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Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: June 17, 2008
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Why Has Keith Teare Gone Into Spam Blogging? Seriously Dumb


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Former Edgeio CEO Keith Teare has gone into the spam blogging business with new blogs that are republishing full content from most leading web 2.0 blogs (and at the time of writing The Inquisitr as well).

The blog at seriouslytech.com (no hard links from me) republishes content in full from the following sites: All Things D, arstechnica, BoomTown, Carnage4Life, Futuristic Play, Jemima Kiss, Lifehacker, Louis Gray, Mashable, Om Malik, readwriteweb, Robert Scoble, Ryan Spoon, TechCrunch, Techdirt and The Inquisitr. There are also other sites ripping even more content as well: seriouslymedia.com, seriouslymac.com, seriouslypolitics.com and seriouslywallstreet.com.

Until yesterday the SeriouslyTech site republished posts with no link back to the original site, and it was only after I mentioned this privately were links implemented to the sites featured, but even then it was only links to Feedburner feed entries, not the site itself. Notably linking to a site doesn’t grant full reprint rights to a blog despite what some in the spam blogging community like to claim.

Teare has explained to me privately the current status of the “project” and what it aims to achieve, but asked that the whole discussion remain off the record, so I cant actually print his defense (not that there could ever be a strong defense for splogging). This is not a Feedreading product like Feedly or a meme service like Onespot: at the moment it’s a WordPress blog ripping content from other people without permission and not even giving due credit back. It’s a number of blogs that are being fed into FriendFeed, that offer commenting on other people’s full content, and even goes as far as offering buttons for the splog entries to be submitted to social voting sites.

I’ve met Keith before and he’s always struck me as being a smart guy, so who ever convinced him that doing this is a good thing (he’s not doing this alone, but it’s all in his name) needs to be quickly purged. I’m sorry Keith, but I’ve gone after companies and people for far less than this (Shyftr comes to mind). What ever this site aims to be in the future, it needs to die now before you start getting the lawyer letters from the very annoyed people you are currently stealing from.



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  • Duncan

    I think I explained privately sufficiently for you to know that EVERYTHING in this article is not true.

    As you know seriously is an old - highly experimental - project that I was responsible for initiating. It remains HIGHLY experimental in investigating the concept of vertical aggregation for passion driven niche subjects.

    Secondly, I ceased to be involved in it day-to-day some time ago. It is run by several people whom I trust to understand the difference between a splog and a serious product. seriously is NOT a serious product at this stage.

    I think your post is designed to be a sensationalist link catcher, traffic bait, and not a serious post.

    You recall that I said I'd be happy to ask the team to remove any blog - yours included - that didn't want to be part of the experiment.

    You've really gone down in my estimation with this silly post.

    Keith
  • Keith
    feel free to continue spinning it which ever way you want, but ultimately you are republishing the full text of other blogs without permission. It's an experiment that includes you promoting other peoples content on this site via FF and seemingly via social sites as well. That Keith is called splogging, and it's something I've been writing about and covering since 2003 so I'm fairly well qualified in placing the label :-)
  • If the project is a vertical aggregation for niche subjects then I'd suspect that it would be published privately without public access. I assume we are just stringing together buzzwords these days?

    If there is truly a business or tech model beneath this then I would think the creators/authors of such sites would want to clear the air as much as possible before a recovery to a legit standing is impossible.
  • Keith I can see your point completely but your approach was and is all wrong. In this case Duncan was completely in the right. You are SPLOGGING because you have never approached authors FIRST and asked them and been granted permission.

    Duncan should have never ever PRIVATELY asked you to remove his blog, his job is to support the publics interest and by doing so support his site. Asking you privately for a back-channel solution would make his actions just as unethical as your experiment.

    Yes I think Keith your project is unethical!

    Also for the record your projects status as 'experimental' doesn't instantly relieve you of any ethical standards.
  • Keith: you are ABSOLUTELY in the wrong with reprinting my stuff into FriendFeed like you did here: http://friendfeed.com/e/8aeace02-5d7e-00b4-f741...

    You are definitely spamming and reusing my stuff and your reputation has gone way down. Duncan might not have gotten all the little details right, but he's absolutely right that what you are doing is nasty and is not welcomed by me.
  • I hate sites like this. I don't really care about my content getting stolen but the trackbacks are amounting to spam in my commenting system.
  • Robert
    good point. It's one thing to steal the content (which is wrong) but to take it to the next level like this site has. I'm just disappointed it's Keith involved. I'm sure someone is giving him bad advice.
  • I have seen that as well, but I've been ignoring it.

    What about Twitter sploggers?

    Check this one out: http://twitter.com/DigitalMoves
  • I am looking at DigitalMoves and I don't see how he is splogging... Louis, perhaps you could enlighten me as I am genuinely clueless.
  • Well, every post I do ends up on his Twitter feed. It's odd. I post, and then 10 minutes later, it's in his feed, tickling Summize.
  • gregory
    www.twitter.com/haikujaiku is doing the same ... write a haiku, it will appear under his name
  • guess I am not good enough to make this site :-P
  • Allen, you're welcome to take my place. Last thing I need is a duplicate content penalty while The Inquisitr is still young and without any real strong Google standing :-)
  • Well for a new site you have over 130,000 visitors according to Compete.com so I think you may not need to get too distressed. :)

    If only have 3 years working hard and slogging away on my own (mostly) at TechWinter I could have a small portion of your montly audience... Please sir :)
  • no thanks - and don't say you don't have a google standing when you are already in google news, and i am not :)
  • Allen, I can't believe it, really. How comes CN is still not on Google News? I know it took me 3 or 4 months waiting and talking to the team there but we've done that eventually. But Duncan is never stopping to surprise me with such a speedy process of getting a pretty new blog everywhere, really :)
  • Louis - While the twitter dude is 'unconventional', he is linking directly to your post. There's always gonna be scraping. It's the more serious web 'invasive' stuff that I worry about.. As for me, I'm just happy Friendfeed put in 'block'! .. and thanks to you (and Duncan) for the Findly find. Very cool.
  • Keith Teare is definitely breaking FriendFeed's usage model. See this post here: http://friendfeed.com/e/8aeace02-5d7e-00b4-f741...
  • Robert,

    I replied to your comment on the youtube article.

    FWIW, seriously sites are not splogs. There is no advertising or any attempt to monetize, there is clear attribution, the links all point to the original, the content is limited to what is in the rss feed. And anybody can opt out via email. For the record Duncan never asked me to take his content off - privately or otherwise. I have however done so after this blatant attempt to create interest in his blog amidst a fake controversy.

    If anything ever comes from the seriously project (I'm not on the team) it will be very different to what is on the site today. But what is there today is not a splog.

    Final point. I was very responsive to Duncan's emails earlier yesterday (which I will keep private), and in mid discussion he posted this idiotic piece. I'll admit, I was taken aback, and angry. So I counted to ten. Now 24 hours later, I just think he is wrong. Anybody who knows me - and Duncan does a little - would know I do not have a bad intention in my personality. It kinda sucks.

    On a bigger point - distribution of content is central to any media. Attribution and reward are of course key (no disagreement from me). Duncan seems to think the very act of aggregation is a sin. Reminds me of a lot of bad actors seeking to preserve out-of-date models.

    But maybe thats just me.....
  • You missed my point Keith. You are screwing with me on FriendFeed. I don't like it. Please stop putting my headlines into FriendFeed as your own posts. That's nasty and no one else is doing this. You are the only one and you are definitely about to get blocked there and I'm about to go nuclear too. Do you really want every blogger and FriendFeeder to hate you? Please figure out why your behavior here is pissing us off and stop it. Thanks.
  • Sorry, didn't see you replied over on the other thread and that you admitted you were making a mistake. Thanks, accepted.
  • Thanks :-)

    Keith
  • Johnny Bates
    Being experimental and being a splog are not mutually exclusive. You cast an air of mystery as if to trivialize the complaints, as being in stealth mode is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Yet the only fact remaining is that there is a site, operating under your name, republishing others' content in full.
  • with full attribution and links.
  • Duncan,

    In the vain hope that you still think I'm a nice guy, I wanted to let you know that the process that began in private 2 days ago, and spilled on to become public yesterday (where you told me what you didn't like and I tried to fix it) has continued.

    As of yesterday the following things you didn't like are no longer on the seriously sites:

    No more social bookmarking
    No more poor credit-giving. Titles and links all use the uri of the original permalink. The credit line (which was lready in place) remains, under the title.
    No more Friendfeed notifications, or comments, (I was actually using those for myself as a real-time news feed. It hadn't occurred to me that my followers were seeing it also - dumb I know, but an honest error). I turned that off and registered seriouslytech as a Twitter id. Now I am subscribed to that in order to get the same impact for myself. My friendfeed doesn't pull that subscription in. So your headlines are no longer in my FriendFeed stream.

    I hope that addresses all of your issues. If there are more I'd like to know them.

    For now I can't read Inquisitr's tech feed on seriouslytech. If you are OK with me putting it back on please let me know. I'd be happy to oblige.

    Best
    Keith
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