However, it’s not like I could (or would even want to) pay Twitter users so that I could follow them without seeing Magpie ads from their account. It’s a conversation, not one-way communication, and paid ads have no place in a conversation.

I could (and have been) go on about Magpie all day, but I did manage to put most of my thoughts on Magpie into a post, so if you want to check it out: http://thefutureofads.com/2008/11/03/magpie-tries-to-make-twitter-an-ad-network-fails/

My friend didn’t get her blog off the ground but if she had I would have told her to avoid those sites. I don’t see this as being any different. It is all about your potential. And either with Magpie or the directories, I don’t see anything good happening either way. Other than lots of garbage you don’t want or associations you didn’t ask for.

I am glad you stuck with your guns. Sorry for the long winded post,
Thomas Garza

Thanks for the comments!

I kept away from the reputation aspect because I’d already managed to offend a number of friends by unfollowing them when they started using magpie – adding the ‘and your reputation will suffer’ seemed to be heaping coals. Honestly, it is a matter of reputation.

As someone pointed out to me if you invite me over to your home for dinner, I don’t want to get surprised by a tupperware party.

Now, you also get paid to put featured promos in your podcasts, but half the time you perform them yourself and they’re hilarious. They add entertainment to my life even if I’m not sufficiently interested in the product to check out the link. For example, I don’t drink alcohol so I have no need to listen to the ScotchCast, but I love hearing the promo and I would definitely try them if I did imbibe. I also like to think that if you thought a potential sponsor was bad news or was antithetical to your values or your vision for your podcast, you wouldn’t accept their business. Because indeed, you are putting your reputation on the line when you endorse the content of others.

Then there’s the question of what happens after someone actually clicks on a Magpie link and maybe adopts the service or buys the product. They’re still going to see that link every X number of tweets, but they’re already converted. For example, J. C. Hutchins’ MINE links only became really annoying for me after I had already subscribed to the blog in my feed-reader. I’d accepted the pitch, I was already enjoying the content in my preferred setting, but the promotion continued; and rapid-fire, given the rate at which MINE posts appeared. If he hadn’t posted about it at all, I probably wouldn’t have found it; but what do you do when you’ve reached a critical number of your audience, and how do you know when you’ve reached that point?

It’s one thing to get paid to promote something you would have endorsed for free. Heidi Miller was talking up Oprius long before she became an affiliate. The hosts of Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Podcastle give personalized recommendations in their Audible sponsorship spots. I’m not saying that the companies using Magpie to promote their products and content wouldn’t have good products or content. But with Magpie, you would be allowing someone else to take advantage of your reputation to promote something that you may have no experience with. The personalized nature of Twitter, podcasting, and social media in general is what I like about the whole thing, and I think Magpie does not reflect that at best and actively sabotages it at worst.