Well, one for yesterday and one for today. Both from today’s Journal.
If selling ads on your social media platform is your business model, do people work around it, cutting out the middle man (i.e., you)?
“Paid ‘Influencers’ Undercut Ads on Pinterest,” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2015 B5. Rather than pay Pinterest for ads, advertisers have paid “Pinfluencers” to pin images for the advertisers’ services/products. Horrors!
If the public knows that some pins are paid for, does that diminish the value of a pin? Can you consider the source? If you’re compensated for posting a pin, do you need to disclose that? Aren’t there rules against that? Who’s enforcing them?
Were they rules or were they merely guidelines?
“UBS to Pay Penalty in Probe of ‘Dark Pool,'” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2015 C2. UBS, without admitting any wrongdoing, pays $14.4 million for not telling all investors in an alternative trading system what the rules were in how the platform worked (it allowed pricing in fractions of a penny, among other things). As a result of the rules, some high-frequency traders got preferred treatment. Horrors!
Hard to have faith in a system (or systems) where the “rules” are being ignored. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.
infogovnuggets 