Pajamas Media – Proceed with Caution

Duncan over at the Blog Herald has considered the new blog network being proposed by Pajamas Media (which I linked to a couple of days back). Duncan has taken a look over the documentation that Pajamas Media sent out to interested participants in the program and expresses a number of concerns with what he reads.

It seems that despite some of the concerns that have been raised that many have signed up for the program – Roger posts that over 150 have signed up to be a part of the network.

Duncan questions the legality of the documents sent out by the Pajamas Media team and points out that there is a 3 month exclusivity clause which stops publishers talking to any new advertisers and publishing networks. In a sense what bloggers are being asked to do is take something of a step out into the dark without knowing exactly what conditions Pajamas Media will offer. He goes on to talk about concerns with the secrecy clause in the contract, confusion between the two programs that they seem to be promoting at once and lastly about the right wing political nature of most of the bloggers behind this program and the implications that this might have.

All in all its a pretty comprehensive critique of a program that to this date has revealed very little about what it will actually do.

I have been asked by a number of bloggers about Pajamas Media and have refrained from posting much about it largely because there is so little information about it so far. I share many of the same concerns that Duncan expresses (and have talked with a number of high profile bloggers who hold similar opinions) – but am willing to wait and see what the actual package that they will offer is before give too much of a critique.

All I will say at this point (in addition to agreeing that Duncan raises some legitimate questions and concerns) is that I worry about a system that seems to be looking to selling ads by advertisers on such a large collection of blogs. I am not sure what advertiser would be willing to have their ads displayed on such a wide range of blogs that are currently out there. To me it reminds me a little of some of the concerns that Henry raised about Volvo putting their ads on MSN Spaces Blogs.

Of course Pajamas Media might have a way of targeting relevant ads to relevant blogs and all my concerns might be completely out of order. I guess we wait and see. I’d advise readers read the documentation carefully – take your time in making a decision on this and if you proceed do so with a little caution until more information becomes available.

Update: Just noticed Paul over at BlogLogic has a post with similar conclusions – he’s waiting to see also.