A little bird told us moblogUK may be using their weblog to market camera phones for the likes of Nokia and Sony. moblogUK has set up separate weblogs for each camera – and plans to do so for others – that displays pictures, audio and video taken from each phone and reviews the results. Is this an ingenious way to bypass and cut through ad clutter or simply an innocent editorial feature of the site? Adrants has asked this very question to moblogUK but has not yet received a response.
UPDATE: A response from moblog assures us that, while the phones are supplied by a PR agency, the reviews are purely editorial. Here’s the full text of moblog’s asnswer to our question from moblogUK’s Mat Brown:
“Excellent question, and the answer is no, they’re not. (being paid by manufacturers) They are totally independant reviews of the handsets, I was very clear that was the only condition we’d do them on. The handsets are supplied to us gratis by a PR firm, but nothing more than that. If they start telling us to “be more positive about feature Y” or “mention feature X more”, then I’ll start telling them we’re not interested in being their puppets – I want to offer objective reviews that are actually useful to people, not just another online advert spot.
When we get some more handsets, they’ll start to make their way out as prizes for moblog’s users, but myself and alfie decided to keep the first two for ourselves – it’s just about the only material reward we’ve got for the last year or so’s work on the site!
