Dan Gilmor notes that he is concerned about a new program called the "Silicon Valley 100" in which a marketing company identified 100 influentical silicon valley folks with plans to give us stuff in the hope of generating buzz. Dan worries whether people will disclose they got the stuff for free as part of this venture.

I certainly never had any thought of keeping it secret, and having my name in Newsweek certainly wouldn't make it easy to do so. Slashdot called it an "elitist club" but in fact, all it amounted to for me was getting an E-mail from Auren Hoffman asking if I could be put on the list and if I would mind being sent free stuff with no strings attached.

I actually at first wondered if it was a particularly clever phishing attempt. My brain is trained to be wary at notes from strangers saying, "We'll send you lots of free suff, just give us your address." :-) Back at the dawn of the internet, my e-mail address got put in a book called "E-mail addresses of the rich and famous." I was flattered for about 10 seconds until I saw all the bizarre spam I ended up getting because of it.

But I couldn't see any reason not to let them send me the stuff. My opinion certainly can't be bought so easily, and most of the people on the list are well off enough that the same applies.

So while I was planning on disclosing the background -- I am naturally skeptical and assume the people I talk to should be as well -- I don't even really have Dan's reservations about those who don't go out of their way to disclose this. As he says, the press get most of the stuff they review for free and it's just assumed. (To the credit of his arguments, this is not true of Consumer Reports, which is indeed very high integrity.)

Will this program get us to talk about products we would not have gone out and bought on our own, or talked about if we did buy them? Quite possibly. I just don't see it as so sinister, or novel. So, once I figured it wasn't a phishing scheme, I said I would give it a whorl.

And oh yeah, I'm taking the toilet seat for a second bathroom, because I already have a different brand in my master bathroom, and think in general they're cool. No idea about the one they're sending yet. Now whether Hoffman will get people to blog about their hemorrhoid problems is a different question.