WebProNews

Is There An Innate Virtual Morality?

Read this essay by Andrew Tuplin about morality in virtual worlds and try to keep your brain from tying itself in knots. New technology brings up (surprisingly) an age-old question: Is fantasizing, or playing out an immoral scenario, the same as (or as bad as) actually doing it?

One Fifth Of Marketers Buy Advertising For News Coverage

One in five senior American marketers polled said they had bought advertising in return for a news story about their company or product, according to a survey sponsored by PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee. The Marketing Management Survey, conducted annually in May, polled 252 chief marketing officers, VPs of marketing, marketing directors and managers about digital media and marketing ethics.

Sex, Lies, And Wikipedia

Before we get into this (and this is a guiltily delicious journey you may or may not decide to take), please consider what level of perfection you expect your Web icons—even the ones who refer to themselves as "spiritual leader"—to be on. While you're doing that, pretend he's not a Web icon, and decide what is forgivable in a regular (mortal) man.

Social Media Can Lead To Better Companies

With every new development in social media, communications departments are faced with new challenges. If the end goal is to control the message – and that is the boiled-down purpose of communications departments – then the expansion and adoption of social media is a direct obstacle to that goal.

BlogWorld Expo - Blogging Ethics

Amy Gahran ran her panel at the Blog World Expo on Ethics - with a cool group of people, including friends Lynne Johnson of Fast Company and Toby Bloomberg.

FM 'Spokesbloggers' Called Out

I've said it before: Sell out first. That way they expect it from you. Another blogstorm erupted last weekend over Federated Media's involvement with Microsoft's new "conversational marketing" idea.

Bloggers Criticized for Microsoft "Spokesblogging" Ads

If you’re reading this post on Monday morning, boy did you miss a flare-up over the weekend. I don’t even know where to begin!

The Google Kool Aid

Tamar linked to an interesting WebmasterWorld thread, Todays Webmaster & Their Relationship with Google, this week. The original poster makes some good points about how we’ve fallen under Google’s spell, spend too much of our energy focused on Google, think that Google’s guidelines are what define ethical seo, and give Google access to more data than we should.

CNET Analyzing Ethics or Attacking Rivals?

I’d like to hear your thoughts on CNET’s look at whether journalists are starting to break the informal code that prevents conflicts of interest. Their expose of well known MarketWatch journalist, Bambi Francisco, reads as more of an attempt to undermine a rival publication, than a serious look at whether traditional journalists should avoid getting involved with companies they write about.

Google and Ethics

I have been consulting on internet marketing for over a decade. In my career I have seen many unethical things, from Fortune 500 companies performing many questionable actions, to observing sales agents selling on a fundamentally wrong foundation.