Just as PayPerPost has revised its business practices by requiring its bloggers to disclose the fact that they’re getting sponsorship money, another enterprise has unleashed a service that will make it drop-dead easy for anybody to start pitching bloggers without any such constraints.
Umbria Inc., which describes itself as “a market intelligence company that specializes in blog research and consumer generated media (CGM) for market insight,” has launched Umbria Connect. Customers will be able to get URLs of blogs that talk about themes or topics that match their line of business. Umbria Connect will sell the URLs in batches of 25.
I can just imagine companies utterly clueless about blogs-and mercenary organizations that just don’t give a damn about blogging etiquette-jumping all over this offer, grabbing up URLs and sending out bazillions of terrible pitches without ever reading the blogs whose URLs they’ve bought. (This could be a real boon to The Bad Pitch Blog.)
Umbria sees it differently, of course, as “a way to connect people who care deeply about specific topics,” according to Janet Eden-Harris, CEO, Umbria Inc. And there probably will be companies that use the service to this end. But the easier it is to snag a URL, the easier it is for companies that aren’t interested in conversation to solicit bloggers for digital ink. (Don’t think so? Look what happened when these same kinds of companies were able to get their hands on email addresses.) I expect to start getting pitches for mortgages, Viagra, and poker parlors any day now.
Pricing wasn’t covered in the press release; maybe it will be high enough to discourage the worst offenders out there.
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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
