B.L. Ochman wrings her hands about misquoted in Businessweek. She told a client at iFullfill to 'do something controversial' as a way to gain blog traffic, which Stephen Baker interpreted as "create a scandal." Stephen has corrected his story, and Ochman is unlikely to be harmed by this, but the exercise is almost self-defining. Ochman is likely getting big traffic from this "imbloglio" even if she never intended it that way.

Drawing a line -- making clear what your beliefs are, and what you stand for -- will often lead to public debate (like my battle with Marc Canter over the Marquiism issue, last winter). That may attract attention to a blog, at least to the degree that people care about the issue behind the controversy. But creating a controversy for the sake of becoming more well-known is shady. Even if the issue is important, the instigator is motivated purely by self-interest, and I have an almost mystical belief in the blogosphere's ability to sniff out such folks, and to ultimately reject them.