Forbes to Cryptogon: “We Think Your Blog Would be a Great Fit for Our Network”
April 6th, 2008I received an email from someone at Forbes inviting me to add Cryptogon to, “The new community of the high quality business and financial bloggers from Forbes.com.”
A press release was attached, part of which is below:
FORBES.COM TO LAUNCH
BUSINESS AND FINANCE BLOG NETWORKNicholas Ricci Tapped as General Manager, Sales for the
Blog Network & Forbes Audience NetworkNEW YORK, NY (March 24, 2008) – Today Forbes.com, home page for the world’s business leaders, announced the creation of a Business and Finance Blog Network, comprised of a community of pre-screened, influential business and financial blogs.
The Blog Network’s content will focus on senior business decision makers and high-net-worth investors. Topics will be relevant to the banking, trading, hedge fund management, affluent investing, and senior business decision-making communities. Participation in the network is by invitation only, and all blogs are vetted by Forbes.com editors for appropriate content, and to ensure that they are in keeping with the Forbes editorial brand.
The network will allow advertisers to target a highly engaged, exclusive niche audience of senior business decision makers and affluent investors easily and effectively. Four hundred-plus blogs have already joined the network, with many more expected to sign on before the official launch in the next few weeks.
“There is no denying the growing importance and influence of blogs within the media landscape,” said Forbes.com President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Spanfeller. “Forbes.com can ensure advertisers are reaching a hard-to-find and very desirable audience within safe, well-lit environments by exclusively inviting ‘best of breed’ business and investing bloggers to our new Business and Finance Blog Network.”
Safe, well-lit environments??? Does this mean that I would have to bathe more frequently?
No thanks.
Besides, displaying a Forbes badge of honor would tarnish my reputation as a source of worthless tinfoil, which I covet. After all, certain appearances need to be maintained.
Ohh Cmon Man. Be on their network. It would be a hoot. With the imprimatur of their name you could be spreading the truth (or something like it) to their readers. How great would that be. I wouldn’t worry how much damage they would do to you but how much damage you could do to them. And who knows you may get a couple of supporters also. That couldn’t hurt.
There’s an eight page contract, the terms of which are ridiculous. They think that bloggers are so desperate for a mainstream audience that we would be willing to deface our sites with Forbes advertising. (Oh, I’m sure some bloggers will display that Forbes badge of honor proudly.) Forbes is trying to grab the advertising space to make money off the audiences that the bloggers have established. (Our cut is 40%, not including weasel fees they specify). If they were just interested in building a kick ass aggregation site, they could simply syndicate the content they liked and link back to the original—as it has always been on the intertubes.
But no.
They want bloggers to display Forbes banners in return for them syndicating our stuff…
No way.
Someone submitted my Wall Street Chop shop piece to Reddit and I received 18,000 unique visits in a 24 hour period as the story went to the Reddit’s front page.
Forbes can kiss it.
I got the same email, lmao!
While I agree that this would be fun/funny the terms you’re suggesting are all too vivid in my memory of proposed publishing contracts. Fuck ’em.
Yep, fuck them! You don’t need em. You got us 🙂 We don’t ask for nothing? We just want you to keep doing what you are doing.
“Forbes? Kev don’t need no stinkin’ Forbes!”
http://freeworldsurvey.blogspot.com/2007/09/forbes-richest-fraud.html
You’re absolutely right, Kevin. And you can’t change the System by working within the System….
Forbes.com needs bloggers more than bloggers need Forbes.com, because blogs are part of the growing new paradigm, while print media is part of the dying old paradigm. You see the same forces at work in how Wal-Mart and Target need “organic” food, and how the building industry needs the “green” movement. While they can’t actually embrace responsible values, they can certainly acquire and pervert them.
I mean let’s face it…who was laying out a roadmap showing precisely how our socio-economy would unfold these past few years? Was it Forbes, or Cryptogon.com?
Forbes readers – like all who look to the major media outlets for a clue about our situation – consist of people too caught-up trying to go with the flow to actually see the waterfall in front of them.
Phfft.
Savinar and Kevin,
Sounds like you were just approached by either the CIA or the Illumanati.
Blog for us!
Good gawd, is there any way you can perform an exorcism and/or cleansing rite to wipe that trail of perdition away, away, away, away from your email accounts?
I learned somewhere in my 30’s (and that was 20 years ago) in a political science class the Federal Reserve is not a branch of the US govmint. Ron Paul knows this. Why doesn’t anyone else? WTF? Forbes, hah, now they are REALLY progressive. SNARK.
Bankers taking over the nation again, and again and again. There used to be Glass Steagul. I hope Hilary holds her experience as the wife behind the throne up to the light in claiming that she supported her husband in breaking down the law that separated investment banks from, well, banks.What a pitiful inheritance.