Shark-jumping, corporate shilling or innocent mistake? BoingBoing’s recent decision to accept in-post ads for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile drew huge amounts of fire from the readership. To be expected, perhaps. What wasn’t expected was the way in which BoingBoing’s staff handled the ensuing conflagration in the comments.
BoingBoing is famous for its anti-corporate, anti-big brother bent. Cory rips on DRM, Xeni rips on the status quo throughout the world, and the blog in general takes swipes at all sorts of imbalances and power struggle situations where the people are losing to the bully. So, is it any wonder that BoingBoing’s readership goes absolutely mad when Frauenfelder begins running posts with an embedded MS logo?
BB, we expected the giant editorial screw-up which allowed Microsoft to sneak its way into the body of a post. Really, we did; it’s been a long slippery slide and this is finally the bottom. What wasn’t expected, and what rocked the trust you worked so hard to build amongst your readership is the blatant silencing of the community when it loudly complained. Deleting comments (since restored) and allowing your “community director” to attack the readership is so very contrary to the perceived face of BoingBoing as to be antithetical. I’m not even sure what to make of this slip, so I’ll assume it was a lack of communication between the editorial directors and the community manager. I can only hope that open loop has been corrected as a result of this, and that there will never be a situation again where BoingBoing feels it necessary to silence members of its own readership in an effort to actuate spin control. It’s childish, misguided and, in the end, it’s totally ineffective; I’d have thought that would be well understood by now.
I think I can illustrate the point at which BoingBoing crossed the line, and it brings up something I truly appreciate about working for Weblogs, Inc. BoingBoing’s biggest mistake isn’t accepting advertising from Microsoft, it’s blurring the line between editorial and ad sales; something we absolutely never do at Weblogs. Inserting an ad inside a post takes the visible side of the separation away, and having Frauenfelder (ostensibly) carry a provided Windows Mobile device to use for producing mobile posts takes away the separation between the content and the advertisement.
Breaking down this invisible wall between content and advertising is the most important thing you should never do in blogging. At the first point which you allow the slightest consideration to be paid by the editorial side to the needs/wants or desires of the advertising side, you’ve lost. It’s like a cancer, a disease which is difficult to stop and which you can never be sure isn’t plotting its grand return. Once that editorial firewall is breeched, you can never, ever go back to the way you were before.
I’ll still read you BoingBoing, but I’ll never look at you the same way again.
