If I publish content on the web or in a traditional media, I want people to trust it. The only way that will happen is if I put my name on the line and assume responsability.

Anonymous content on profiles or any other kind of webpage will still have an effect on Search Engines. But the viewer isn’t a blank slate, he will read and ponder what credibility to give that text, video or any other webcontent.

If a client comes to me planning to smudge someone else’s profile, web page or product I have to say no. It’s not a matter of ethics, it’s about preserving everyone’s credibility. If something isn’t true or can’t be backed up with hard evidence, we don’t say it, we don’t comment and we don’t jump into conclusions.

I’m not going to reference the post here because it is completely unrelated to blogging, but I do want to talk about the ethics.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t digg my own stuff because it just wouldn’t feel right to me. In this case, however, I had been running around in circles for three days trying to figure out how to do something that actually turned out to be easy. I could find nothing on Google, I made posts at the newsgroups, but got no useful answrs: I kept hitting blank walls.

Once I DID find the answer, I wrote it up and published it. I “dugg” it because I really want to share that with the next poor sap who runs around banging his head.

Of course you need LOTS of digs to make it to the main pages, and that may not happen anyway, but I did want to at least give it a kick to get it started. I do NOT think that’s unethical – do you?

I promote my flickr site on my blog, so it seems to make sense to promote my blog on flickr.

pcunix: you don’t have to be young to be in MySpace. I’ve known ppl who are in their 40s going there for various reasons. Some just happened to have blog/site caters to youngsters interest like gaming stuff, while others (older men) have ulterior motives…which needs no further elaboratio. ;P

Some are even using their Friendster blog to promote their own main blog, like using it as an update bulletin containing post teasers that are linked back to their own off-Friendster blog.

So.. I don’t have an account at MySpace (too old and no interest) or Flickr (I barely own a camera) but if I did – yes, I would :-)

If I have something to say on Flickr or MySpace (and that something just happens to be my brand) then I feel I am legitimatly using that service. If I decide to use every new service that crops up that is my business.

The great thing about bookmark/tagging and social news/network services such as reddits, digg, del.icio.us, rawsugar and others is that they encourage everyone to make a profile. Your participation (branded or not) in that service strengthens the service and your profile, provided you are abiding by its terms and agreements; it is a win-win situation. This is how the playing field is being leveled or, as Thomas Friedman would say “the world is being flattened” so that regular people like me can actually compete with a major newspaper or magazine.

To deny youreslf any inviting new web service is to deny a new way to interface with new people on the web.

Should I restrict my use of new webservices just because someone else thinks that “profile peddling” is unethical? No. My use of webservices will be defined by the service not a “blog elitist” but by the web service itself.

Nothing’s ethical if you’re doing it to besmirch others. If you only are doing this to draw more attention to yourself, then go for it.

I would agree with SEOmoz on this “Obviously, if you were a competitor of Otis’, writing about the same subject and you chose to smirch his online reputation by creating misleading or negative pages about him, you’d be in unethical territory.”

There is a potential in such systems being used for unethical purposes. If your intention to harm becomes real and quantifiable harm, then the action must be unethical. But, if your intention is merely to gain personally and no real harm occurs then possibly it is ethical, tacky but not morally questionable.

Can actions be judged devoid of the intention? Is it not what is in a persons heart that makes the action unethical, or is it simply natural law that is applied solely to the action.

Ethics and morality are fascinating and now you have made me spend far too much time on this site. But that is the Power of Darren!