A page-one article in this Sunday’s Boston Globe (6/26) should be of interest to anyone tracking the impact of blogs on the image and reputation of businesses and products. This story looks at how bloggers are being paid to post comments in support of products — the article leads off with a post by a blogger who shares his positive opinions about an online florist, Dot Flowers. Fact is, this blogger never purchased anything from Dot Flowers — instead, he was paid by online marketer USWeb to post the comments on his website, according to the Globe.

I’m not sure how others feel, but I find this is a bit disturbing — raising questions about what we see in blogs and other online forums. We may think we’re reading true consumer-generated media — in fact, we may be reading the paid-for posting of personal marketeers. If the postings are clearly identified as paid-for, I have no problem; but if this isn’t obvious, these bloggers seem to cloud the true meaning of consumer-generated media.

The article goes on to look at the impact of blogs, including the emergence of corporate blogs, the explosion of the blog audience and the growth of bloggers as opinion influencers.

This is all positive, but the unclear use of this medium as paid-for forum is a concern for me.