[credo]

>>This is not exactly nefarious, even to the severely-damaged-evil-meter version of nefarious which includes "intentionally and with forethought committing the sin of marketing."

I don't see marketing as a sin.

However, I do appreciate full disclosure and some level of honesty.

His blog post twice mentioned that it was "totally not affiliated with Starbucks.". However, if Starbucks had been paying his company for marketing, imo he would have been better off in mentioning this fact.

[corin_]

Perhaps he would have been, but remember we're looking at this with the benefit of hindsight. It's easy for us to see people debating whether this was a marketing plow and think "why did he not prove his innocence in the first place".

But if you're just having a bit of fun doing something as a hobby, it doesn't neccesarily even occur to you that people might care what your link to Starbucks is. It's quite possible that the thought process in his head was "just in case anyone knows I've done work with Starbucks in the past, I should put up disclaimers that it isn't affiliated with them so there won't be any confusion", and not thought any more about it.

[jc123]

Agree, disclosure would have been better instead of "totally not affiliated with Starbucks". I checked the page again and see "I stumbled on the idea while doing research related to my work with Mobiquity related to Broadcasting Mobile Currency." Was it there before?

[carsonm]

Yes, he stated that far before this story "broke."

[robgough]

The catch here is if he was just doing this on his own, outside of work - then not being very explicit about it being separate could get him and/or his employer in quite a bit of bother.