SocialSpark Business Review (video)

SocialSpark CEO Ted Murphy provided a business update yesterday regarding his paid blogging program. I’ve embedded the presentation below. At the basic level, SocialSpark (formerly PayPerPost) allows advertisers to get bloggers to write about their product or service. Murphy says the product is about connecting advertisers with people who create content online. They represent 18,000 advertisers and 190,000 bloggers (they call them posties).

Murphy explains that the core benefits of SocialSpark are: brand awareness, word of mouth, traffic generation, social media optimization, and content creation. The admin panel they built is actually quite impressive.

I have a variety of concerns with SocialSpark and paid reviews in general. Here’s just one concern. there’s no requirement for the review to be positive but let’s be honest here. If you write 2-3 negative reviews, what company is going to want to send you their gadget? Zip.

As I’ve written about numerious times before, I’d love to see a blog advertorial network. No reviews, just advertorials. As more blogs move to RSS, I believe we will see more advertorials popping up.