Arrington’s name and quote was used on a site that was intended to trick people into thinking it was a social media site and even solicited votes and user stories. To be clear, I’m not fully convinced that he did anything wrong aside from lending his name to an ad campaign that was somewhat on the sleazy side.

As for radio ads, you can see those “endorsement” type live reads from a mile away. You’d have to be 3/5ths of an idiot to actually not be able to tell what’s an ad and what’s not. Even as subtle as he is on Twit, Leo Laporte’s ads for Audible in the last few weeks have been enormously obvious.

Arrington goofed. Valleywag took a shot at him. C-Net is capitalizing on it.

All in all, it’s just another day in the blogosphere.

To me this is no different than when I’d listen to Howard Stern and he’d go on blathering about some product he was pitching. Everyone knew it was an ad. To me this is just another form of advertising. I used to tune out those ads from Stern and I’d just as soon tune out this page from FM.

I don’t doubt Arrington’s integrity. I never have, and I never will. Considering the amount of crap he takes, he’s more than welcome to do what he pleases. I think people are pissed because he didn’t disclose it and the quotes he made went on an infomercial type site.

And John Battelle is a weasel for throwing his bloggers under the bus by saying they should’ve disclosed what was going on.

This is an issue in the blogosphere, and frankly Arrington, who’s gone off on Pay per Post a million times should try a lot harder to avoid even the appearance of impropriety lest that high-mindedness come back and bite him in the ass like it just did.