How not to publish a guest post: Venture Beat lets entrepreneur skewer competition
A recent post by entrepreneur Auren Hoffman on the new (and promising) tech business news site Venture Beat started like this:
I'll admit that Evite is one of the greatest viral sites the world has ever known. Yet it is absolutely horrible.
And spent seven paragraphs tearing the site apart before mentioning this:
But you know what, there may be an alternative. Recently I received few invites via Socializr, as I am part of their gamma program. I love this site (disclaimer: I am an investor and a friend of the founder). I hope and pray they kill Evite.
It's like George W. Bush writing on the front page of the Washington Post, "Democrats eat their young (disclaimer: I am a Republican)." There's nothing wrong with letting a guest write a blog post — just don't let them dress up a PR piece as independent news. Readers will see right through it.
