Let Them Eat Cake

I want to support bloggers, really I do. After all, their time is money and their contributions are valuable. They feed the content beast - never mind that we also need them in PR circles.

Like the HuffPost bloggers, I contribute to a number of online publications - MediaPost and Mobile Marketer being the most prominent - and I know that my columns attract decent attention most of the time. And like the HuffPost bloggers, I also entered into an "unwritten" agreement with these publications that my contributions would go unpaid. In return, I would receive increased recognition, credibility and traffic to my site.

Sounds like a rather fair and attractive deal, doesn’t it?

It was for the Huffpost blogger army (who very happily contributed and blogged and posted for FREE), until Ms. Huffington scored a massive payola from AOL earlier this year. Since then, the unpaid contributors have decided that their arrangement wasn’t such an attractive and good deal after all.

So what’s the first thing you do in the United States when you think you’ve been untreated fairly - or change your mind, or find an ambulance-chasing lawyer? File a class action law-suit of course!

Whether the unpaid bloggers “revolt” and $195million class-action lawsuit will gain any more traction remains to be seen. I personally find it ridiculous that the bloggers feel they are entitled to part of AOL’s payment for the Huffington Post. Ego-tripping more like.

Whilst I haven’t heard Arianna scream out “let them eat cake,” yet, sounds to me like they want their cake and to eat it as well.

Good luck with that.