We have to admit the wave of disclosures hasn't been as massive as we anticipated yesterday, particularly if you exclude sarcastic disclosures like this marketing blog's list of all the free samples, zombie newspaper subscriptions and government handouts it received over the years.

It looks like some blogs got their disclosures out of the way earlier in the year, when the FTC rules first made news; the others, we presume, either aren't aware of the regulations or believe the federal government will be no more diligent regulating bloggers than it was regulating financial institutions. A reasonable bet.

The blogs that did disclose their freebies tended to lack the sort of deals — Sony, SeaWorld, etc. — professional fameballer Julia Allison laid on the line yesterday. Which is, frankly, a good thing; hopefully the blogosphere will remain this under-sold-out for years to come. Click the pictures below for some examples:

Music blog Guilt Free Pleasures: After its mom, "who reads Gawker religiously" according to an email it sent us, saw our post yesterday and pestered it, Guilt Free Pleasures disclosed that it got "most if not all" of its music for free from record labels and publicists and that it takes free concert tickets. But "our opinions have not been swayed by the fact that we are receiving this music for free." Oh whatever; we know you're planning to build a gilded mansion with those spare craptastic CDs, GFP. (Also, call your mother, already.)

High-profile Valley blogger and former PR executive Louis Gray: Reminded readers he is now a consultant for Paladin Advisors Group, with clients like ReadBurner, SocialToo and BuzzGain, as disclosed in previous posts. Gray then noted that there is no easy way to attach disclosures to "likes" on blog systems and social networks, or shares on Google Reader. Thanks for giving us something fresh and unexpected to worry about. Thanks a lot.

Christine Koh of mommy blog Boston Mamas: Wrote about that the practices of some fellow mommy bloggers "depressed" her; reiterated her longtime commitment "to transparency and 100% advertorial-free editorial — but said she wouldn't be disclosing her material ties on a per-post basis as the FTC recommends because "I operate Boston Mamas more like a magazine" and have a clearly detailed editorial code.

The disclosure, buried on the "Contacts" page, foreswears advertorial but says Koh accepts free review units, "junkets" and "swag," including gift cards, which she insists do not influence her coverage. So theoretically she could accept a free trip to Monaco, a trillion dollar gift card and a necklace of opulent jewels to review, all from the same vendor, and then never disclose this fact to her readers in the post. In fact, that very scenario occurs weekly for Koh, probably.

NonSociety blogger Jordan Reid: Like her corporate overlord/protocelebrity mentor Julia Allison, Reid wants to stay out of trouble with the FTC. So she promised to let readers know when her parents buy her an awesome dinner at a four-star restaurant; promised to not completely fabricate posts; and to overshare absolutely "everything" that happens to her with "total and complete transparency." None of that really has anything to do with the FTC regulations, Jordan, but it's, uh, good to know, and we're sure your boss over there is proud.

Allison was an early pioneer in the fine art of internet attentionmongering, so it makes sense she's tried to establish a beachhead on disclosure. The NonSociety founder today apologetically issued a "so corporate" post to make sure everyone understood who has been paying her to say nice things about them:

• Blueprint Cleanse, which has been flushing things out of Allison's colon for "over a year."
  
• SeaWorld, whose payments Allison did not disclose until after we raised the issue.
  
• Sony, who gave Allison an unprecedentedly classy deal involving actual TV commercials.

We expect this will be the tip of the iceberg; FTC rules say that bloggers must disclose their "material relationships" with people they write about, including anyone who provides freebies or cash. If you see any other confessionals, email them in; we'll round up the blogger confessionals tomorrow.

(Top pic: One of Allison's Blueprint Cleanse endorsements. Via NonSociety.)

Of course, 24/7 Wall Street has the advantage of being able to conjure made-up estimates out of thin air; that's how the site put a price tag on various blog networks back in February (PerezHilton.com: $32 million (ha); Gawker Media: $170 million (HA!)). Now the site's taken those made-up estimates and combined them with additional made-up estimates of how much each blog network would be worth without its iconic founder. In other words, it's estimating the economic worth of each blogging boss — not to be confused with their actual wealth.

Here are the numbers. Spoiler: Drudge is king, even in hypothetical death.

(Correction: This post originally said 24/7 Wall Street was an AOL property. It is in fact independent.)

Gawker Media's Nick Denton: $26 million. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but it's only 15 percent of his company's hypothetical net worth, since Denton doesn't do much writing or editing. "Gawker would miss the guiding hand, but presumably the company could get another skilled CEO." (Pic: Eliot Shepard via mednut on Flickr)

Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington: $23 million. Huffington is the face of her company, 24/7 correctly notes, lending it valuable "star power and relationships." But the site overestimates the extent to which Huffington has delegated control to "highly skilled editorial staff:" although she's made some promising recent hires from the likes of the Washington Post, Huffington has stocked the wide-ranging site with nepotistic hires willing to abide her detailed (headlines, story placement, story assignments) and wide-ranging orders. As such, she's probably at least twice as essential to the organization as 24/7 estimates (25 percent of HuffPo's $90 million net worth). (Pic: JD Lasica)

Drudge Report's Matt Drudge: $43 million. That's 90 percent of his site's estimated $48 million value. Sure, Drudge has in the past received help from swell guys like Andrew Breitbart (no longer working for him), but they hardly had the skill to open email messages containing Republican talking points and newsroom leaks: "Drudge obviously has editors working for him to gather the hundreds of links from other media but the scoops that run on the sites are almost certainly his."

PerezHilton.com's Mario "Perez Hilton" Lavandeira: $30 million. The jizz-doodling celebrity gossip blogger is obviously an irreplaceable genius i 24/7's eyes: Without him, says the website, "the $32 million value of PerezHilton.com would go to under $2 million." Right, except for the fact that Lavandeira's got his sister and probably others actually writing/doodling the damned thing on his behalf. And since 1> Perez Hilton isn't anyone's real name to begin with and 2> his sister doesn't go around calling people "fags" like Lavandeira does, she might actually be able to make the site more popular.

TechCrunch's Mike Arrington: $12.5 million. Sure, TechCrunch's flagship tech business blog has "more than 20 senior writers, editor and business staff," but Arrington is "a controversial and polarizing figure," so he's worth half the company's total imaginary valuation of $50 million. (Pic: Robert Scoble)

The rest: MacRumors' Arnold Kim, a onetime doctor is estimated worth $4.2 million to his $21 million site; GigaOm's Om Malik accounts for $2.9 million of his tech blog network's $9.5 million value; Mashable's Pete Cashmore is estimated worth $1.25 million, or half of his tech blog's $2.5 million value; Business Insider's Henry Blodget $1.5 million or two-thirds of the total value of his financial blogging company; Markos Moulitsas (pictured) $1.7 million of political blog Daily Kos' $2 million made-up value. (Pic: Steve Rhodes)

Finke's numbers just went onto Quantcast, no doubt through the efforts of her blog's new owner, heir and budding Web mogul Jay Penske, who presumably hopes opening his stats will help sell advertising. Finke is making north of $625,000 from Penske over eight years, according to the New York Times.

She gets around 30,000 to 40,000 people on her site each weekday. The may indeed be influential people. But there aren't that many of them. Except when Finke is the subject of a New Yorker profile, which she can turn into a traffic-spiking multimedia catfight.

It is, perhaps, unfair to expect Finke to attract the several hundred thousand daily readers of an LATimes.com, or the couple hundred thousand of a Gawker.com. Her site is very specialized in insider gossip, more akin to a Variety or Hollywood Reporter. In fact, 30,000 is roughly the circulation of one of those Hollywood trades, if not both.

But if Penske wants to use Finke as a linchpin of a robust online empire — and if Finke wants to seize the incentives that could reportedly double her take to $10 million over the life of her deal — those numbers will need to come up, which means Finke will somehow need to broaden her appeal. Loud fights can only take one so far, after all.

Like Mullenweg, Karp was a Web entrepreneur as a teenager and is now in his early 20s, creating software through which other people can make money. But while Texas-born Mullenweb has started a series of fights with his tech-industry colleagues, former Bronx Science student Karp has been cuddling his way around Manhattan and Brooklyn.

This sociability has helped Karp exploit Gotham's chattering classes: Tumblr has an estimated one-fifteenth the users of Wordpress.com, but generates about five time as much content, thanks to social networking tools that let its Brooklyn-centric userbase easily quote and snark upon one another's posts. This edge shows up in the sites' public daily posting statistics (Tumblr, then Wordpress):

Meanwhile, Karp, in full bragging mode today, tells us Tumblr averages "five interactions (answers, likes, reblogs, etc.) with each post on average versus 1.5 for Wordpress." That doesn't mean Tumblr is worth $15 million — it has yet to launch its "really sexy" plan to generate actual revenue — but it is an interesting stat, and a testament to the social networking features the snuggly young entrepreneur has built into his site. It's also a pretty solid indication Karp will soon have some additional "interactions" fairly soon, with surly young Mullenweg.

(Top pic: Mullenweg, right, by Jared Greeno; Karp by Zadi Diaz)

Izea, you'll recall, is the company that paid llifecaster Julia Allison, with real actual money, to blog about a free trip to Sea World. Not satisfied merely to pimp out bloggers, the firm has set its sights on the burgeoning field of tweeting. The company's announcement, passed along by Mashable, leads one to believe there's a big payoff for promoting Izea's clients; here is the screen Izea shows prospective Tweeters, set at $100 per 140-character tweet:

Mashable had its screen configured for $150 per tweet. We took the bait and clicked through to the signup screen for our personal Twitter account. Reality was bleak, with Izea suggesting an asking price of $1.50 per tweet, based on our usage stats.

For what it's worth, taking part in this sort of shilling doesn't seem to be a barrier to working with national news networks. Allison wrote paid blog posts for Armani Exchange July 17 but went on MSNBC as a pundit at least twice within the following week. Tech blogger Chris Pirillo is listed prominently as an Izea client and has his own show on CNN.com.

Of course, you're supposed to disclose your ties to Izea, which means you'll probably lose a lot of followers. Plus it will get progressively harder to look at yourself in the mirror each morning. But at, like, $4 per word, you can at least pretend you're a real writer.

(Pic: Allison, from her sponsored Armani post. As far as we know, she has yet to rent out access to her Twitter.)

Powell's movie is part blogger story and part Julia Child biopic; Meryl Streep plays Child, the famous home-cooking guru.

Now in preview screenings, Julie and Julia is already being savaged in food blogger circles. Chef, cookbook author and food blogger Virginia Willis' slam set the tone. While professing "no malice," it took Powell to task for daring to question Child's recipe, once:

One day she made a comment implying a recipe being wrong for roast chicken. I honestly don't remember what it was, but it struck me as being so disrespectful, completely without deference to Julia Child, that I stopped. What the hell did she know about food? Had she even heard of poulet au Bresse? Didn't go back.

Actually, the term Willis was looking for was poulet de Bresse, but we shouldn't interrupt a master bravely defending Child against a disrespectful (gasp!) acolyte:

People who happen to eat and are able to type are now our new food experts... Good grief, people who don't know how to begin to roast a ding dang chicken without following a recipe can be our new, ahem, food experts.

The bitter anger of a lone chef-writer? Hardly; other food bloggers quickly agreed. "Thank you, Virginia for... bravely expressing your frustrations," wrote one. Another: "Great post." Another: "A very well written article about something which, despite being an amateur food blogger myself, does frustrate me to no end." One blogger, after watching only a trailer, said Child "deserves more than being the other half to a Nora Ephron-penned romcom about a 'lowly cubicle worker' who blogs and struggles and cries and gets a book deal." Oh, plus also, Child thought Powell was a mere stunt artist! A clown, really! What a gleeful thing, to be able to report.

Powell, you see, has made enemies of her obsessive online peers. What infuriated them most was a 2005 New York Times op-ed decrying the "insidious... snobbery of the organic movement" — an all-out assault on the Church of Alice Waters. The reaction was furious: "today's stupidest piece of information;" "gratuitous... a coarse reductionist version of the... organic movement;" "[a] shockingly incoherent thing;" "ill-informed... erroneous." Or this, after Powell panned raw foodism in the Times: "Julie Powell... needs to stop huffing dust from the crypt of Erma Bombeck."

The prevailing "Slow Food" ideology of the culinary world is that the process of nourishment should be devolved — from massive centralized farms and feedlots and factories to local growers and aritsans and ultimately home gardens; from nutritionists and other food scientists to cultural and family traditions. And ultimately, we're supposed to replace slapdash restaurants with careful preparation in small, individual kitchens.

The irony is that here we have in Julie Powell the ultimate manifestation of these principles, an amateur who dived fearlessly into home preparations, devolving not only food but, via her blog, media as well, taking both cooking and communication into her own hands. And yet the foodie priesthood seems on the verge of ex-communicating her over these very traits. Sorry, guys, but Julie Powell is literally the embodiment of an organic movement. Buy some Milk Duds (TM), splash some fake butter on your Popcorn, pop open a Diet Coke (TM) and enjoy the film.

Arianna Huffington crowed after the 2008 presidential election that her website is "more participatory" than publications that practice journalism "the old way." But she's a favor-trading traditionalist when it comes to distributing money: Even the best contributing bloggers are unpaid, while paying gigs tend to go to VIPs.

Some have earned their status. Others were born into it.

Which isn't to say the well born are necessarily unqualified for their jobs: HuffPo is notoriously hard to work for, with famously high turnover; couple this with the site's national expansion and it's easy to see why HuffPo is hungry for young talent. But aren't there, like, some laid off journalists out there, with actual experience?

Here are some of the well-connected VIP spawn Arianna's taken on:

Ethan Axelrod

Ethan Axelrod is the son of Barack Obama's longtime adviser David Axelrod. The 22-year-old has written and edited for his student newspaper at Colorado College, according to the Washington Post, and apparently has no other professional journalism experience. He will edit HuffPo's Denver edition.

Mediaite quotes insiders saying he's modest about his killer genes:

"He's a very nice, unassuming guy," one staffer told Mediaite. "He's smart, obviously – he comes from good stock."

Funny that the Post's Howard Kurtz didn't mention his newspaper's own family connection to the HuffPo (see next).

(Photo via Axelrod's Facebook profile)

Nicholas Graham

Nicholas Graham is part of the same Graham family that owns the Washington Post. Formerly an Associate News Editor at HuffPo, Graham appears to have recently become Associate Video Editor. One insider tells us his predecessor, Patrick Waldo, was well liked inside of the company but was recently pushed out. (Pic via NCAA YouTube)

Elyssa Spitzer

It's hard to begrudge Elyssa Spitzer her HuffPo internship for at least two reasons. One, as the daughter of disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, she's been through a lot of family trauma in the past year and a half. Two, we're not even sure if her internship is paid. (Pic via Cityfile)

Liz Hanks

In 2007 and 2008, Liz Hanks worked as Associate Living Editor at HuffPo. We've heard actor Tom Hanks' daughter had two other jobs, as a news and blog editor, and that Arianna Huffington eagerly publicized her name and presence after she joined the staff (to a degree some on staff found unseemly).

We imagine working in the living section was scary: It was home to a wide array of true believers from Arianna Huffington's culty religious group, the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness. Hanks' supervisor, Anya Strzemien, was, according to insiders, forced by Huffington to attend a seminar run by a group closely tied to MSIA.Despite the hubub around her, Hanks seems to have been generally well regarded within HuffPo for keeping a level head.

Matthew Palevsky

Matthew Palevsky is Arianna Huffington's godson. His father Max was a billionaire computer entrepreneur. Palevsky was in January appointed to oversee HuffPo's OffTheBus citizen journalism initiative. He hardly seemed qualified:

The effort was a crown jewel, breaking two major scoops during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was previously headed by big guns: a Howard Dean and John Kerry organizer who formed a Web volunteering institute at Harvard Law, and a Nation editor and longtime magazine writer who teaches journalism at USC. They were of no relation to Huffington; one was later hired by Pro Publica.

Katherine Zaleski

Katherine Zaleski's father is said to be close friends with Ken Lerer, Huffington Post's co-founder. Further, we're told she has her own apartment in the El Dorado luxury co-op at 300 Central Park West; her dad is said to live in a separate penthouse of his own and Lerer a few floors down.

For four years, Zaleski controlled the coveted front page of the Huffington Post — as much as anyone besides Arianna does — but later moved into a special projects role. She took over the New York section after Dan Collins abruptly quit (Huffington later claimed he was always supposed to leave the job just after launch, but that's not what she told us just before launch).

George Smith, who does online marketing for Crocs, wrote about a blogger at the conference who was upset the company ran out of free pairs of its inexplicably popular plastic shoes. The blogger started out timid, but grew brazen:

"Ya know, if you don't give me shoes – I could totally write something bad about you on my blog."

"Excuse me?" I asked – hoping she would laugh or give me some indication that she was just joking around. Nope…

"It's just a pair of shoes. It's a lot easier to give them to me than deal with the negative press I could make."

Smith hadn't heard of this "nobody" and dispensed with her quickly:

She looked shocked – like she really thought her sad attempt to blackmail me would work. In a second, she walked away and, before I could really gather myself, disappeared into a sea of bloggers. I never saw her again.

Blackmail over a $30 pair of Crocs? Really? Talk about small time. If bloggers can be bought so cheaply, it's sad to think how many glowing posts the free schwag at BlogHer is generating. The conference featured giveaways in the SocialLuxe "pampering" lounge, including makeovers and Smith's Crocs, as well as gift cards and laptops on offer at the conference website.

Bloggers insist ample freebies don't influence what they write. But those at the feeding trough are bound to get their egos bruised sooner or later; how many will be able to avoid a pathetic, prideful outburst of "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??" schwag extortion?

(Pic: Smith by @greeblemonkey, via)

When the Chronicle's website this morning yanked a column lambasting the mayor, charges of political cowardice quickly followed. The paper was scared, but not of the mayor: Frightened for its business, the paper is now charging for some Web content.

Vlae Kershner, News Director for the site, writes that the column in question, by former Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein (pictured), was never supposed to be online in the first place. "It's subscriber-only content that was posted by mistake," he told us.

Following months of discussions about doing this sort of thing, the paper has decided to inaugurate its first premium section, containing Bronstein's column (see the email Chronicle editor Ward Bushee sent us, below). It's a small experiment, but an extraordinary step: SFGate has historically been perhaps the most open newspaper website in the country; unlike other big-city papers, it never even tried to charge for access to its extensive archives.

It's odd that the Chronicle would choose opinion content for its first premium content experiment, given the experience of the The New York Times. The Times abandoned its effort to charge for opinion content, TimesSelect, after discovering that a paywall diminished the paper's voice and reduced its advertising revenue. Plus the market for political and cultural opinion is oversaturated; Bronstein's opinion pieces will likewise be a tough sell. The market pays no attention to newsroom hierarchies that put columnists and former editors up on pedestals.

More salable would be the Chronicle's least glamorous work, local news reporting, and any other beat it truly owns, like restaurant reviews. In politics and food alike, though, the paper faces competition from a growing corps of bloggers who could permanently steal way readers. For its own stake, the Chronicle should make sure it will be able to abandon any future experiments more readily than it launched the current one.

Chronicle editor Bushee's email:

Here's the deal. Phil's column was created from the start to be a print-only column in the Monday Chronicle. When we first started talking about the column, Phil and I agreed to try this as a low-stakes experiment. The experiment is not indicative of any larger plan by the Chronicle, SFGate or Hearst. It is not the start of a premium content imitative or a pay wall. But it was designed to test how different content models can serve different audiences. Each week Phil reaches a significant online audience with his blog, which is not available in print. By introducing a column by Phil that is different in its content and mission from his blog, we can see if it adds value to the printed paper by giving readers unique content that they could not get free online. As with any experiment, it will be evaluated at some point to see if we stick with it or change it.



Unfortunately, the brief appearance of the column on SFGate this week made some people think we were pulling it off because of the content. As you surmised in your note, that was not the case. The column was posted for a short time on SFGate through a misunderstanding and then pulled down when it was discovered.

(Pic" Bronstein, via the Chronicle)

Barely a month after putting an undisclosed sum into Henry Blodget's Business Insider blog network, Andreessen is leading a $500,000 to $1 million round for TPM Media, the company behind political blog Talking Points Memo.

It seems Andreessen isn't just saying the New York Times will die on his popular blog; he's actually betting on it. (NB to Marc: You can PayPal your Gawker Media investment here.)

(Pic via TechShowNetwork)

Sure, the tech writer has a forthcoming Newsweek blog to promote, named after his column at the weekly magazine. But his decision to lay off on Jobs wasn't a business decision so much as heartfelt concern about the Apple chief's health.

Now, as Fake Steve, Lyon's again cracking wise about favor-currying New York Times columnists begging to donate their livers, CNBC reporters bringing him lattes and, our personal favorite, having a gaunt Jobs brag that "I'm bench-pressing twice my body weight."

We're surprised his bosses at Newsweek are playing along; Lyons killed his personal blog after they demanded he remove a post calling Yahoo flacks "lying sacks of shit." Perhaps the subsequent problems at the magazine's print edition have opened Newsweek's eyes to the promotional power of the Web.

Sure enough, Lyons is already linkbaiting Gawker. Yes, Mr. Jobs, we'd be happy to show up at your house with a camera; just send along an access code to the front gate in case we need to use the restroom.

(Pic by Mark Coggins)

People are notoriously loathe to pay for well-researched original Web content, so you have to admire the chutzpah of Super Chirp, which is bravely going into the business of selling access to Twitterized brain farts. The company doesn't even have this sad market to itself.

What compelling, original content is Super Chirp launching with? A celebrity Twitter stream? Status updates from some nerd God?

Not quite. The standout among the scant debut offerings is a $10/month feed from Tim Sykes, former star of reality show Wall Street Warriors, who in 2007 ended his hedge fund career with foolish stock bets, earning the title "Trading's Buffoon" from the same publication that had once named him among Wall Street's hot "30 under 30."

Now a Twitter denizen, Sykes urges you to "screw it, sign up" for "real-time trade alerts form [sic] me." How can you resist?

Update: Sykes takes to Twitter (of course) to respond to this post: "Are people really so dense they can't see how valuable real-time info is? Bring it gossip columnists." Of course, his business partner Adarsh Pallian gives a more honest assessment: "@timothysykes on gawker and @pallian on techcrunch - not a bad press day."

HuffPo just shared some key details with Irin Carmon of Women's Wear Daily:

This year, The Huffington Post will have 22 interns... a number that approaches that of paid staff (about 35 in editorial, 60 on staff overall.) That includes one intern who paid at least $13,000 in a charity auction for the privilege.

...Half of these interns are being paid, a spokesman for the Huffington Post confirmed. The spokesman declined to say how much, calling the question "silliness."

It's not clear how publisher Arianna Huffington decides who to pay and who not to pay (we've asked and not yet heard back). But it's worth noting that some Huffington underlings have higher profiles than others. This year's staff, for example, includes former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's daughter (per WWD), as well as editor Nicholas Graham, of the family that owns the Washington Post.

Liz Hanks, daughter of actor Tom Hanks, has also worked for the site. And Huffington this year handed an important management role to her godson, heir to a computer fortune worth billions of dollars.

So if you're trying to get paid at Huffington's innovative new media game-changer, it might help to be born to the right parents, if you can pull that off.

John Battelle's Industry Standard hired research analysts near the height of its hubristic expansion c.2000. Former Red Herring editor Jason Pontin recalled that his magazine, the thickest of the dot-com bibles, attempted the same. He writes in an email:

We hired and built an entire research division: some of its material found its way into the print and online products. I do not believe they ever succeeded in selling much in the way of proprietary research...

You need to understand that there are really two kinds of research products. The first, which we tried to do and failed at, I completely supported as the editor at the time: expand our editorial products into higher-priced subscription research on the model of The Economist Intelligence Unit.

The second is truly proprietary research bought by a single client or group of clients: I wasn't sure that was a great idea, because it was an entirely new field for us requiring a new infrastructure and staff, and we failed at that, too.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, GigaOm publisher Om Malik is a Herring veteran, and made his bones on Wall Street, where proprietary research is common. His current effort is relatively inexpensive ($80/year) and targeted at broad groups of readers. It also has some sort of Web 2.0 twist involving outside contributions.

Hopefully for Malik, those differences will be enough to keep history from repeating itself.

(Pic by Jyri Engestrom on Flickr)

After nearly missing her flight, the internet fameball didn't hesitate to violate federal aviation rules.

And then she dove right in to the wining and dining with her hosts.

But after a few drinks or bites of dead sea creature of whatever, Allison suddenly heard an odd voice in her head. Is that her conscience?? Time to lob some softballs at the flack have a "forthright discussion."

Whale kiss + dating joke, bwahahaha. Forget about the specifics of that "forthright discussion" on animal rights, those can wait another day (or forever).

With fellow "sponsored" bloggers. Not her usual crowd.

Sea World rescued 17,000 animals! They rule!

Except when they confine polar bears to "tiny rooms" and make them look morbidly depressed!

This man invited Allison to touch the fat little upright creature on his lap. She was scared at first, but came around.

She ended up wanting to puke.

After 22 tweets and 28 blog posts, Sea World seems to have gotten it's money's worth. And Allison's still going! It turns out her benefactor's creepy/hilarious YouTube video was right, after all:

Times are tough, and Allison's startup NonSociety has not escaped the bad economy: It's already lost a reality-show deal (Bravo declined to proceed beyond a pilot) and one of its three co-founders. This perhaps helps explain why Allison has become a "featured blogger" for "Social Media Marketing" firm Izea.

Listed on the front page, Allison helps the company advance its mission to "provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for posting social media content about a product, service or website on their blog."

Izea, in other words, pays for posts. In cash. And Allison has started working hard for one of its featured clients, Sea World, which is inviting bloggers to a press junket this week. Today on her NonSociety blog, Allison gushed about her upcoming trip to the marine park with no fewer than five exclamation marks. On Twitter she was a bit more restrained, with just one "!" (the microblogging service limits users to 140 characters, after all).

Neither of those posts included any disclosure of Allison's relationship to Izea or Sea World — even though such disclosure is required by Izea.

After a tipster pointed us evidence of Allison's shilling, we got in touch with her for comment. She's promised to get back to us.

But other bloggers, including all those laid off print journalists hoping to chase their dreams online, can draw a quick lesson: There is still money to be made in blogging, even independently. But you'll have to do some ethical soul-searching. And in the end, you'll have to disclose whatever innovative monetization techniques you settle on. Not eventually, either, but up front, right in that first post. Because if you don't, you'll get caught.

UPDATE: Yes, Allison got paid, but "THIS IS THE FIRST THING THEY HAVE EVER PAID ME FOR." The bastards! More:

The latest harebrained scheme to shake down Google for cash goes like this, according to Silicon Alley Insider: The New York Times wants a cut of any ad Google sells on any page containing "New York Times content." There's also some scheme to implant Google ads in the text of Times articles, so they'd magically appear whenever a Times story is quoted.

What does this mean, exactly? When Google brokers an ad on a website, it keeps some of the money and shares the rest with the publisher. If the Times wants to insert itself into this transaction, it's going to have to pick someone's pocket — either online publishers, or Google. If the Times wants to roll over Google, more power to it. And if it wants to take money from the spam blogs which automatically scrape other sites' content, are hosted by Google's Blogger, and profit from Google-sold ads, great — Google ought to be doing more to prevent those sites from existing in the first place.

But if the Times thinks it can collect a vig from any blog that dares to cite a Times story, and Google plans to help it do so, they'll have a heck of a fight on their hands.

Here's a simpler idea: If the Times is so worried about people finding their stories online, why don't they just block Google? Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker made the suggestion himself. That makes far more sense than any of the schemes leaking out of the mortgaged Times headquarters in New York.

(Photo by liquidsunshine49)

Lavandeira has won a case against PerezRevenge, a gossip site which styles itself as an antidote to Hilton's "meanness." U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess has ordered the blog's owners, Margie Rogers and Elizabeth Silver-Fagan, to stop using the PerezRevenge name, turn over the site to Hilton, and desist from "using the term 'Perez' to designate any platform, medium, and/or website that contains entertainment or celebrity news or gossip."

Which is laughable, when you think about how Hilton got his start. He first blogged on a site called PageSixSixSix, until he got a nastygram from the New York Post, which objected to his free-riding on the name of its famous gossip column. Lavandeira then came up with his play on the name of the famous hotel heiress, and became Perez Hilton. He also routinely doctors celebrity photos, arguing that sprinkling cocaine dots on them is a transformative use, entitling him to publish them. A couple years ago, several photo agencies disagreed and slapped him with lawsuits. Still, it's all fun and fair. It seems like he's just upset that someone else has joined in on the game.

Boing Boing blogger David Pescovitz writes about Comcast Town, a virtual world:

Comcast (a BB sponsor) ...

We stopped reading there, too. Pescovitz invites users to judge Boing Boing's entry into Comcast's virtual-world contest. Readers are eager to judge Boing Boing, but not about that.

They have wasted no time reminding Pescovitz of the only Comcast stories they're prepared to hear: Tales of FCC hearings packed with Comcast shills, installers falling asleep on Comcast customers' couches, and the evils of Comcast's war on file sharing and other bandwidth-heavy uses of their network.

It makes everyone look stupid: The Boing Boingers, for thinking they could take Comcast's money and escape criticism; Comcast, for entering the lion's den already smeared in blood; and Boing Boing readers, for thinking the blog had any credibility left to get up in arms about. We'll give the Boingers this much: At least it wasn't a promo for their latest book.