Richard Koman over at Silicon Valley Watcher is a little upset at my comments earlier in the week regarding the post announcing Tibco as their blog’s first sponsor.
You can see Richard’s comment at the end of the original post.
“No, I don’t think it qualifies as advertorial. It is editorial about a company clearly identified as a sponsor. Nothing in it rings false or is anything Tom wouldn’t have written under other cicumstances. It signals that we will seek to work with companies that really have something to offer, not just that want to through money at us. As a blog, it’s nonproblematic to have a post about our first sponsor. It’s a big deal to us and validates our model of original writing on a blog.”
Now I think this is something of a storm in a tea cup.
In my post I clearly stated that Tom Foremski (correctly) flagged the Tibco post clearly as relating to a new site sponsor. So anyone with any media savvy would realize that what followed was sponsortorial or whatever.
However I think it would have been better for the post to have been actually flagged as such.
I don’t believe for one second that Tom would have written that post if they weren’t a sponsor. Re-read the post
I don’t have all the answers. No one probably cares. Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but personally while I think it’s great Tibco have come on board that post ain’t editorial.
In fairness to Richard here’s his formal response on the blog.
Footnote:
In the long tradition of bloggers indulging in ‘upward link management’ you’ll see that Richard only links back to Dan Gillmor‘s post on the matter and not my little creaking blog. I’ll try not to get too upset about that…. 🙂
Murphy's Law 