Quick thought…
Google needs to think less about lowering the relevance of blogging to curb scrapers, they need to think more about how to give us the power to remove those that are subscribed via RSS. Actually, all feed readers need to give us that option. We might then be able to make a dent in theft by feed. Just a thought- but why is it that feeders do not give us the option to see the total subscribed by list of “who is subscribed” just like wordpress does on the backend. Then we could use feeders as a measure for various things and chose to remove/block those subscribed that are only subscribed to steal. This one tiny measure would make all the difference in the world.
Benn Rosales is the Founder and CEO of The American Genius (AG), national news network. Before AG, he founded one of the first digital media strategy firms in the nation has received the Statesman Texas Social Media Award and is an Inman Innovator Award winner. He has consulted for numerous startups (both early- and late-stage), and is well known for organizing the digital community through popular offline events. He does not venture into the spotlight often, rather he believes his biggest accomplishments are the talent he recruits and develops, so he gives all credit to those he's empowered.
Jeff Brown
November 28, 2007 at 1:16 am
Oh sure, BE logical. 🙂
Todd Carpenter
November 28, 2007 at 2:44 am
I’m no lawyer, but I think there’s a huge opportunity opportunity to build a class action lawsuit against Google. They encourage RSS feed theft by offering their AdWords program, then making it far to time consuming for any one blogger to push through the red tape of getting the splogger ejected from AdWords.
Splogs could end in mere days with a simple splog flagging system, but Google would loose millions.
Benn Rosales
November 28, 2007 at 7:54 am
Call Sellsius, let’s get it on…
Yeah, logic never seems to equal reality…
Benn Rosales
November 28, 2007 at 7:57 am
Good to see you over here, Jeff…
Athol Kay
November 28, 2007 at 9:22 am
Wouldn’t solve anything. All that would mean is that fictional “gentle readers” would sign up and just cycle the feed away to the splogs instead of “megaspamXXXhot.com” signing up for the RSS feed.
Do people seriously click on Adwords at these splogs anyway? I had had Adwords on my orginial blog and no one clicked on them once. I don’t see how my butchered content suddenly turns into an Adwords goldmine for someone else.
The only time I manage to even come across them is when I’m fighting them.
Athol Kay
November 28, 2007 at 9:25 am
Oh I keep hearing about RE bloggers “spending hours a week fighting stolen content”.
We’re tiny little blogs people. If it scales with blog size, people like Scoble, PostSecret, Techcrunch would have to spend hundreds of hours a week fighting it.
I’m not sure they do that.
Benn Rosales
November 28, 2007 at 9:26 am
Well, couldn’t I still then block the gentle reader from the list? It would just be a tool to remove the automation of the insta-scrape.
As a rather confident A type male, I am beginning to get a complex- hrm… viagra or cialis…
Benn Rosales
November 28, 2007 at 10:22 am
I spend about 5 minutes a day at most, but it is increasing furiously when I factor in we’ve only been live for about 47 days.
Athol Kay
November 28, 2007 at 11:32 am
But thats the my point Benn. Unless you’re willing to check out every person that gets your RSS feed, anyone could be a sock puppet siphoning off the feed.
How would I know that a “Benn Rosales” was the real BR getting my feed? Or a “Hotgrl25” could just as easily be a 25 y/o party girl looking for a first home as a balant spammer.
I also suspect that if people reading the feed have to hand over personal information to a blogger to get the feed, then some readers won’t subscribe.
Teresa Boardman
November 28, 2007 at 6:35 pm
It happened to me again last week. someone taking my whole blog via feed for a splog. Took me all week to make it go away. Would have been nice to cut them off.
Benn Rosales
November 28, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Athol, your point is valid, and the fluffy bunnies can scrape away.