All the controversies you mention above signal marketers walking into murky waters, triggering anger from audiences that don’t want to be lied to.

The paid post controversies really show the immaturity of social media. I took Chris Brogan to task in a recent BusinessWeek column over his 2008 $500 Kmart gift card blog promotion — and wrote, hey if we sell out written opinions, why don’t we insert paid brand mentions into oral opinions as well? Imagine being in a business meeting and someone saying, “you know, I really think we should benchmark Kmart’s customer service. And if you tell someone else too, I’ll give you a $500 gift card!” The problem isn’t disclosure, but elevation of topics to places they don’t belong and the bending of opinions that diminishes the originator’s voice.

Despite the questionable ROI on such attempts the trend is unstoppable, of course. Every new network gets polluted by people trying to game the system. Telephones had telemarketing; email has spam; systems tend to self correct eventually with Do Not Call lists or spam email filters, and eventually some software will help us weed out fake shilling in online networks.

It’s worth noting Google has voted all this down. Google requires bloggers who accept compensation for reviews to insert a no-follow tag, stripping the blog of any impact on the brand’s organic search rankings. Google has threatened to remove the page rank of any bloggers who don’t comply.

Interesting, isn’t it, that the biggest search engine in the world considers paid posts such garbage that they need to be ignored, as invalid entries in the knowledgebase of humankind.

Similar to Ed, I write music reviews (I’ve also written many book and art reviews), and I often receive CDs I’ve not agreed to review from particular labels – labels whose music I often happen to enjoy. I’ve long made it a policy that I feel no obligation to review unsolicited material – and that if I do review the CD, I’ll give it an honest review even if I don’t like. I have the luxury of selecting many of the CDs I write reviews for, for the magazine I write for, so I generally try to avoid reviewing music I know in advance I’m not going to like.

Back when I reviewed books, I picked up the books I was going to review for free from a large bookstore chain, whose initials begin with B&N. I had to return these books when I was done with them, but that chain nonetheless got a blurb with each review, which said some like, “Book provided by You-Know-Who.” Once, the manager of that particular bookstore asked me to review a book she wished to promote. I reluctantly agreed and proceeded to review – candidly – the worst book I have ever reviewed. When I returned to the store the next time to pick up a new book and to return the old, the manager proceeded to follow me around the store, loudly berating for giving the book a bad review, saying that they gave me all these books and the one time she asked me to review something I could have at least written a nice review. I told her I agreed to write a book review, not a press release. She replied that the author was coming to the store for a signing and she’d told her a review was being written. Awkward, huh? Yep, but I still think she shouldn’t have asked me to review the book if she didn’t want an honest review.

I solicit a book every week or so–about 6 books a month. I usually get around 15 to 20 books a month, most, obviously, unsolicited. I always review the solicited books, but feel no compulsion to review unsolicited materials. I also try to not write wholly negative reviews. If I have no time to review a book (because I have too many to read, plus a life to live, a job to work, etc.), but the book looks interesting, I’ll read a bit to get a sense of the style, and simply blurb it, admitting I haven’t read all of it yet.

Sometimes, I get stuff that’s pure awful, usually from vanity presses–self-help books and stuff. The weirdest thing is that the PR stuff from these places is the pushiest, vainest, most delusional crap. Major publishing houses are far more restrained–an old industry that shouldn’t have to rely on viral campaigns or gimmicks I suppose.

Incidentally, I did recently get a book from a small indie publisher out of Philadelphia, a zombie themed deal. The publisher is trying to create a kind of viral buzz about the book, but it will ultimately fizzle–because the book is awful.

As soon as a blog starts to garner serious traffic or media attention, I’m assuming the author starts to receive gently solicitous communication from promotional staff within that specialist area. PR people send packages, invitations arrive on the doorstep etc. Just as other media have whole industries dedicated to influencing their content for commercial advantage, so does the web.

I’d be interested to hear from a blogger or online journalist about this – where do they draw the line?