Used & Abused

Bloggers beware – this is only the beginning.

Mulley has written about bloggers’ ire over being ‘duped‘ into a Fianna Fáil event last night, under the guise of a talk by Obama web guru, Joe Rospars, and between his post and the Slugger round-up, there’s no need to go linking to every angry blogger again here.

The jist is that Fianna Fail sent out two invites – one to party stalwarts which described the launch very much as a Fianna Fail affair, and one to bloggers which failed to mention FF at all, and merely dangled the social media carrot of Joe Rospars. Hook them, and they will come.

And come they did, in their droves. And lo, they were angry when they realised they were going to sit through a party political broadcast. But still, they blogged about Fianna Fail and their link to Rospars’ company, blogged furiously, but as anyone knows, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And one thing you can rely on bloggers to do is write – lots. Happy or sad they will churn out text. It would take a Hiroshima-like event to shut us bloggers up. Bad or good, FF got their online column inches from a PR FAIL – so was it really a PR FAIL?

Just a week ago I warned bloggers to beware that they were setting themselves up to be used and abused by PR types. I was speaking about the Bord Gais launch model, and was assured in my comments that this wasn’t the case – bloggers were in control of the situation, and would not have their time wasted. They went because they were curious.

Well, folks, curiosity killed the cat.  This should be a stark warning to bloggers – PR people now see you as fish in a barrel, and they all have guns.

(An aside – the Irish Times picked up on the ‘What’s in it for us’ post – and credited it to some meaty-sounding blogger called Mark Ham Nolan. Is Google blocked in the ivory tower, Siobhan? Danger is MY middle name.)

EDIT: Hello folks in FF HQ, thanks for reading. I have a feeling you’re about to get what’s been coming to you for a long time very soon indeed.