On the other hand, I might add some really Estonian perspective to this story. Namely we have practically all our newspapers freely accessible on www: most of them have tried pay-walls (typically payment by SMS) but returned to open very quickly (pink-paper business daily http://www.aripaev.ee is the only one currently paywalled, but I understand that’ll change pretty soon). What’s interesting is dailies were struggling with notable loss financially and in readership couple of years ago, but they have recovered in both (increasing profits & circulation of printed version) despite of open access.

I’d even say aripaev.ee was the only seriously profitable daily for years, so they could afford to be paywalled. Now everybody is catching up and… perhaps they are feeling the discussion moving elsewhere?

And thanks, Michael, for full article!

I posted a week ago on how The Economist gets the new world of social media, at least from a editorial standpoint. And I was impressed at how they reached out and personalized the initial contact with me. I did not feel like they did a cookie cutter “Dear Sir..”

Now, they actually did send me the whole story in the email I received from Charlotte to review. I only posted the first portion of the email she sent as I was more interested in the experiement than the story itself. I inserted the link on my blog to the page where it was housed on The Economist site.

I found it a bit strange that, although they sent me the article to review, it was not available as free content for others to see as it was behind a subscriber log-in page.

Great idea, not a fantastic execution. The article itself was not bad…. but, I felt uneasy doing a review and when the content source of my commentary was password protected.

This just means I am now compelled to post the whole article as it was sent to me in the email. I don’t feel manipulated as this was presented as an experiment.

Am I giving The Economist more attention then they deserve and carrying the conversation forward on their behalf? Perhaps yes, but I am an avid reader and had blogged about them last week in a very positive light.

I thought the experiment was well worth taking on as my voice is one of an authentic fan of the publication. However, that alone is not a bias to be a shill for them just because I have a scoop on their content.

Thanks for your feedback. Look out for my next post!

I talked about the idea of crowdseeding in my blog some time back, but my view on this is that individual bloggers generate their own crowds of interest based upon their true voice and genuine enthusiasms and definitely not on manipulated buzz. We’re all too idealistic/cynical, I hope, to be manipulated for any extended period and your suggestion of releasing stories and seeing what happens is what the future will be.

The only way you can “control” the reaction is by ensuring that you produce something of sufficient quality that it will get a positive reaction.