Technosailor.com

Rarely do I go after individual people on this blog. There have been a few occasions, but I prefer to talk about issues and not people. However, when the errors of a person are so egregiously over the top, I have a need to say something. This was the case over the weekend with Forrester research analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, who decided that he would depart from the typical role of an analyst, where neutrality and objectivity are key in providing unbiased advice, and instead insert himself into a conversation as a subject matter expert on a topic he really knows nothing about.

IZEA is one of those companies that everyone loves to hate. Why? Well… PayPerPost, the ill concieved program that when launched offered to pay bloggers for reviews of companies and products without disclosure and requiring positive reviews.

Many stories have been written about PayPerPost over the years, most of them negative. Ted Murphy, the CEO of IZEA, is a stand up guy though and adjusted PayPerPost to not require positive reviews and to allow for disclosures. This was better but wasn’t palatable for many bloggers. To his credit, Ted has been very open with me in the past year since I had a memorable conversation with him atop the rooftop bar at the Iron Cactus in Austin Texas for SXSW.

A lot has been said about PayPerPost over the past few years and largely, I’ve stayed quiet on the matter. My silence should not be interpreted as acceptance of how the business is setup or “sold” to bloggers. Techcrunch and others have covered the company, the business practice and the impact on the blogosphere ad [...]