Whenever we have a difficult issue to debate at Weblogs, Inc. we like to think about what the various experts would do. When we debate ecommerce we ask “What would Jeff Bezos do?”, when we debate publishing we ask “What would Graydon Carter/Jann Wenner do?” and when we discuss marketing we ask “What would Seth Godin do?”

Now, we don’t just say “What would Seth Godin think of this?” we ask what would Seth Godin *DO* in this situation. That is key to the exercise.

Recently I took BzzAgents, a Word of Mouth marketing company, to task because they were telling their “agents” to lie to consumers. BzzAgents hires people to promote their clients products, and in their field manual they said the following:

Be conscious of who you tell about BzzAgent! To tell or not to tell? Should BzzAgents reveal their identities? That’s a question for you to decide carefully when you’re sharing the Bzz with someone. Some people might think it’s cool. Other people might not understand. The choice is yours. Decide what’s best for each conversation.

In other words, they are telling folks that it is not a good idea to be transparent, and that consumers should be deceived. The recently admitted that this was wrong, and changed their policy to:

Be Open: BzzAgents should be entirely open about their identity. As long as you’re sharing your honest opinion, being candid about your involvement with BzzAgent actually helps create better Bzz. If you like a product or service, it doesn’t matter where you found out about it, so don’t feel as though you need to be anonymous or stealthy. Just be open and honest and let your opinion count.

Again, BzzAgents falls short of giving a clear mandate to be honest.

I asked myself “If Seth Godin was running this companywhich I doubt he wouldwhat would he set as the mandate?” After imagining myself with the eventual shinny bald head I’m sure I’ll have (sorry Seth, couldn’t resist!), I channelled the brand-master himself. here is what Seth said to me in my vision:

“Do not, under any circumstances, deceive the public. The pubic is smart, and should be respected. If we deceive our consumers they will eventually find out, and when they do we will harm our brand much more then we would have helped it. Additionally, why are we wasting our time trying to create buzz? Why don’t we put our energy into making a better product? If we do the public will notice they are not stupid, they recognize excellence. Let’s just be excellent!”

Trying to force word of mouth is like trying to force someone into loving you it doesn’t work. As much as I love to analyze business and marketing, I’m smart enough to know that buzz is the smoke from a burning hot product. Building a fire is hard work, no doubt, but it’s a lot better then blowing smoke.

So, I’m driving in a car in Shanghai and I look out the window and see

Is Alexa broken? I’ve noticed that all the major blogs had their ranking cut in half over the past week or two. It’s as if 5-20,000 sites were removed from the Alexa index.

Our blogs have been growing, but looking at Kotaku’s traffic log and our traffic logs it is clear that neither site grew to the point at which they would have a 10-40,000 boost.

Perhaps Alexa took out the Asian blogs that were quickly filling up the top of the index? The 100M+ Chinese users online now don’t have too many sites to look at. As a result they have pushed thousands of Chinese sites into the top of the Alexa rankings over the past year. Maybe Alexa is making another index for them? I’ve also heard that a lot of people in Asia use the Alexa toolbar, and that the Alexa data has become meaningless because of this.

Can someone from Alexa add some transparency to the index as it is really confusing people!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone from China! In honor of Thanksgiving Day I give you Dim Sum!!! China is amazing, I’ve got a bunch of updates on my trip that I’ll post shortly, but for now I’m off to discover Shanghai (and eat more!).

Even in China they are talking about the ugly fight in the NBA last night. It’s all over the TV here.

For those of you who missed it, Ron Artest of the Pacers has been a ticking time bomb for the past three years. Last night he went postalrunning into the stands after fans who threw a drink on him after he and Ben Wallace got in a fight on the court. The Pistons fans were disgraceful, I’m sure some will be getting visits from the police today.

Now, fans have been getting more and more out of control at games. I’ve heckled players at the Gardenin fact we were yelling at Vince Carter so much one nightthat he didn’t have gameso much he started laughing and shaking his head. Getting into it with the players is part of the fun. However, I can’t imagine what a person thinks when they throw a 24 ounce soda at a guys facethat is insane!

UPDATE: I just watch another video.. some of these fans were thowing bottles according to ESPN. After Artest went into the stands The Pacers were in some real danger.

Of course, even fans with this level of stupidity shouldn’t be attacked. Watching Artest and Jermaine O’Neal punch NBA “fans” in the face was the most disturbing things I’ve seen in professional sports.

The NBA suspended Sprewell for a year for choking his coach, so Artest and Jermain O’Neal are going to have to be suspended for the year there is no other option. They punched fans square in the face. O’Neal’s punch was a running punch that could have killed someone. It’s not like these are regular guysthese are 6′6″ to 7 foot guys who spend all year long in a weight room, and they are punching out 5′9″ fat guys! It was sad, and after seen the videos again scary as hell.

Fan behavior has got to be controlled a little bit better, and I there are players in the NBA that need to have some major character development training.

Sad, sad day for the NBA. Hard to be a fan of the NBA with guys like Artestas talented as he isacting like a thug and asking for a couple of months off to promote a rap CD.

I grew up watching Patrick, Oakley, Barkley, Karl and MJ. Those guys may have been going to strip clubs, gotten in bar fights and played poker the night before a playoff game, but they never beat up fans! They always carried themselves with a lot of class. Heck, Artest makes Rodman look like a saint!

Got to China yesterday and made my way to Shenzhen, one of the first Special Economic Zone’s in China. These zone were created in August of 1980 and were designed to be the first experiments in China for free trade and foreign investment.

I’m learning all about doing business here, and let’s just say it’s veryverycomplicated. There are no rules, it’s all based on relationships, and all kinds of interesting things can happen to your company as you grow it. Now, I thought I was a hard-core entrepreneur, but this is a totally different level of risk. Things can turn on a dime for a startup, and it really makes you appreciate the rules and regulations we have in the US. Our systems can be screwed up and complicated, what with all the lawsuits and red tape. However when you compare the snafus to the free-for-all, anything goes, model here in Chinacomplete with retro-active rulingsyou start to yearn for some regulation!

On day one I couldn’t sleep, a 15 hour flight will do that to you. So, I took a walk around a huge theme park here (see model on rightthat’s only half the place!) and had a “that was a first!” experience. As I walked through the amusement park I realized I was the only white person out of the 10,000+ people, mostly children, enjoying the sunny 85 degree day. At 33 years old I don’t get these strange moments too often, so it was a great feeling to be thrown so way off base.

As I walked in I kept seeing people look at me out of the corner of my eye. Then groups of kids at the part started yelling the two or three English phrases they knew. Imagine 30 kids yelling “Hello!!!! Hello!!!!” over and over again to you, and having hundreds of people in the theme part stop what they are doing to turn and look and point at you.

My first reaction was “did I sit in something” or is there a piece of toilet paper hanging off my shoes?! Then I realized that the folks at the theme park had been bussed in from the farm-land to the north of Shenzhenmany had never seen an American, or someone with blond hair and blue eyes, before!

I was stopped at least 30-40 times in two hours to take pictures. It was cute, five kids would surround me and all put up the peace sign and smile like they were taking a picture with Michael Jordon. Now, I can ball, but I’m no MJ.

Speaking of balls. when I sat down to eat something I asked the women what the balls floating in the soup were. She said that the first group were “fish balls.” I said great, and then asked her what the other balls were. She said “cow balls,” I said great.

Right as I started eating a group of 25 or so eight-year-old students surrounded my table and started testing out their English on me: “What is your name?!?! What is your name?!?! What is your name?!?!” they screamed in unison over and over again with a bit of melody. “My name is Jason, what is your name?” I responded. After a pause they started the song over again, “What is your name?!?! What is your name?!?! What is your name?!?!” Funny.

Their teacher came over to me and said “I’m English teacher them.” I responded and introduced myself, and she had no idea what I was saying. I realized she didn’t speak English either! I was told by some folks here that there is a strong mandate for everyone to learn English in Shenzhenas well as in the rest of Chinaand that people are looking for any opportunity to test it out. No kidding!

Now, the online growth is staggering here. There are hundreds of thousands of Internet cafes, and a hundred million folks online (which explains why American sites are getting pushed down on Alexa and Chinese sites are taking the top slots).

Unfortunately people don’t have credit cards here, or any way to pay you for goods online, so ecommerce is going to be a bust for the next five or ten years on a percentage of users basis. However, if you have 10% of a billion people online able to do ecommece that is a 100m customers, and that ain’t bad.

Online advertising also has a long way to go. Folks are doing deals on a sponsorship basis, and the advertisers don’t know about metrics or deal formats like CPM, CPA, CPC, etc. In other words, online advertising is like 1995 in the US. There are no advertising networks here either, so smaller companies have no way to get advertising.

Well, I’m off for some dim sum and then going to the computer market and a net cafe to check out the scene. The biggest opportunity I’ve seen so far is online gaming. Had some meetings with WeGame.com, which is run by a member of my extended family, and they are doing some amazing things with “e-sports.” You did know that China has named online gaming as the countries official 99th sport right?

Next up into the backrooms to check out software piracy, $20,000 worth of software for $15, and a 300 computer netcafe hidden in a dump of a building that you enter through a back alley!

I’m getting on a plane tonight for 10 days in China. Hong Kong, Shanghai, and a couple of other less known places. Really excited to see what all the buzz is about. When I was at Web20 and the Milken Conference China was all people could talk about. They threw out this insane stats about there being more crains in China then in the rest of the world, and China importing 40-60% of the world’s various raw materials. Of course, there is always that factoid that there isn’t enough copper to run phones lines for everyone in China, and that there is one phone for every 40 people. I’ll verify all those facts for you guys by the time I get back.

I’ll be online (free high-speed in all the hotels of course), so feel free to email with ideas and people to meet! I’m at “jason at calacanis dot com.”

NOTE: SOMEONE IS SENDING BLOG SPAM AS ME, IT IS NOT US AND WE ARE WORKING ON FINDING OUT WHO IS BEHIND THIS.

Nick Denton put up a pleasantly surprising post today, complimenting me for being a “volunteer watchdog” for blog ethics. He proposes Jeff Jarvis and I start a blog ethics committee in order to create some standards in blog advertising. It’s a great idea, a lot of work, and very important to the blogosphere.

If you’re blogging for money or notwe all have an interest in having a level of comfort when we’re consuming and creating media. Who doesn’t want to know if a blogger is getting paid to write about something? Who doesn’t want to see advertisements clearly labeled and outside of the content space? I can’t think of one reader of blogs who wants to be deceived. Nor do I know a reader who wants to be high-alert trying to spot the ads in the content, let alone waste their brain cycles on figuring out the hidden agenda.

Sure, there are interesting things we can do with advertisers on blogs, and I’m all for it. However, there do need to be standards, and I’d love to be involved in helping define them.

There has been a lot of talk about “word of mouth” marketing groups that want people to pay them $1,000 to $20,000 in order to “represent them” in the WOM space (they don’t put the insane fees for joining on their website of course). These groups are clearly designed to: a) make the deceitful act of advertisers paying off consumer to do covert marketing as in some way legitimate, and b) give the founders of these organizations a fat salary for doing no work! Look at the code of ethics at BzzAgent.com:

Be conscious of who you tell about BzzAgent! To tell or not to tell? Should BzzAgents reveal their identities? That’s a question for you to decide carefully when you’re sharing the Bzz with someone. Some people might think it’s cool. Other people might not understand. The choice is yours. Decide what’s best for each conversation.

That is pathetic. What brands would associate themselves with this kind of behavior?!? You can always tell a liar when they use clever marketing speak like thisnormal folk speak English. BzzAgent, if you are encouraging your “bs agents” to lie and deceive people why not just write it in simple English? Here I’ll do it for you:

“Please don’t tell anyone you’re getting paid to promote their products or you’re not going to be as effective. We all get paid on performance, so be sure to keep our deal hidden from the public. Cha-ching baby!!!”

Evil marketers are starting associations to spin their deceitful ways. It’s now time the good guys to start a blog publishers association and put readers and writers first. The ethical debate is a perfect starting point, I agree with you 100% Nick and thank you for pushing the issue in such a positive waysee, we can all get along. (Did we just have a moment?)

So, I just registered BlogEthics.org. If Jeff Jarvis and Nick Denton are willing to start the Blog Ethics Committee I’ll do it provided we have transparent open discussion spaces for people to participate in.

If that goes well, and provides some value to everyone, I’d be willing to help start the BPA. Again, don’t want to, and can’t, do this alone so I’m going to need some help from people out there.

The comments below are open; I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

NOTE: SOMEONE IS SENDING BLOG SPAM AS ME, IT IS NOT US AND WE ARE WORKING ON FINDING OUT WHO IS BEHIND THIS.

Wanted to remind everyone that you can make your life super, extra, double great by adding my blog to one of these three great services (in alpha order):

I encourge you to try all three of our “Weblogs, Inc. Approved” services as they all have something a little different to offer. For example, My Yahoo is integrated with email, search, weather and instant messaging. Newsgator has a slick design and is super fast. Feedster is feature-rich and is incorporated into an amazing blog search engine (you do know there are search engines just for blogs right)?!?!

We took the time to create these partnerships because we personally loved each of the productsthey are the best of the best for RSS reading!

If you already have an account with any of them (i.e. you have a My Yahoo, Yahoo email or Yahoo IM account) you can add my blog to the service with one click! If you don’t have these services yet they will sign you up after you click on them.

Reading blogs becomes much more enjoyable when you have a web-based reader like the ones above. We’re thrilled to be working with each of them.

all the best, Jason

PS - We will be annoucing some more “Weblogs, Inc. approved” RSS readers shortly.

Autoblog is the only blog that was able to get their hands on a review copy of the stunning new 2005 Mustang GT (it’s good to be the most read car blog by a factor of 5-10 :-). This past week they have been reviewing it over five days. It’s so cool, they have the audience post comments after each day with the questions and comments incorporated into the next day’s review! You can only do that on a blog.

Actually, come to think of it Autoblog.com is the only car blog out there that even does actual reviews! We’ve done a ton of them check out the search result here!

So, take a minute and check out the five point five days of Mustang at Autoblog: Day 0.5, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5 in the Mustang. Tons and tons of origional photos as well!