Wired has an interesting story about RealNetworks and its stealth bloggers. RealNetworks serves up the live feeds from CBS's Big Brother House and apparently pays bloggers to write about what they see. According to the Wired article, Real pays 3 independent bloggers to write about the antics seen on the pay only feed and has an in house blogger. Lori, the author of Silly Hamsters blog, said Real "pay(s) me a certain amount of money to cover the live feeds, and I can write what I want to write. I'm not told what to write; my opinion is my opinion only,". She was approached by RealNetworks after having posted a series of posts on her personal blog. I find the practice a little deceptive if the bloggers aren't disclosing their association openly on their blog, even if they were open in response to the wired questions.
