blogs Archive

Yesterday we took a look at two paid posts from British Airways run through the Izea SocialSpark program. One of the comments I made was around how the paid disclosure is referenced. Izea required that the paid post badge be added to the bottom of the post. My suggestion for clarity was to add a clear notice that the post is paid/sponsored at the top of the post.

Last night I received an email from Izea founder Ted Murphy that basically addressed my suggestion. It was perfect timing as Izea launched their updated disclosure requirements earlier in the day. You can read their disclosure update announcement on the Izea blog. They are calling the update a “sandwich disclosure”. You can see their sandwich image below. Basically they now require their network of paid bloggers to disclose at the top and bottom of each post that the content is sponsored/paid. I am glad to see this change – let’s hope they can enforce it.

My only suggestion is around how they handle the disclosure technically. The required content is a block of HTML. Why not switch it to a simple Javascript include so that it can be changed/adapted at a global level going forward. If a change needs to be made, it can be handled in one Javascript include rather than on each individual post. I can’t wait to see this change rolled out on the paid blogger’s blogs.

Izea notes that their system checks for the disclosure messages and rejects any posts that don’t include the required notations.

– I wonder which part of the sandwich is the real opinion part :)

I’ve flown on British Airways three times and all three flights went well. The last time on British Airways was in 2006 and was a short hop from Venice to London and I remember the crew making the trip smooth for someone who really doesn’t enjoy flying. So it was a shock to learn that an airline that has a good reputation is buying reviews and paid posts. I decided to take a look at two posts, one from former tech blogger Meghan Asha and the other from her NonSociety partner Jordan Reid.

You can read the posting on SocialSpark (that’s Izea’s posting service) where British Airlines outlines what they require to be included in the post. The paid post provides for $15 in earnings although I believe some Izea posters make more than what is listed.

It’s interesting that the posts from Jordan and Meghan basically follow the required script from British Airways exactly. Is that where the “real opinion” comes from? One requirement is that the post is more than 200 words; Meghan’s comes in below that at 186 words. Both bloggers provide a small button to note that the post is paid although it is at the bottom of the post. I know Izea founder Ted Murphy talks about the importance of disclosure is his network’s paid posts which is a good thing. One change I’d like to see is that the button is moved to the top and clear language is added to the top of every post noting that the post is paid. You may never even see the button on the two blogs because of the non-traditional layout that the NonSociety site employs.

Continue reading “Just What Did British Airways Buy?” »

Last month, I was one of the startups that attended an event in NYC which offered a chance for startups to meet the tech press of NYC. While I was there I started to think about an idea that might help the startups by helping each other. I’d like to share a rough sketch of the concept and would ask for your feedback if the idea has any merit.

The concept is pretty simple…a startup blog exchange. Nearly every startup I visit either for CN coverage, requests for assistance or URL verification at my startup has a blog. Startup Ticker is a great place to find all of the blog posts in one place. We run the ST ticker on the right menu of CN.

Instead of an aggregator, what I am proposing is a blog exchange where each startup blog includes a post from another startup on their blog. To make it simple, let’s assume there were three blogs in the exchange – they might exchange a post once a month in the following fashion:

• Blog A guest posts on Blog C
• Blog B guest posts on Blog A
• Blog C guest posts on Blog B

For this concept to work, we would need enough blogs in the exchange network to make sure that there is a good variety. I guess we would need some sort of categorization system as well. My initial thought is that the guest posts must be non-promotional but they should include a note about the author and his or her startup.

Continue reading “Request for Feedback: Startup Blog Exchange Concept” »

Remember Friendfeed? The ultimate sharing service that was going to beat Twitter and reach the mainstream in a big way?

Web trending service Compete shows Friendfeed down nearly 30% in September with 750,000 U.S. unique visitors.  This is down from just over 1 million unique visitors in August 2009.

Former Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang noted this past weekend, “To be honest, Friendfeed doesn’t have the same appeal it used to post-FB acquisition. I’ll just cut my losses and use Facebook instead.” Robert Scoble, the most popular Friendfeed user, is now using Twitter’s favorites feature to share content. Consultant Louis Gray appears to be using Google Reader to share content he finds interesting. I am unsure if the actual Friendfeed interaction usage for Robert or Louis has dropped.

These days I find myself only loading Friendfeed a couple of times a day. The service seems to load and react slower than pre-acquisition. I receive nearly zero interaction on my shares, feed posts and comments. The ability to drum up a conversation certainly has diminished post-acquisition. Why is this? If the service wasn’t acquired, would the level of interaction still be high? It is interesting to look at how quickly the early adopters packed up their carriages and started the horses after the Facebook acquisition was announced.

Continue reading “Anyone Still Using Friendfeed?” »

Earlier today we learned that company database service TradeVibes was acquired by tech blog VentureBeat. Last year Duncan Riley provided a comparison of TradeVibes and competitor Crunchbase which is run by tech blog Techcrunch. TradeVibes has been rebranded and is now called VentureBeat Profiles. Riley noted today that the acquisition story was pitched as a competitor to Techcrunch.

When I read the acquisition announcement, I immediately thought about the tech blogs that use TradeVibes to power their company directories. When TradeVibes launched it seemed many of the popular startup tech blogs created partnerships with TradeVibes. I can only assume that a good bit of the traffic and attention with regards to TradeVibes came from these same partnerships.

Here are a few of the tech blogs that use TradeVibes/VentureBeat Profiles:

• Mashable – “MashCoInfo“
• Readwriteweb – “ReadWriteWeb Companies”
• Inquisitr – “Qbase“

Will the tech blogs currently using TradeVibes remain onboard that the service is owned by a “rival”? Could it usher in a new level of partnership between all of the TradeVibes powered blogs? Or will the blogs leave the service? The next couple of months should be interesting in the tech blogging space.

This evening I did my twice-weekly check to see if any of my WordPress blogs have been exploited and what do you know…CenterNetworks has been exploited. I was checking every day but moved it to twice a week checks after the last security patch for WordPress that moved the blog to 2.8.4. The exploit took place last night as far as I can tell and has already been indexed in Google so there goes my traffic and earnings.

When the “big hacker” event happened earlier this month, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg noted, “The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.” As of this evening, I can only assume his promise no longer stands valid.

I can’t tell whether the exploits are coming through WordPress or my host, Rackspace. Rackspace always says it’s on the WordPress side. I am happy to provide whatever I can to WordPress to help them figure out what happened and I can only hope that eventually they get this fixed. Rackspace personnel called me this evening and noted that the permissions are all set correctly on the server. If it’s something on my end, I’d like to know that as well.

Update Midnight: Rackspace is now running a XSS checker on this site.

Update 4:30pm Saturday: Rackspace is now saying that they believe someone logged into CN and manually changed the template file. They are supposed to be sending over some logs soon.

Update: 8pm Saturday: I’ve received the log files – unfortunately they don’t show much beyond someone editing the footer include. If someone from WordPress would like the files, please contact me.

Each and every time that my WordPress sites are exploited and/or hacked,  I seriously regret moving away from Drupal where in over three years I wasn’t hacked once.

Related: The Good, The Bad and The Exploited – My Move from Drupal to WordPress

Blogging service Zemanta has announced the launch of their “Balloons” service. Zemanta’s goal is to bring together relevant databases and help enhance content across the Web and in email. They use a variety of databases including Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia and Last.fm.

Zemanta Balloons are similar to what Snap offers — you can see an example below. If you are using Zemanta on your blog, you can add the balloons option. This allows readers to see a sample of the content behind the link before the reader clicks on the link. Zemanta notes that the content comes from, “the openly licensed Freebase database and content from YouTube, Google Maps and MusicBrainz, as well as millions of articles from Freebase contributors.”

As for the technology behind the balloons Zemanta notes, “the code underpinning Balloons is open source and built on Common Tag architecture, the open tagging format – developed by Zemanta, Freebase, Yahoo!, AdaptiveBlue, and others that aims to make content more connected, discoverable and engaging.”

On the Zemanta Balloons test page, one of the links provides content from Wikipedia and a link to Amazon for the product. While I don’t see an affiliate code in the link, it could be a way for Zemanta to generate revenue from the Balloons functionality.

One interesting note – in IE7 if you start a video inside one of the balloons and then mouse away, the video keeps playing and the only remedy is to close the tab or browser.

Related: Our full Zemanta coverage.