Scoble has balls

February 3, 2007 — 17 Comments

sharksRobert Scoble announces that he’s become a paid shill for PayPerPost. Credit where it’s due, Scoble has balls…and a whole pile of guts in between. His reasoning is that they’re paying, it’s capitalism at work and he does this sort of thing, which is fair enough, but talk about putting the cat amongst the pigeons, a baby into a tank of sharks or Steve Irwin into a school of stingrays. Even some of his best mates have come out against him, notable so far his co-author Shel Israel, who writes this in the comments:

“I am personally dosappointed [sic] that you have chosen to do this. To me Pay for Post represents everything that the book you and I wrote opposes. I wish you would change your mind. This will not help your reputation…One more thought, Robert. You taught me the standards for blogging that I adhere to. It is what you taught me that makes me so passionately oppose Pay per Post, who have shown themselves to be the sidewalk hookers of the blogosphere. Robert, I really hope you cancel. In the long run, you will be doing PodTech a service”.

No doubt that others will have more to say about this in the coming days, particularly given the recent Pogrom against the service by the likes of Jason Calacanis, Jeff Jarvis and others.

For Australians, to the tune of the famous XXXX commercial:

“I can feel a lynching, coming on….I can feel a lynching, coming on. They’ve got the taste for it, love to hate for it, I can feel a lynching, coming on.”

Good luck Scoble, you’re going to need it.

Update: looks like I’m on the banned list on Scoble’s blog, because despite other people linking to the story via this post, I’m not in his trackback list, and yet they are (and WP confirms the trackback was automatically sent) (magically just appeared). Some interesting comments though, Scoble, if you thought the last two weeks were bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Mujibur:
this just further confirms what many of us have been saying for a long time. Robert is simply a paid mouthpiece. This isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t about conversation, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s about the almighty buck

I’d say to Mujibur, Scoble is entitled to whore his presence, and let no other whores cast the first stone. I have a price as well…indeed I’m far, far more cheap and hence I’ve got no intention of throwing stones, however this is an interesting move by Scoble as noted above, in light of the pogrom against PayPerPost…and I’d note to others the use of this word, progrom…look it up 🙂

Disclaimer: I have an account with PayPerPost which I’ve never used, signed up when the service first started so I could take a look. I’m not against PayPerPost as a model, it’s not my cup of tea but I’m not everyone. My previous thoughts on PayPerPost can be found here.

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