Word-of-mouth marketing can take any form of peer-to-peer communication, such as a post on a Web log, a myspace.com page for a movie character, or the comments of a stranger on a bus. As the practice has taken hold over the past several years, however, some advocacy groups have questioned whether marketers are using such tactics to dupe consumers into believing they are getting unbiased information.

FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing – washingtonpost.com

The way I feel is if you are being paid to market something people should know about it. This should be public information. This sort of marketing can be “Armstrong Williamsitized” very quickly. Personally, when I like a product or service (like the Flock browser; message to the Flock team: please create an update feeds now button for the newsreader! I’d rather be in full control and not have it auto update), I am really happy to tell other people about it. Yet, if I were getting paid to talk about a product or service, but then I try to pass myself off as an average consumer, then I’m cheapening the experience of human interaction.

As a social being (I need to get more social in some ways LOL) I love recommending books I’ve read and products I’ve used because I like them. I want people to enjoy them as well. If I’m getting paid to sell you something and you don’t know that, then it’s not fair. Corporations should not be looking to pay people either. They should identify a community of supporters and work with them to see the product or service build up a base. I’ve seen this done the right way with Mozilla Firefox and now Flock.

I’ve seen Adam Curry market things the correct way as well. He does get paid for advertising Senseo and Splenda but he does it in such a cool way. Then there are times when he’ll just talk up something because he likes it, like his bio-diesel car that he had.