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Avoiding A Sploggers Arms Race
By Dan Morrill
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-12-21
Bloggers are confronting the idea that sploggers are ripping content, and posting it on their own Adsense laden web sites.
The question facing bloggers is do they go the way of RIAA/MPAA and sue the world, or do they take advantage of the idea, and work with the idea of back links, and learn to work with sploggers. While I think we should do things to minimize the damage that unattributed copying leads to, getting into an arms race with sploggers is just a form of ego stroking. What we should all be focused on is providing value that others can't easily copy. There is something to be said about the conversation that authors bring to the table. Content is cheap but personality can't be as easily ripped off. All I can hope for is that we don't get so up in arms with the sploggers that we start sounding like the music industry. Wouldn't that be ironic? Source: How to Split an Atom What is interesting is that this is something faced by all bloggers, sploggers steal content, as atom said, this is what they do. That is a reality that all bloggers face, and that is something that as a community we should look at and work on how to keep personality involved in the process.
It is easy to rip off content; it is harder to rip off the look, feel, and personality behind those blogs. While syndication also pays little, if anything at all, if we take a look at the raw numbers provided by Techcrunch, we all stand a pretty good chance of getting at least something out of having our content used in ways that we didn't intend.
Realistically the numbers presented by Techcrunch are bad, but also good, for those sites that gave backlinks that equates to google page rank, the realistic idea of money from Adsense, well it is not the greatest way to make money. Sploggers will not get sponsors, and that is where money is in blogging. If you are doing site reviews and customer product reviews, that feeds into the splog and gives more coverage for the product or web site. In all, like any other ecosystem, there are good bits and bad bits that happen with people ripping content using what ever tool they choose to use.
While it is one thing to complain, sploggers using content, with or without backlinks makes for an interesting argument, and while there is a lot of splogging going on, they are mashups of many sites, personality, context and joy does not come through, it keeps things interesting, and something that bloggers need to come to terms with.
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About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.
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