Network of sploggers
Posted by scoop on November 30th, 2006 in Business Blogging, Splogs, Tips, Uncategorized |
Look at Head Lemur, Allan Herrell’s sidebar for this button.
Still on the topic of sploggers, the head lemur, Allan Herrell, has been writing about his experience with a particular splogging network. He has been writing about a particular blogging network, actually. As he pointed out in Splogger John Bransford, Chronic News and the head lemur:
John Bransford has not contacted me either as an individual, owner of ChronicNews.com, Phoenixsnews.com or any other entity to obtain permission to republish my material on his network of splogs. In every case that permission is denied now and until the heat death of the universe.
Allan Herrell also made sure that on his sidebar, there is the button that says “Some Rights Reserved.” I suppose that if you are mainly someone who uses a blog reader for personal purposes, you wouldn’t bother with that. However, if you are someone who likes aggregating material for your ‘network’ you would have to think again. And again. And again.
Upon reading such blog entries, it made me wonder. What makes up a blogging network? Who defines it? How would we even verify such things? What about those who aspire to either become part of a blogging network or a blog ‘overlord’ so to speak?
Maybe those questions would be more on the entire philosophy of blogging and also the business-side of blogging. Those questions are rather general and ask the rationale behind things. If you are a problogger, you know that there are some things that you can do and cannot do — a matter of ethics, as some people would say. You know that there are limits to how much freedom you can have and how much freedom you can also give to people in terms of access to your blog.
In any case, just think about it. Have you seen people who put up networks of splogs? Is there a pattern? Have you become a ‘part’ of that blogging network? If you are apparently part of one, what will you do? Allan Herrell tried to get in touch with the splog network overlord and he really tried to do something about it, as you can see the chronicles on his blog. Bloggers really seemed concerned about their content appearing on splogs because it potentially could damage one’s reputation. Imagine if they associate your blog with a splog — your credibility would be at stake.
For those who would like to make a network of blogs:
If you want individual bloggers to join your network, scraping off their feeds is definitely not the way to do it. It is really so much better that you contact them and find out if they are interested in joining you. You better make sure that you give a win-win situation so that the bloggers will know you are not taking advantage of them by either abusing them (using their content to benefit you) and that you are sincere in your offer.
For individual bloggers whose content appear on splogs:
Though you might not be able to track down each of those sploggers but the moment you do find out your content is being scraped, you could do several things:
- Email the splogger about it and talk about it.
- Blog about your case (like what Allan Herrell did, somewhat recently).
- Track down the splogger’s account on Google Adsense and DMCA it (as suggested by Jonathan Bailey).
