Jim said: I think Balter called for transparency at Ad:Tech because he knows that without it, marketers will destroy the very thing they are trying to harness. While that rings perfectly true and thus passes Occam's razor without it even being a close shave, my personal razor is a tad warped. I think they'd rather kick up a storm about this transparancy issue and look like they're doing something good than to answer questions about using kids to market to other kids, which their membersmight be doing - who knows? We don't know who the members are as the WOMMA do not disclose who has joined them. That potato is too hot for them to handle, so they picked another one instead, one that people clearly would be talking about as it is of interest. What I find to be the wierdest thing here in all this is that we are having untransparent debate about transparency.

Then again, I might be mad. Y'all know me, what do you think, is it time for the loonybin, or to become a CEO of a marketing company?

Good Q Caff!
I'm one of those people who shows off neat stuff I've bought If I happen to love whatever widget it is - to friends who have similar interests. God forbid the future where happy sharing becomes "spamified speech" and raises peoples suspicion.

Not to derail this thread but I've just spotted this post where Nick Denton calls for an ethical guidelines group to keep weblogs in check, a very timely idea. He suggests that Jason Calacanis (who revealed the FARK paid links) , with Jeff Jarvis should head it up with one other person.
I just hope that the third they suggest is not from the US, it seems rather narrowminded to have only US people try to outline rules for a worldwide problem. But maybe that's just me.

bingo.