I’m the first to admit when I made a mistake, and having been gone for the better part of the weekend I think I did pretty well keeping up overall. My big problem was that I accidentally posted by Community Blogging post (Sunday) on Saturday. In fact, most of my weekend special edition posts came in a day early.

What is a blogger to do? Come up with a new feature to start out the week, that’s what. I call this one, “Open Questions”. Weekends are notorious in the blogosphere for raising questions which are tossed around from the top of the “A-list” down to mere mortals like you and I. Whether it is on the ethics of payola or the proper age to begin a startup, slow news days lead bloggers to turn their attention inwards. Lets take a look at some of the questions that have cropped up in the blogosphere this weekend, starting with everyone’s favorite Pay Per Post.

Pay Per Post

The question: “Is a Pay Per Post application on your Facebook account equivalent to selling out your friends?”

I’ve made myself pretty clear on my stance on Pay Per Post (Disclosure: I know several members of the company and a managing partner of a firm that invested in it). I choose not to use it because it does not fit into the format of this blog. There are very few times when a “message from my sponsors” would seem appropriate. If I like a product, I talk about it. If someone wishes to advertise with me, they know how to get into contact. In all cases, the opinions I express on my blog are strictly my own.

This does not mean I am against Pay Per Post, it means that if you choose to use any new method of advertising, you have to understand that you’re opening yourself up to criticism. Pay Per Post is great for people who go into it understanding this point.

Should it be on Facebook? Well, that is up to the person using it. I think people use Facebook for all sorts of reasons. Some of us use it to keep up with our friends, some use it as a personal gossip engine, some use it as a message board for co-workers. Why then should it be so surprising that some people will use it to make a buck?

I don’t want to compare Facebook to MySpace, but over there they have been shilling themselves silly for years and very few people complain. In fact, getting discovered on MySpace is a mark of accomplishment. What is the Social Net to do about Posties appearing on Facebook? Be wary, as they have always been. Accepting information at face value always leads to trouble. As long as the people using this application disclose, disclose, disclose, I see no problem with them leveraging their social network in any way that they wish.

Web 2.0 Roundup

As such, I respectfully disagree with Rex Hammock’s point that adding a Facebook application immediately makes you worthy of a ban. If he is speaking strictly of his distaste of advertorials polluting his feed, then more power to him. If his comments are instead a slight against the very idea of Facebook application (which I don’t believe they are), then I would ask him to look at it from a wider perspective.

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