Discourse.net

Okay but here's a question: Do you know the blogger, or have a reason to believe the person is being truthful? Because I've seen some pretty sneaky online "opinion shaping" efforts by corporations lately, and I'm a horribly cynical person.

Dang. I have to work on being more cynical?

Scary to contemplate, isn't it? Necessary though, if you don't want to become an accidental corporate shill.

I think it's a real blog. And from reading back items I'm going to guess this wasn't paid media.

Fair enough. Cf: http://crookedtimber.org/2007/10/17/blogging-scholarships-and-googlebait/

It doesn't have any traits of paid media.

The blog isn't running Adsense or other advertising for profit, it's somewhat established going back to April 2005 and the story isn't really related to the blogs content so hardly likely to be "Link Bait" because the entry wouldn't bring much targetted traffic.

Seems legit to me,

Carly,

Carly, I don't have particular reason to be suspicious about Zappos; it may indeed be legit. But, the best stealth marketing campaigns look just like that. Also, I've been approached about making product recommendations in exchange for free product. And, as I already mentioned, I'm really really cynical.