For a few days now, the latest Internet goof-up being linked by news sites and IM'ers alike has been focused on Target.com. Since early last week, people have been finding questionable products featured on Target's website. As links to these pages make their way around the Internet, the blogosphere was quick with its commentary. However, did some bloggers jump the gun when criticizing Target?

Do bloggers influence other entities? Do their breaking news stories accomplish the intended goal? Discuss at WebProWorld.

The pages that brought attention to Target.com were for products that some might not expect to see available from a family-oriented business. One such page intimated that Target.com was offering illegal drugs, while another had more of an adult theme associated with it. Links to these pages have been showing up on a number of popular blogs, like BoingBoing.net; and news sites, like Fark.com.

Because word travels around the Internet at an incredible rate, it wasn't long before a number of notable blogs began taking Target to task for featuring this type of content. WebProNews contributor and blogger extraordinaire Steve Rubel had this comment about Target's oversight, "Dear Target, a PR crisis is brewing for your company in the blogosphere. Please tell me you're listening." Steve's blog entry was not the only one either.

The reason why Target's online inventory may contain questionable content is because Amazon.com powers Target's site. This means that two companies share databases, and therefore, inventory. These "questionable" products appearing on Target.com are a result of Amazon.com's inventory (the product in the "illegal drugs" link above is a book). A better explanation appears on NoahBrier.com, courtesy of Adam Kalsey:

"Apparently this isn't a test data problem. It's a problem with not enough product details and the way the ecommerce system's back end works. The item in question is a book that Amazon carries, but Amazon has no details on the book. Since Target.com is managed by Amazon, many of the products sold by Amazon can be forced to show in the Target.com design; just tack the ASIN from Amazon onto the Target URL. For instance, you buy Isaac Mizrahi cashmere gloves from Target.com even though your local Target [doesn't] carry this item.

When the book is shown on Amazon, it's obvious that Amazon is selling a book entitled ‘Marijuana,' but when shown through Target's interface it just looks like they're selling pot."

Blogger Jeremy Zawondy took issue with what he perceived as jumping the gun and devoted a blog entry toward explaining his position. The entry, called Are bloggers really that dumb, says, "It's a stupid mistake. Are we too screwed up to realize that companies are composed of people and that people sometimes make mistakes?" Jeremy continued with, "I suspect that if someone bothered to tell them about the problem instead of using this as an opportunity to blame their PR folks for not reading blogs, they probably would have fixed it and gone on with life. Making fun of them on your blog is all well and good, but calling this a crisis strikes me as being over the top."

This led to a bigger disagreement across quite a few blogs over the influence of the blogosphere. Some believe, with some justification, that bloggers do have an effect on company procedure. This train of thought would be supported by the blogs started by the search engines. Since it's inception, the MSN Search Blog has been used as a good source of public feedback for the company's search engineers.

However, there are those believe that the blogosphere has no influence. This is evident by many of the comments accompanying Steve Rubel's blog entry. Concerning Target.com, Robert Scoble, commenting on Steve's site, had this to say:

"With every hour that a representative of Target doesn't come here or any of the other blogs involved at this point it just demonstrates they don't know how to do searches on their company name on PubSub, Feedster, or Technorati and that they haven't dedicated anyone to watch what people are saying about them online."

Although, the fact that they haven't reinforces the belief that bloggers don't have as much influence as they think, according to the people who disagree with Steve and Robert. How much influence do you think bloggers have?


View All Articles by Chris Richardson

As far as what blogging is, are you referring to where someone can go into a blogsite and write anything they want right? If that is the case, then I think bloggers have an influence when people like the media want them to. For example, and this is a step aside from the issue at hand, the war in Iraq. Military personnel were posting stories and pictures never heard of in the news such as CNN. When word got out that the content on some of these blog sites was not in line with what was reported on the news, they were told not to continue there activities, or were shutdown. Originally, these blogs served as a communication from the soldier to the family member of that soldier, as a way to keep in touch. Being overseas at one point myself, I know that sometimes the telephone systems in third world countries is not the greatest. What originally began is an innocent keep in touch gesture from one person to another, escalated into an all out silence campaign. Yes, I know some were meant to totally disrepute the current events as what they were being reported as. However, every American has the right to freedom of speech, unless, you are the one defending that right. If the Federal Government can step in and shut down a few blogs, and tell you not to post anymore of them, then I definitely think blogs influence companies actions to a degree. Depending on what the extent of the subject is, and how demoralizing or degrading, as well as the size of the company related to the subject, then yes, I think bloggers influence more than what people can see on the surface. For the most part, any story, blog or not, always has a point of origination, from that point it spreads on and on and on. I think why some people dont take blogging seriously yet is because it is not a widely accepted form of communication. If the SEC were to inspect your office and check your emails, your files, etc, you think they would check to see if you had written any blogs? Probably not. Because I think with a blog being a point of origin, and people not using them widespread as a form of communication, there are only a few communities who use them as a source of information. As with anyone on the internet, anyone can post anything, and its not nessecarily true or false. I can say my mother is 6 foot 5 inches, she might be, but who is to know true from false? Only if you have other evidence on hand, i.e photos, such as on the soldiers in Iraq blogs, URLs to Target. I think that is where the real issue lies, not the blog itself, but what the blog leads to, and what other evidence is on that blog.

I was mostly referring to exactly that Bloggers can write anything they want in there blogs without thinking how much they could be liable. Like That article gives you a original link where a blog was Saying Target.com has marijuana for sale which is illegal. Just a slight Example of how Bloggers could get into legal trouble posting stuff like that.

Would that then constitute slander? But isnt slander blatently telling false information to achieve some sort of reward? The bloggers here I dont think would have received any type of financial incentive. Its like gossip, you hear one thing about someone, it gets passed along, and the story gets construed at the end. Again, at the point of origin, is when the original copy may have been altered. "Jerry sells seashells down by the seashore," can be mistaken as "Garry steals seashells down by the seashore." All of a sudden, Garry is a criminal. In this case, Target was selling the seashells, and Amazon was Garry. The stories got messed up along the way, and two innocent parties got mixed up in an innocent mistake. Garry and Jerry were never criminals, they only got in a little trouble because someone didnt take the time to look into the situation.

What I find truly histerical here is not that Tar^get' has questionable items on their online inventory is the hipocrisy of the people who are critical of Target's items. I mean, were those items found? They must have made searches for them... Shame on target for carrying them? I say shame on you pervs for looking them up!