SHILL
- A person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating
- A person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.
- verb. To work as a shill: He shills for a large casino.
- To advertise or promote (a product) as or in the manner of a huckster; hustle
Accept? Why would Google offer to pay you? “Other” payment, because international airline fares are, in fact, considered a form of payment. Jeff Jarvis, according to Jeff Jarvis, gets his travel paid for to conferences in major cities all over the globe by Google, Inc. He laughs this declaration off every time he is cornered into disclosing this truth. He regards it as an irrelevant fact. He is mistakenly caught up in the need to mention this detail as if he were one of the people who could be corrupted. The disclosure section of his blog has barely been updated since July 2005.
What about his jobs?
Host of “This Week in Google.”
Author of “What Would Google Do?”
Author of “Public Parts: How Sharing….Improves…..and Live.”
Director-Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY
Lecturer on all topics related to his books.
His entire livelihood is tied up in this company and we are supposed to believe this doesn’t affect his opinions? Does it matter that the money for the PR stints comes from an intermediary and not directly from his friends Sergey and Larry? It is human nature to love that which feeds and sustains us. He may not even realize it, the man is of average intelligence. He just lives in NY and somehow got a professorship.
Howard Stern fans, who don’t particularly know what Google is, berate him as a Google Shill after his appearances on that program. The comments on Jarvis’ blog are filled with accusations of impropriety, although he chuckles them all away. His Twitter stream is inundated with cries of “shill” every time he opens his mouth. He often dismisses these accusations preemptively. He generally has the sense to know he is a shill so he will ask fans not to send him letters calling him a shill, he makes this plea under the illusion that he is speaking to the Google-hating fringe.