Pay Per Post Prejudice Pointedly Pokes PodTech’s Scoble

Robert Scoble is a fine fellow, as almost every blogger knows.  Perhaps it is partly for this reason he’s under an unreasonable attack by many bloggers for accepting an invite to Keynote the upcoming Pay Per Post Conference in Florida.    I’m not a fan of the Pay Per Post concept because it’s probably going to create too much abuse, but it should be discussed and debated rather than thrown out without discussion as many prominent bloggers, many of whom *make a lot of money blogging* want to do.

I  commented over at Scobleizer:

Wow, I’m really disappointed in how hostile people are to you about giving a simple keynote. If Bill Gates keynotes CES does it mean he supports all the violence in GTA and Resident Evil? Of course not.

I’m not currently a PPP enthusiast and don’t plan to blog for them, and perhaps Shel’s even right to call this approach the sidewalk hookers of the blogosphere (clever and catchy!).   However if disclosures are prominent and clear PPP people can note that they are doing a similar sort of thing that a *paid* journalist does when they review gadgets or movies or Techcrunch does when they review companies.

I smell a lot of hypocrisy here. Prominent folks who are directly paid very big money to blog in various forms are insisting that stay at home moms can’t pick up a few bucks for reviewing something. And if Shel is right those evil hookers, blogging between tricks, will be denied the money that could get them off the street!

The critics worry about credibility and that’s good, but it’s hypocritical to get paid indirectly by blogging (e.g. TechCrunch, Engaget, O’Reilly, Battelle, Shel, etc, etc, etc) and then suggest without more elaboration that other payment routines are inherently flawed and dishonest. Are you just protecting your turf?