So how many tech bloggers realised that they were "briefed" on Google just implementing the Adobe Flash search SDK which has been around for a while, and it doesn't make flash SEO friendly. - Andy Beard via Bookmarklet
"FriendFeed, founded just eight months ago, has not had time yet to prove whether it can be a mass market or financial success but it has soared in the estimation of the Valley’s digerati to rank as Google’s most significant offspring to date." - Bret Taylor
Friendfeed is my favorite application - period. NOTHING compares... awesomely disruptive with amazing potential!! My internal *innovation lightbulb* glows really bright when I get close to Friendfeed!! - Susan Beebe
Interesting article. I'd probably move wholesale to FriendFeed.... except the people I communicate with are largely on Twitter and not here. Life's too short to set up imaginary friends on FF. Any way I can pull in my entire Twitter feed here? - David Sim
I'm with David on that one. I set up some of my Twitter friends as Imaginary to test it out (and I love the feature). However, I am too lazy to set all of them up. - Yolanda
FriendFeed has potential, no doubt. Now if only I could get some of my friends to sign up! - Rahul Das via twhirl
Friend Feed was talked about on Windows Weekly and Twit this week!! - Paul
The best part of FF is the clean UI. This is more important than featureset. Remember, Google.com search and craigslist -- two very simple clean user interfaces. - Maneesh Arora
Notice the rise in MSM coverage for FriendFeed, sure sign this is about to hit the public's imagination - Duncan Riley
FF definitely wins with its API and responsiveness, as well as a vibrant community and ability to generate lots of conversations - Wil
Congratulations to Bret and company for this continuing very well deserved accolades. - Alex Hammer
As well as the fact that a bug that constrains you to the last 11 pages of your activity? - Yuvi
There is massive potential in FF but there should be more tools for filtering conversations and content so that it would be more easy find what is important. Any change for keyword based tracking lists (like in del.icio.us)? - Daniel Schildt
@Earle Martin - The bug has been acknowledged and a fix is said to be "in the works" - for about 2 months now :( - Yuvi
I don't use Google Groups or email for discussions. If they want my input they have to use FriendFeed. Imagine that. I'm more committed to their tool than they are? Unreal. - Dave Winer
I knew there as something wrong with FF and this is it -- they don't jump in with both feet -- they dip a toe in here and there. It's nice to post links to articles and baby pics (congrats!) and trip pics (ditto) but put your person into this space. Then it'll really go somewhere. - Dave Winer
BTW the Twitter guys do the same thing. They are not among the power users of Twitter. - Dave Winer
Dave, I agree with you 100%. The commitment they show in using their own product is vital. And, a proper user profile page will be very nice. - Dewald Pretorius
I've had the same thought about a user profile page. I'm reading something and I wonder who the person is. Click on their name and -- nothing. Funny thing is that some reporters are starting to read FriendFeed, so if they want to have influence over their press they're going to have to show up here. Otherwise we're going to control their message. Heh. :-) - Dave Winer
@Dave Winer: I disagree - with pretty much every aspect you state here :) Google Groups and the availability of standard ff functionality precede friendfeed rooms by years for the former service and something around half a year for the latter. Deriving any conclusions concerning committment to friendfeed from the usage of groups or email - or any other service that might be better suitable for the specific task - is rather subjective and not comprehensible. - Mustafa K. Isik
Actually Dave has a point - if content producers are meant to go to where the conversation is, without an easy way to find it all, then the same should be true for Friendfeed bug reports and feature requests. You can do searches based upon topics, but try searching based upon a permalink of a blog post - Andy Beard
I don't think rooms are the answer either. How I would do it -- add a command to the popup menu under More (above) that says -> Feedback to FF. Click on a comment and choose the command. Then it goes where ever they want it to go to be in their queue. If they want to respond, they do so in place, where the discussion is taking place. I've been doing this for a LONG time Mustafa, you have to come to the users, making them come to you -- you'll miss the good stuff (as they are). - Dave Winer
@Dewald Pretorius, @Dave Winer: What better, more precise and comprehensive profile information, beyond the full activity stream plus links to all kinds of services an individual uses and produces content on, could you possibly expect? I like that friendfeed makes for a platform that is not about people fleshing out a dedicated profile page and telling you how great they are - instead you get the chance to make up your own mind via a very authentic activity stream. - Mustafa K. Isik
[continued] Concerning a quick way to get an impression of who an ff user is and where his/her interests lie, a computed tag cloud (based on shared items, comments, liked items) could prove useful. - Mustafa K. Isik
The only issue FF would run into using their own system for feedback is the restriction on entry and comment length. However, they could easily lift those restrictions in a special room or on entries designated as feedback, feature requests, etc. There really is no excuse for them to not use their own system. - Dewald Pretorius
@Dave: "You have to come to the users, making them come to you -- you'll miss the good stuff (as they are)." Great observation. - Hutch Carpenter
Agree with Dave, would like to see profile pages on FF. A quick snapshot sort of page that gives you an idea of who the person is. Flickr does a pretty good job at this actually and could be a good model for what a profile page should look like. Profile pages should not limit bio length and should allow html. - Thomas Hawk
Each users page, especially their recent activity, is a great snapshot of who they are, I think. When I subscribe to someone, I look at those pages to make sure what I see is interesting. I think that's the best kind of a "profile" on a person you can get. - Jordan Hofker
You don't need a profile page on Friend Feed, you have access to the users profiles in the services on the right hand side. And therefore multiple profiles. - Toby Graham
Jordan, what you say is true, but what you see is a snapshot of a time-based "profile", which could give you different impressions of the same person on different days. Depends on what the person's FF feed pulled in on that day. A static profile area would alleviate that problem. - Dewald Pretorius
I kinda get the feeling that early on they've been sitting back and letting the community develop by itself, rather than leading the way. Which I totally agree with. - Shey
Full disclosure time: I gently rolled my eyes when I heard about FriendFeed, but I have to say I'm a huge fan now, if that kind of thing can be measured by how much time I spend on it! - Jeff Eddings
You test out a lot of these social/feed applications and just the odd one or two have that easy fit like a glove feel to them which means you use them day in day out - google reader was one and friendfeed is another... - David W
I suppose you don't need WYSIWYG as you have that in your email client, and your first email to them becomes a blog post. It also has replies to comments by email - Andy Beard
Here's an idea: reply to stuff that arrives in your email and CC it directly to a blog at posterous. - Andy Roberts
Some impressive stats from Microsoft
From the page: "Microsoft.com Powered by Hyper-V
One of our more challenging systems from a server subsystem utilization perspective is microsoft.com[microsoft.com] . The site handles 15,000 requests per second, 1.2 billion page views per month, and 280M worldwide unique users per month as well as supporting ~5000 content contributors from within the company. This site has close to 300GB of content consisting of some seven million individual files on each server. Due to this scale and the variety of applications hosted, the site heavily exercises all of the major subsystems - memory, CPU, network, and file I/O â" on each server. Based on the load characteristics and the fact that this site is a testing ground for early adoption of Microsoft technology, we expected the production load of microsoft.com[microsoft.com] to provide a great test for Hyper-V." - Andy Beard
This will be another platform that should be added to viral friend scripts, but only using APIs - any service not using provided APIs from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for contacts should be condemned. - Andy Beard via Bookmarklet
A story of a couple who's son, now 20 months old, has what's called, Leukodystrophy, but instead of complaining about it , Matt (the father) is going to get his hands dirty by entering an ironman in Switzerland on July 13th, to raise money for The Myelin Project and European Leukodystrophy Association. - Andy Beard
From the page: "Holy optimization Batman! Are search geeks no longer relevant in the world of SEO? Nothing of the sort my caped companion in ranking. Search geeks are still highly relevant and likely will be as long as search engines exist. You might even say without them all your optimization efforts could fail entirely." - Andy Beard
From the page: "Legal broadband subscription services that permit file sharing may appear on the market by the year's end, according to music industry sources - after government intervention brought both music suppliers and ISPs to the table." - Andy Beard
Matt is going to be swimming 3.8 km, 180km cycling and a 42.2 km run to raise money for charity. Son Joseph suffers from a condition known as Leukodystrophy - Andy Beard
Thanks for the stumble, the more raise awareness on this, the better :) - Kevin Dixie
New WordPress plugin for caching using memcached - it is not as fast as wp-Super-Cache but does perform better on sites with frequently updated pages.
Used on WP.com so I assume it is WPMU compatible too - Andy Beard
I'm just playing with it now but it looks like its a good aggregation hub for "updates" on your blogs and what you are doing and thinking. It has promise. - Chris Herbert
Actually I use friendfeed and twitter for discussion based on who I'm talking with. If I know their stream is noisy (like Robert's) than FriendFeed leaves the comment out longer so he can see it. Twitter is better for following large groups and a back channel for a smaller subset. Friendfeed is far more open-ended. - Andrew Feinberg
Anything with a well implemented public API isn't really a silo IMO. - J. Phil
It's not a silo. Anyone can pull (just about all, from what I've seen) the data out via the API. It just needs more apps built on the API. - J. McConnell
It is both an aggregator and a silo which encourages scattered conversations - I am unlikely to never come back to this conversation after I leave the comment, the RSS feed doesn't even seem to work http://friendfeed.com/e/57de4d... - Andy Beard
The "like" feature allows me to track a conversation if I'm interested in following it. - Chris Herbert
This problem isn't an inherent one. FriendFeed could fix this relatively easily by allowing the starter of the conversation to link to another FF post. E.g. Robert, since he started both this and the other conversation you commented on, could "link" the two together and then FF could intelligently splice the two conversations together. - J. McConnell
A third party could provide similar behavior via the API by noticing, e.g., that Robert posted a link to this conversation in the middle of another, or by following some other convention. However, it would be nice for FF to provide something like this so all users and API clients could benefit from the spliced coversation. - J. McConnell
I think FriendFeed is not intended to be used as a silo. As mentioned before by previous commenters, it's an agregator with a feel of a discussion forum/mailing list with "karma point"-like feature. - imabonehead
J. McConnell certainly it is possible, there has been talk of clustering before, but it would need to cluster all the stumbles, Diggs, shares etc - it would be great to stumble something, and then discover a whole linked conversation from many sources - Andy Beard
Andy Beard, good to hear that it has been discussed. This reminds me that I did hear mention of it when the FF founders were on the Gillmor Gang. Their argument for not having it yet, I believe, was that the separate conversations are a feature in that they allow separate social groups to interact more naturally, openly, without feeling that their comments are completely public. - J. McConnell
However, it seems that there is support for that kind of private interaction already with rooms. As long as room conversations about a URL aren't clustered with other conversations about a URL, I would think everyone would be happy. Either way, allowing a poster, like Robert in this case, to explicitly link two entries seems to be different and much more conservative than algorithmic clustering. - J. McConnell
It's funny that at a cocktail party there's tons of conversations that happen between small groups in a semi-public manner, but that we don't want to allow that to happen here. - Robert Scoble
FF = aggregator. I find FF far more useful than Twitter. - Bill Sodeman via fftogo
Don't think it is a Silo. But eventually Its all about the intent and the usage. - Parth Awasthi
A silo is something that allows things in but not out, so technically FF is mostly a silo right now. I prefer to think of it as an aggregator. - Sally Church
Sally: if this is a silo how can Google get into it and index it? Also, how can you pull these conversations into RSS? Hmmm. - Robert Scoble
Robert, cocktail party conversations are (typically) not recorded, archived, searchable, etc. Also, the number of people that can overhear them are usually limited to the 5 or so people in the immediate vicinity. On FF, the number of people that can "overhear" is essentially limitless. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for heavy, intelligent clustering on FF and much open discourse. I had to point out the difference here, though. I can understand and respect some people's desire for more privacy. - J. McConnell
J.: you gotta come to the cocktail parties I go to. Almost everything is recorded. :-) - Robert Scoble
Robert and J. McConnell, you can delete your comment if you want. Hey, cocktail party...who's mixing drinks?! - Chris Herbert
Robert: Google can index it because it's essentially an open, not closed silo. I was thinking more of the commenting on items coming in - they don't always go back to the source, so if you're not on FF you could miss a whole load of discussions on your original post/item. For me, it's semantics - I like both Twitter and FF for different reasons. - Sally Church
Robert, I'd love to go to some of the cocktail parties you go to :) I did have you, specifically, in mind when I threw in the "typically". I knew you'd say that, haha! - J. McConnell via fftogo
Chris Herbert, a) not from Google's cache, b) the privacy-sensitive people I have in mind don't want to delete their comments, they just want to limit the scope of their comments. And to be clear, these are hypothetical people I'm talking about, so maybe the argument isn't worth making. - J. McConnell via fftogo
just check this http://quotably.com/scobleizer and compare the conversation and the amount of tweets vs. ff. i cant see a significant one, if any. - kosmar
What some people call noise, others call content. I know lots and lots of folks who consider all the A-list tech blog stuff "noise" and wonder where the "real" content is on the web as a whole. Perspective is crucial. - Soulhuntre
Robert the FF guys (Paul I think it was) also brought out a similar arguement about watching a film with friends and then discussing it after - that conversation is somewhere linked to his blog post - Andy Beard
But then I have seen threads of 15+ comments on someone's stumble of one of my posts, and no comments on the original post. Robert "liked" one of my ePerks articles, but that was in the social media room posted by Igor - Andy Beard
I have contemplated using a FF widget or Wordpress Plugin on my blog to display FF conversations, but those will only pick up a fraction of the conversation around an article. It might be better to create a custom search feed for each article - Andy Beard
Try to do THAT on Twitter. And, anyway, Twitter sees far more conversation particulation than you get here on FriendFeed, where interesting conversations join up into clusters. Also, a conversation here lasts hours. Over on Twitter? The half-life of a conversation is only six minutes. Why? Because interesting stuff just gets buried so fast. - Robert Scoble
Not silo in terms of technology, but channel preference and uneven RSS/API usage make it silo in reality. - Brian Carter
yes you can monitor a few threads that way, but the only way I can monitor conversations just about my own posts here on friendfeed is to use search - Andy Beard
As an example I am using advanced search just to pick up comments I might have missed regarding eperks, but it is time consuming http://friendfeed.com/search?q... - Andy Beard
very nice point about the half life of a conversation on twitter. I find that unless I use the GUI (ie use a client like twhirl), the half life is pretty similar - Shivanand Velmurugan
It would be great if an author can group a bunch of twitter messages into 1 conversation ( or everyone starts using friendfeed instead :) ) - Shivanand Velmurugan
Agreeing w/ @andybeard- FF has silos w/in one conversation... at least as big an issue as whether it's a silo amongst SM sites. - Brian Carter
Almost as bad is when an organizer includes your name as "invited speaker" on draft programme that circulates to others, before you even see it. In my experience, too common esp here in Europe. - Neville Hobson
How do you know it wasn't a simple mistake made by a junior person and which wasn't checked? - Dennis Howlett via twhirl
Dennis, are you serious? No conference material gets published and distributed unless it has final approval from the head people. This was intentional. - Gregory Pittman via twhirl
This happened with Blogworld last year and @techcrunch - Andy Beard
Business wise it just does not make sense and will be busted even before registration has ended. :( - Nicole Simon
it's a true sign of fame... why don't you send them a bill? - mark ivey
I'm just curious if you'll reveal the name the conference or the organizer - Jennifer Van Grove via twhirl
Hmm maybe you blogging about it is the response they are hoping for? There is no such thing as bad publicity? - Bob Ngu via twhirl
While I can understand the problem if the organization has not indicated that you have not confirmed participation on their agenda, why would this be a problem if organizers have in fact indicated that you've been *invited*. That is a mere statement of fact (assuming they have invited you and you have not already declined said invitation.) I understand the possibilities of abuse, but given how slow some people are to agree to or decline a speaking commitment, the organizers may have equally valid concerns - Jill O'Neill
That is total crap... i can't believe someone would do that to you... I'd make some calls to that group asap. - Susan Beebe
Bob has a good point in his reply...maybe Blogging about it is a bad idea afterall? hmmm - Susan Beebe
No; some random blogger who was shared twice in RSSmeme and didn't want to be. I deleted her from the site and told her to turn of full content feeds for her blog if she didn't want it in RSSmeme and explained how it all works (most people don't understand that it is through Google Reader *shared* items, they think I'm stealing). - Benjamin Golub
Benjamin: do you feel someone has the "right" to request their content be forever removed from RSSmeme without having to change the way their feed is set up? - Robert Seidman
I told her it wouldn't be forever. Basically I just wanted her off my back so I deleted the entries but made sure she knew that if someone shares it again there is nothing stopping it from coming back. It's up to her now. - Benjamin Golub
I didn't think you republished full feeds? (BTW great service). On the page now, all I see are extracts, which is fair use. Could you share any more details? - Duncan Riley
Give me a break... does she disable my right-click on her blog too...? - Kenneth LeFebvre
Duncan; the RSS feeds are republished in full and you can click on "Preview: none some all" to set you preview level (to no content, some content which is the default, or all content). OR you can click on "read more of this story" under each story in the "Explore" section to dynamically load the full content. - Benjamin Golub
Oh NO! Is there anything we can do to help? - w0nk0
That's odd. What's her complaint? Why would being on RSSmeme bug her? It's only extra attention for her post, not taking away page views. - Hutch Carpenter
That bites but glad I found out about your service looks great. - Mark Forman
Ah...the Shyftr type of complaint maybe? Didn't even know about full feed. Is she an ad-supported blogger? - Hutch Carpenter
Benjamin, then I'm afraid you don't have a leg to stand on. You're reprinting content in full without permission and for commercial use. The Google Reader argument doesn't work: this is public, for profit reprinting. Have you ever seen an ad on GoogReader? There's a very good reason you haven't. - Duncan Riley
Duncan; so I'd be safe if I disable full content then? - Benjamin Golub via fftogo
If there are no ads, how is this a problem? Does that mean Feedly can be sued, too? Any site that acts as an RSS reader, for that matter... - Rahsheen Porter
Duncan: Whatnow? Google Reader would be illegal if they put ads in? there's a simple case to be made here that if people create a syndication feed for their site there's implicit permission for people to read the content of that feed in another context, monetized or not. To say otherwise would be to deny the legality of any feed reader that either carries advertising or can be purchased. - Kevin Fox
And Kevin's response, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what I've been saying for months. - Louis Gray
Kevin, your opinion is that it's implicit. Obviously, Benjamin shares your opinion. But I don't think it will be over with until it's fact, not opinion. My opinion is that if *I* am trying to make money off my content anything that can attain a higher page rank and allow my content to rank higher on their site than my own site on a Google search is explicitly NOT ok. Admittedly realistically this excludes 99% of actual blogs, but still....OK, now what? :-) - Robert Seidman
Kevin. Bollocks + thats the exact same argument that has been used by spam bloggers for years. There has always been a difference between private use and public for commercial use. Could you walk into Borders, photocopy an entire book then republish it for profit? seriously? But you could walk into a library and take a photocopy of a page from a book and if you didn't republish that you'd usually be ok - Duncan Riley
Benjamin, absolutely. The extracts are fair use. Reprinting the full content is a DMCA waiting to happen. Take a look at the Topix story if you need some context/ history is terms of what you can and can't print, as they've been to court before. - Duncan Riley
My other suggestion: ask for full reprint rights. I'm actually sure many people wouldn't mind, but you can't presume that those rights exist by default because they don't. - Duncan Riley
@Kevin, so by that line of thinking, the billions of spam blogs (splogs) are okay. I'm not okay with that. - Jason Kaneshiro
+1 for FF producing actionable conversation that could quickly help an entrepreneur. What's this ... crowd-solving? - AJ Kohn
RSSmeme is displaying no full content for the time being; I might change this after I have time to research my rights. For now it's dinner time! - Benjamin Golub
What does pagerank have to do with the law? Saying you put a full-content feed online but will pursue legal action on anyone who puts that content into a feed reader is like saying you published a website but people aren't allowed to read it in a browser that costs money. - Kevin Fox
Rahsheen: in feedly, we are exploring a different path. A combination of: we offer an API for the publisher of the content to surface their ads next to their content (and it will be only their ads next to their content). The same API will allow them to also turn off the full display of their content in feedly. We are going starting next week to put a forum together to talk to publishers and better understand their needs and see if this combination is a good thing or a bad thing. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Feedly - good move. Suddenly the perception on the blogger's part goes from "they're copying my content" to "they're helping me monetize." That's one avenue for RSSmeme to explore. - Jason Kaneshiro
Kevin let's assume I, site a.) want to make money on my site. Let's say site b.) republishes my work in full. Because of the way pagerank works site b.) ranks higher in Google for my work than my own site and gets more traffic to "my" content than I would. I'm not saying it's evil, but it hardly seems "fair". - Robert Seidman
Jason: I tend to agree with Kevin... in spite of the spam blogs, which I also despise. There's real, measurable value added by such sites as RSSMeme and Google Reader, that is worth being rewarded. The publisher of an RSS feed always has the option to include advertising within the feed itself, if they don't consider the publicity their feed is getting to be remuneration enough. They can also lock down their feed with a username/password and provide credentials to their properly licensed users, if they want - Kenneth LeFebvre
I just want to clear up what I believe should be obvious but isn't being expressed. You all believe that RSSMeme and the Google Reader Shared page have similar issues. Google Reader itself is a tool that allows you to read content published on the web. It has more in common with a Browser than it does a Billboard. Google Reader's Shared Page is a republishing of content, full or abbreviated. I believe Kevin is talking about Google Reader and the folks on the other side are talking about the Shared Page. - Andrew Burd
Consider - what's the bigger challenge - bringing about a sea change of copyright perception in the blogosphere, or adjust the startup's business model to fit the perception - whether it's misguided, or not? It may depend on how much time the startup has before they must start turning a profit - what battles are worth fighting. - Jason Kaneshiro
I have nothing to add to the discussion WRT whether or not its legal to reprint feeds aside from the fact that I see nothing wrong with it. If you publish a feed for syndication, expect the thing to be syndicated.<nitpick>@Louis FriendFeed is by no means a walled garden. Nobody has to sign up to see this conversation. </nitpick> - Erica Baker
@Erica, I know. it's a garden with a very small hedge. :-) - Louis Gray
@Jason, whether it's a "bigger challenge" shouldn't be the rallying cry. You shouldn't settle on principle because it's the easy way out. If you have a strong opinion on this, you should make it known, and then keep making it known, and hope someone has the opportunity to try and convince you otherwise, or you for them. - Louis Gray
Saw Louis Gray's post on this. I personally publish full feeds, knowing full well that they can end up anywhere (and they have ended up at a lot of bizarre linkbait sites), but I chalk that up to the cost of conversing. - Ontario Emperor
I can't for the life of me figure out what this is all about...? If you wanna be on the Net and publish stuff and enable feeds on it, expect it to be shared and "fed upon" far and wide. Otherwise build a static website without RSS feeds. Heat. Kitchen. and all that. Dont these people know how the intartubes work *gawd* Cry babies over content being fed upon, then stay off the net FFS!!! - Mario Olckers
Mario: Don't you agree that there is a difference between consuming content through a feed reader and republishing the content on the net? You and others may be willing to allow fully republished articles with ads but you shouldn't expect everyone else feel the same. The internet doesn't "work" if no one can afford to publish their content because of leeches. - Andrew Burd
@Andrew, playing devil's advocate, but why should we pay for content at all? Why should content necessarily be something that producers can "afford to publish" or not? Is the cost of publishing your hosting plan and bandwidth? Does the fact that you pay for those things as a necessity to publish entitle you to expect others to pay you back for what you offer them? - Lindsay Donaghe
The scary part is that at some point (not this time), this will probably tested in court. The scarier part is that, on numerous occasions, I've seen judges rule the wrong way (without any doubt) when it comes to the Internet. It goes on and it's a waste of time and money because of the international nature of the Internet. If you don't want to republish, lose the feed. Agree totally with Kevin - Implicit plays here. - Charlie Anzman
Lindsay: Someone's paying for content delivery whether it is you personally or not. Yes that cost is hosting and bandwidth. Those are semi-fixed costs that don't include man-hours. Having said that... I don't think a content re-publisher owes you anything. As they shouldn't be doing a full content re-post for profit at all. Granted you should allow a content generator to get the ad credit for practical purposes, it is also an ethical issue... - Andrew Burd
continued... It just seems icky to me that someone would make any money off of someone else's copyrighted content. - Andrew Burd
A related problem here is that in publishing content online, there is no build-in structure or "tag" that indicates the terms or license under which the content is being published. Creative Commons is trying to get to this, but right now all it is, is a link on your page. How many sites like rssmeme currently notice the cc link at the bottem of my blog, process the cc version I am linking too, and adapt their republishing behaviour accordingly, to take the cc "rules" into account. For example, I would be dissapointed if rssmeme -didn't- republish my content in full, but -with- attribution... so this goes both ways too. - Robert Kloosterhuis via fftogo
paying for content, getting paid to create content, both trending to zero ... separately, the page rank game is what has produced scraping and splogging ... - gregory lent
When publishing an RSS feed, there is an implied license to use that feed within the context of an RSS reader. Claiming otherwise would be like making a Word document available and suing Microsoft for "republishing" when someone views that document in Word. However, what there is arguably NOT an implied license for is taking that feed, and republishing it on another web site (commerical gain doesn't matter, although it would lead to punitive fines if it ever went to court). - Ian Betteridge
This goes back more than 18 months when I first attacked rampant sharing in Google reader, or later demonstrated how Facebook status updates can be shared. Last I checked Google Reader was still modifying shared content, stripping out usage information when items were shared. I don't mind it, I even encourage people to do it with my (public) content. - Andy Beard
@duncan - Speaking of Topix, there's a story out about how they've aligned with 6 content providers. Of course, in this case, the parties have agreed to the information sharing... - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
I prefer to take a resigned approach to this. If you publish content on the web, having it stolen and used for monetization is just part of the game. It's not like I have a limited supply of the post I've written, and I'm going to run out of stock if it's stolen. Trying to prevent content theft often costs much more than actual losses incurred. I know others will disagree, but that's my approach. - Dewald Pretorius
If publishing a feed implies permission to view the contents in a feed reader, we have to decide whether a web site is a feed reader. Client vs server side is not a good distinction these days. So what's the difference between republishing and simply providing a nice UI? I've seen similar issues come down to the path the data takes, but I think that misses the point. One possible distinction is whether the user explicitly requested content from that feed. That has problems, but they have workarounds. - seth
if you don't want people to read your content, don't put it up for free on the web ... if you don't want people to read your content elsewhere than on your web page, having an rss feed is kinda stupid as that's what they're for ;) if you really want specific people to be able to read your content in an rss reader, password protect it or something. To me it just sounds like someone not paying attention to what they were doing. - imma - immaterial
From the page:-
"They need to control and manipulate the information to the public for their own special interests. That is how Mass Media has always worked through history. Garbage in Garbage out! Mass Media feeds sensationalism and at times reports some Half Backed Truth calling it news!" - Andy Beard
“If a reader writes you and asks your opinion on a book you have advertised on Amazon on your site, is it rude for you to politely suggest that they buy through your site, if they decide to buy at all?”
Word it in such a way explaining that they are affiliate adverts, and your site earns money when people buy through those links - that then becomes affiliate disclosure - Andy Beard
I think it depends on how you suggest it to them. A subtle... "Hey remember if you buy it through my site, you'll help support it and keep it going. Don't feel obligated to buy the book, but if you do, etc... - Kevin C. Tofel
I agree with Kevin C and I liked his wording:) - chris shouse
Thanks guys, I used Kevin C's words almost verbatim, so thank you! - Sarah Parker
Cool! That was "affiliate wording" so my cut of your cut is 10%. ;) I'm kidding... glad to help and good luck! - Kevin C. Tofel
“I know a blog on a purchased domain is better than using free service (like wp.com or blogspot) but I can't prove it to a client. Anyone have *proof*?”
i'm not sure i agree with this generalization. the quality of the content supersedes the URL in my opinion. what i mean is a well written blog on a free service like wp.com or any other is much more likely to get traffic and results than a poorly written blog on a purchased domain. - sean808080 via twhirl
What you get by self-hosting is control. Your domain is your domain, and not matter what changes you make...even changing hosts etc. your audience are pointed to the right place. - Chris Nixon
free services always come with advertisement and restrictions on coding, but might bring you traffic via the power of community. it might take a long time for people to recognize it. as u may remember, companies hosted their "official sites" on geocities in the early internet era. now, everyone could register their own domain. moreover, off the top of my mind, seems that a self-owned domain enjoy a better ranking in search engine. - Jansen Lu
I absolutely agree with Jansen. I have certain limitations with Blogger (that stupid "blogger bar" is a big one) but I get a small share of traffic from Blogger. I assume that's people clicking on the stupid bar and seeing my site. - Joseph Z.
I should define "better" better :) I mean more for the traffic. I can prove the aesthetics aspects and I know you lose some control of your brand. But what for some it comes down to traffic. That's what I can't prove. mydomain.wordpress.com or mydomain.blogspot.com VS mydomain.com - Rob Williams
Try appealing to their sense of self-preservation. Free blog services can often delete your entire blog because of what they deem to be unsavory practices/content. You aren't 100% safe unless you own your own domain. In short, less complications in the long run. - Maki
I have almost 30K visitors (and a PR of 5) to my free.wordpress blog in less than 10 months. Since I link to it from the front page of my business website, it seems irrelevant what the actual address is, but YRMV. Of course, I didn't have professional help, just muddled through like a blind idiot in a maze. When I hire people to help me, I tend to listen to what they have to say. - Aura Mae
It's like asking to prove why company execs prefer using their own company domain emails instead of ...@gmail.com - Palin Ningthoujam
Go one better and ensure that every site is on a dedicated IP address - Bruce Clay blog some time ago stated figures on the improvement with dedicated IPs - Andy Beard
Whether you use a free service or self-host your blog, it's really an issue of branding. I would argue that a domain puts you in a better position to establish a brand that leverages social media resources to proliferate without degrading that brand. If the question is to host or not to host, Wordpress.com allows you to link a domain to your hosted blog. I don't know if the other services let you do that. The case for branding sometimes falls on deaf ears with clients who are do-it-yourself-er types. - James Kennedy
If they go with the free hosted blog, go and buy their domain for yourself. It might become more valuable in the future ;) - Chris Nixon
I want to buy a domain at some point as I don't think blogspot/wordpress carry the weight of an actual named site! - Joe Dawson
You absolutely want to own your own domain. At the least it shows you can manage your own domain and have more skills than sign up and choose theme. - Ben Parr
Great feedback everyone. Seems bottom line is #1 it's a branding issue, #2 traffic adv/disadv is undetermined. - Rob Williams
