Mari can’t believe she forgot mainstream journalism’s war on blogging! Yes, by advertising like this, people who do PPP are only further polluting what most professional journalists would call a pile of rubbish.

REALLY?! Mari is shocked (and should read comments more often…) Heh, you could probably make money hand over fist if you did.

Indeed, how can genuine review posts (for any product, be it web hosting, albums, books) be looked upon as worth something when people assume your writing is rubbish because you’re not writing for the New York Times?

Short attention span is a symptom of being an Internet user, Mari thinks.

While blogging has exploded as a hobby in recent years, a lot of people either don’t know what it is (as you said) or are cynical of its benefits. There are lots of people who already believe that blogging devalues both the Internet and journalism. I think by stuffing blogs with reviews of products you’ve never used, or recommendations for insurance and plastic surgery at the grand old age of 16, you’re only feeding those cynics.

Even as a proud non PPPer I’ve had people turn around and say “wow, I thought this post was a PPP advert”. While that shows first and foremost that I should take up marketing and advertising (hehe), it also shows that people are being conditioned to think that any post that recommends a product is automatically fake. How can we as genuine bloggers ever possibly say anything nice again if people just assume that we’ve been paid to say it?

I have lots of other things to say about PPP but they come to my little brain in fits and bursts (short attention span).. so I’ll probably pop back and more to this at some point later