Yesterday I’ve learned of BlogDash, a system which provides you with “the tools to find the bloggers who will actually care about your story, company, product” as well as with “all the information … to make a personalized and educated pitch”.

BlogDash was actually announced by David Spinks (one of the company’s Co-Founders) at BlogWorld in October 2010 [more here] and it is now functioning in alpha. As it is clear from their own above-quoted description, the basic idea behind the service is to help businesses find the right bloggers to work with. “Perfect for affiliate recruitment!” — was my first thought.

So, I reached out to David, he has set up me up with an account, and after playing with the tool for some time, I’d like to give you a quick snapshot of it in my today’s post.

At the time of this writing, BlogDash is profiling 27,918 bloggers.

Without narrowing things down by category I’ve set my filters to show me blogs with Google PageRank of 5 or higher, and a Klout score of 50 or higher. One of the 132 bloggers BlogDash has found was that of Chris Brogan, and I thought you may find it interesting if we use his profile as an example, as we see how a typical blogger profile looks at BlogDash (highlighting mine; showing only a part of all information displayed):

As marked above, in each profile you will see:

• Data on blog’s focus, target audience and type of content
• Blogger’s receptiveness to “gifts/products for review”, paid posts, “sponsored giveaways”, and guest posts on other business’ sites
• …and we also see a counter of how many invitations we can send out

The first two of the above three bullet points are actually extremely useful for affiliate program managers looking to recruit thematic bloggers. Also, since the goal of every affiliate recruitment campaign is to find online partners to market your product/service, I can certainly see how BlogDash can be used effectively outside of affiliate recruitment too.

The tool also allows you to put information on tweets, posts and comments, and more. The video on this page is helpful to get a basic feel of it. Off to play with it some more…

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.
– Orson Welles

Blogs, forums and other websites that allow room for such elements of online social interaction as customer reviews are still a great way to promote merchants through affiliate programs. One thing to keep in mind though is the fact that faking reviews is not only unethical, but it is now also being prosecuted by attorneys general.

Earlier this week The State of New York fined a cosmetic surgery company $300,000 for fabricated reviews. The New York Times wrote:

The company had ordered employees to pretend they were satisfied customers and write glowing reviews of its face-lift procedure on Web sites, according to the attorney general’s statement. Lifestyle Lift also created its own sites of face-lift reviews to appear as independent sources.

One e-mail message, discovered by the attorney general’s office, told employees to “devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client.”

I think this is a good precedent. Both affiliates, and merchants have something to learn from it. The Internet is giving us not only a larger reach, but also a responsibility. It is good to see things becoming more transparent, and hence authentic.

In continuation of my earlier posted thoughts on the effectiveness of blog reviews, it seems appropriate to now turn to the Federal Trade Commission’s plans to monitor blogs for paid/biased reviews.

On Sunday, the Associated Press wrote that blogging, which continues blooming, “has taken on characteristics of community journalism — but without consensus on the types of ethical practices typically found in traditional media”. Journalists who work for newspaper and broadcasting companies “are held accountable by their employers, and they generally cannot receive payments from marketers and must return free products after they finish reviewing them”. Up until now the blogosphere has not been regulated by any such rules. FTC is about to change this, and the new regulation may come into force by the end of Summer 2009.

CNET News commented that for the first time ever, FTC will seek to enforce guidelines that would “ban deceptive or unfair business practices”. CNET continues:

The rules could be quite strict, even extending to the practice of affiliate links — for example, a music blogger who links to a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes that earns an affiliate commission in the process.

Izea.com’s sponsored conversations are brought up as an example of a website that offers its contributors incentives — such as “free trips, products, gift certificates, or outright payments” — for coverage (see Ted Murphy’s reply here).

We are once again back to two questions: (i) that of disclosure, and (ii) that of authenticity. The question of disclosure was touched upon in earlier discussions about dropping affiliate links on Twitter (see “Damn Marketers. Affiliate Links in Twitter” post by Scott Jangro, and Shawn Collins’ “Affiliate Link Disclosure Manifesto” post, and comments under both of them too). I blogged a bit about authenticity (and how it’s connected with trustworthiness) earlier today. While there will be a need for policing, it seems that the end users are already doing a great job deciding who to trust.

Is the disclosure necessary, and will it help? Richard Koman, a lawyer and technology writer for ZDNet.com, believes it is and it will. He writes that, in reality, “the solution is simple enough: ‘If you buy this book through my site, Amazon pays me a few cents.’”

I do not view this FTC’s move as a potential cause of any major trouble for decent affiliates. There is nothing to be unhappy about. After all, the aim is “to crack down on false claims from bloggers” (italics mine). The subjects of (a) how exactly to word the guidelines, and (b) how to implement the effective policing do leave room for discussions, but overall, the FTC’s concerns are proper and this is a good move.

Other interesting discussions and articles on the subject may be found below:

• FTC Going After Bloggers = Epic Fail (SEOBook.com)
• FTC Is Ready to Pounce on Dishonest Bloggers (PC Magazine)
• Are Paid Bloggers Guilty of Ad Fraud? (ibid)
• FTC Eyes Blogs for Conflicts of Interest (PC World)
• FTC to go after product reviews bloggers who accept freebies (ZDNet)
• Adding an Amazon or Apple Affiliate Link to Your Blog? The Feds Want to Know (All Things Digital)