dinners he serves, and he has been gracious enough to invite me to many of these events, where I have eaten heartily and enjoyed the fruits of Bacchus, including a couple of Russian River Pinots in which that merry god really outdid himself—perfect balance of fruit and tannins, nice berry overtones, good finish—but I digress. I remember a dinner laid out not twenty feet from this very courtyard two weeks ago, when we dined sumptuously. The occasion was the granting of a term sheet to young man from the provinces, who had just launched a SaaS B2B offering, for which he had the greatest enthusiasm. I remember that, just as dessert was served, he delivered a long, gushing monologue about his new service. Do you think that was improper?
FLAKOLES. I remember the speech well. The fellow was so excited he didn't notice that his sleeve was resting in the meringue. Improper? No. He was boasting about his own company. Going on a bit perhaps, but not unexpected.
SOCRATES. So even in a conversational setting, in a dialog where one employs one's authentic voice, we don't mind a bit of commercial promotion, as long as it is spontaneous and heartfelt.
TWEETO. Certainly not. I expect that kind of enthusiasm from the people we fund.
SOCRATES. Suppose, however, that though he delivered the same speech with the same passion, you discovered that he had been paid to make it. How would you feel then?
HACKAUN. Offended. That would be incredibly crass. Even the most die-hard salespeople I know wouldn't do such a thing.
FLAKOLES. It would violate all bounds of decency. Paying people to make speeches at parties? Unheard of. Unspeakable.
TWEETO. God forbid, and if you what you say is true, Socrates, we will take up the matter at our next board meeting with the fellow. He may find himself painting curbs in Redwood City.
SOCRATES. I am sure, good Tweeto, that his speech was genuine. I was merely using the man and his loquacious enthusiasm as an example. My story was false, but it has served to guide us closer to the truth of blogs.
Blogs, in all settings, present themselves as freely written; they are frank, and they open a discussion the way a frank utterance does. Perhaps the key to your clients' offense lay not in paying for blogging per se. I am sure that in your contract to serve them, you mentioned blogging. Many analysts blog, after all. They are paid by clients, too, and they blog about them. PR agencies blog, sometimes about their practice and sometimes about their clients. The public is not surprised or dismayed by these things. I think our story of the dinner party shows us the nature of poor Glaucon's offense. I expect someone from a company to blog about the company. I expect them to talk about the company, too, perhaps even at a dinner party. But to receive pay for a specific speech or post—to use a medium that is typically spontaneous and conversational—is as offensive as a putting a taxi meter on a dinner table, and charging by the word. I am afraid more Glaucon has sadly miscalculated.
TWEETO. Look at him blubber so. I had thought my garden had gained a second fountain.
HACKAUN. His tears are soaking his toga and showing us the outline of his physique. Would that clouds would come quickly scudding in and darken this scene.
SOCRATES. You may find escape from the aquatic sorrow you're beholding, yet. Look, another intern approaches.
INTERN. I am happy to report that the Internet is back up. I and my colleagues have prepared mocha double-whips for all present, except for Glaucon, whose stomach cannot abide such things. For him, I have set aside a soy chai in a china mug.
TWEETO. Then all is ready. Come, friends, we have solved the riddle of young Glaucon's offense. Let's go within and see what they're writing about today on TechCrunch.
Urn photo by jtstewart, some rights reserved.
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