In her blog Decent Marketing, Katherine Stone takes Fast Company to task for our May 2004 article on BzzAgent and how to best harness word-of-mouth marketing.

Stone questions the possibility of mobilizing honest word of mouth and mistakenly likens BzzAgent to traditional street-team marketing, but some comments in response to her entry raise an interesting question. Can any incentive-driven word of mouth be considered honest or real? I like to think so. After all, any company working with BzzAgent runs the risk that someone won't like a restaurant or book -- and tell people so accordingly.

The key remains the quality of your product or service. What do you think?

Update: John Moore at Brand Autopsy also questions the legitimacy of BzzAgent's model.