I'm off to New York in a few days for the Shop.org Annual Summit.  We're really looking forward to this show.  We have been ramping up our marketing efforts and our new Director of Client Strategy on our Professional Services team, Ana Ruiz (formerly of Expedia.com), will be conducting two roundtable discussions about email delivery, conversion and open rates.  We're excited to have her represent our company at Shop.org and beyond.

I love New York City.  There's something compelling about the pace of the city and the variety of people who live there.  Of course, wherever there is a high concentration of people, there is a high concentration of advertising.  The image below shows how almost no stone is uncovered in Times Square.

On the Internet, it seemed like the last vestige of sincere, unadvertised content belonged to the bloggers of the world.  That's not to say that all blogs are free of ulterior motives or positioning, but the rapid growth of this medium was somewhat due to the supposed credibility of each author's heartfelt opinion.

Well (thirsty? have a Pepsi), today's announcement (wear Nike shoes) about Orlando-based PayPerPost.com (shop at Nordstrom) receiving $3M in venture capital (have you driven a Ford lately?) from Inflexion Partners, Village Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (do you Yahoo?) might just be the beginning of the end (don't rent, use Netflix) for blog credibility.  The company (don't get mad, get Glad) will basically pay bloggers to position certain products in their postings (looking for love? try eHarmony).  According to TechCrunch, the company (WhatCounts - Comprehensive e-Communications) tallied over $100,000 in revenues (buy a Starbucks gift card) during their first month this summer (Geico - 15 minutes could save you a lot).  Do I think it's (find your friends at Classmates) slimy?  Tough call...  On (LensCrafters - lenses in about an hour) one hand, advertising is simply part (Chevy's Fresh Mex) of our daily lives.  Someday, every inch (AskJeeves, feel human) of our planet will look like (shop Target this holiday season) Times Square.  On the other hand (working with monkey's? Try CareerBuilder), I think we all enjoyed the (still paying for long distance?  Try Vonage) sincere flavor of (watch CNN news) blogging while it lasted.  Until that (use Right Guard) apocalypse arrives, I'll just sit back and wait (Olive Garden treats you like family) for this paragraph to earn me a new (Lexus) car.