… just like the ones the retailers used to have! (come on, sing along, you know the tune!)

The holiday season is upon us — it comes earlier every year — and this year, thanks to the sour economy and double-digit unemployment retailers are nervously trying to get people to buy “stuff”. One of the ways they get you to buy this “stuff” is to disguise so-called gift guides and “hot item” stories as news. This trend started right around 1999 or so, and in the past decade retailers have found that they don’t need to write the so-called news articles anymore, the “news” sites will do it for them. Why you may ask? It’s all about the $$$.

Websites and online news sources quickly discovered that there was gold in those gift guides. Click gold that is. Through referral partnerships (whereby the merchant pays the referring website a percentage of the sale) and pay-per-click (the website gets a few pennies each time the story is displayed, or a link clicked) the money rolls in 24×7. Why report on any real news at all when you can post faux-news and collect that click gold?

Case in point, let’s take a look at MSNBC. They have been rolling out the gift guides for some time, but today I happened upon one called “Gifts for the hardcore techies” filed under science and technology news. Thank goodness there wasn’t any hard science news to report on instead — you know things like the radiation leak at Three Mile Island that happened yesterday or something like that.

A quick read of this gift guide leads me to ask two questions:

• Did anyone bother to tell MSNBC that we’re in the worst economic downturn since the Depression?
• How much money are they earning off this one?

So let’s take a look at what gifts they “recommend” we run out and buy our geek friends.  I’m sure they have personally used and tested each of these, right?  And by used and tested I mean for more than 30 minutes.

First on the list is the Android phone from Motorola — the Driod.  This will only set you back $199, but it also requires a 2-year contract.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t care how good a friend they are, I’m not going to sign into a two year contract for a phone for them.  What if they already have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile phone and love it?  This one sounds fishy right out of the gate.

So the phone is out, but hey they have a lot more “recommendations”.  You can get your friend a $1,800 laptop (I wish I had friends like that) or for a measely $2,000 you can get them a plasma TV.  Geez, I got to start hanging out with some better friends — I usually just get a free lunch or a card.  I feel like I’ve been cheated all these years!

Let’s just hope you don’t have a lot of friends who are into tech, otherwise you are going to have to ask Uncle Sam for your own personal bailout by the time you get done going down the shopping list that MSNBC and their “tech writer” have put together.  The cheapest thing on the list is an overpriced 2GB “designer” USB drive for $24.99 (which can be found for less than $9 as of this writing on Bing’s shopping site).

I don’t know what just upsets me more.  The fact that a news site is passing this kind of nonsense off as “news” (especially science and technology news) to fatten up their coffers (every product on the store had a link at where you could click off and buy it — click gold!) or that apparently they think that the average person on the street going to rush out and buy their friends gifts that cost more than a mortgage payment (or two, or three!)

Perhaps instead you can invite your friend out to a nice, long lunch or a special night on the town.  Maybe you could get a group of friends together and treat them to a movie and popcorn (ok, so I know that one can be pricey!); or give them all a batch of homemade cookies and fudge to enjoy.  Don’t fall for the hype that comes out this time a year — and don’t get sucked into the mindset that you have to buy expensive gifts for family and friends.  The best gifts I ever got cost less than $10.

If you still feel this burning need to spend money might I suggest you consider donating a few bucks to a food pantry or other charitable organization.  In fact, I know of a Food Pantry where I live that could really use some help and appreciates whatever small donation you can give.  And no, I don’t get any click gold whenever you click on that link.

Of course you’ll never see MSNBC put something like that into their “gift guide”.  No $$$$ — no coverage.  That’s just the way these guides work nowadays.  Buyer/Clicker beware.

Tags: charity, christmas, gifts, scam