DISQUS

Bring it on..... I'll be the first to host the fingerprint database of Homeland Security and TSA officials.......

Kevin

Gopi...

I hate web comments that you can only leave one blog so I summarize my thoughts on my blog and post a link on the source blog.

Kevin

No way. I don't buy it. Either Markus is a liar or a fool:

http://feedblog.org/2008/01/13/markus-frind-fou...

If you're making $10M on 10 hours a week and 2-4 servers WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU TELL THE NY TIMES ABOUT IT?

I'd keep my mouth shut and keep raking in the bucks.

Just send them an invoice for $1k and spend it on beer..... :)

Hey......

What error did you get... I'll check our logs. Shouldn't have happened. I think we're not picking up the Plaxo thing because we're in the middle of a BIG upgrade right now. A lot more hardware... stay tuned :)

Kevin

Well THAT's Digg bait :)

I'm torn on JetBlue......

One good thing about David Neeleman is that he has ADD (like me) and embraces it as an asset. What makes me mad is that ADD is classified as a 'disorder' which I think is exactly the opposite.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2002/2002-1...

However, JetBlue ALSO turned over passenger flight travel information to the US government without a warrant:

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60489,...

"JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided 5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with help from the Transportation Security Administration."

.... which is crap!

Sweet.... yeah. we just enabled some new code. We're working on some cool new stuff :)

Kevin

Robert.

Do you realize how many different types of spam there are? This is just one specific type.

There are hundreds of types of spam each with potential algorithms which can be used to defeat them.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. spending hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars a year to defeat spam. From additional hardware, to wasted engineering time, to mad users, it all adds up.

We can an are blogging PPP spam from Tailrank but it costs us money. We spend about 20% of our engineer and hardware resources on blocking spam. We're a small company and there are *plenty* of things I'd rather spend this cash on like hiring a few more engineers.

What really scares me about PPP is that now these scum are coming out of their caves and asking VCs to invest millions of dollars and way too many people are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and play devils advocate just because they have cash.

Anyway.. I'm done arguing about it. Half of the reason for me commenting on this was to help protect you from losing a ton of credibility in the tech industry. The other half is to prevent PPP from getting any more attention.

I still think they'll implode though.

http://www.feedblog.org/2007/01/and_so_the_bubb...

... is clear evidence :)

Kevin

Robert.

You're not an engineer. While it's easy for YOU to see that a story is about PayPerPost it's NOT that easy for a robot to see if a story is sponsored by a search engine.

Do you use the string "Pay Per Post" or "PayPerPost" ? What if there's a typo? What if the blogger simply doesn't disclose (this is actually happening all the time right now btw even though disclosure is apparently a requirement).

Is there a URL of all PPP campaigns? There are a few listed on the site but I do NOT believe there's a public URL available.

Also.... do search engines have to write code to walk around every SPAM company? What about Text Link Ads? What about all the PPP competitors that are coming out of the shadows?

While Google does generally do a decent job here the reason these companies are resorting to spam is that it WORKS! Google isn't perfect and so these guys are trying to take advantage of this opportunity to make a buck - Internet be damned!

And even if Google WERE perfect there's still Yahoo and MSN that they can spam.

You haven't done your research here. This is fine of course because it's not your job. The point I'm trying to make is that it's probably NOT a good idea to accept an invitation to speak from a company that's highly controversial to say the least without knowing why people are mad at them.

It's pretty easy to be a marketing genius if you have millions in VC money to burn and lack any form of ethics.

All this press is bad press. I've never seen a company hated as much by the blogosphere since, well, Microsoft.

Robert.

It *is* Blackhat SEO.

They're *trying* to spam Google. Any link exchange which would object to using rel=nofollow IS a spammer.

Spamming == blackhat SEO.

I mean god. In the beginning they didn't even want to have disclosure!

They're also hurting bloggers. Most of these bloggers aren't going to be aware that their Google juice is going to be damaged when they participate in PPP spam campaigns. Microsoft has already come out and said that if they catch you selling links they'll blacklist your blog.

These guys are the Sith lords of the blogosphere! Don't convert to the dark side!

For the record.... I'm ALL for advertising but it has to be behind a link firewall which ISN'T search engine spam.

Kevin

BTW. As an aside...

You haven't resorted to the Dvorak link bait method have you?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg

Ug.

Robert,

PPP is black hat SEO. It's like calling a spamming SEO. You're taking an unethical activity and white washing it by classifying it with a whitehat activity.

These guys ruin the Internet for the rest of us.

Dude..... you've lost some points in my book.

This isn't about advertising. This is about spam.

These guys are spammers! If they were concerned about advertising they would allow bloggers to use rel="nofollow"....

This is a bit like doing to a conference hosted by a convicted rapist and then keynoting on the rights of rape victims.

Either way you legitimize them.

You've jumped the shark dude. :-/ Come back from the dark side!

I need a Redundant Array of Inexpensive DAVEs..........

:)

Odd timing but Tailrank just pushed video memetracking tonight in our 2.1 release....

http://blog.tailrank.com/2006/12/tailrank_21_no...

which you can see here:

http://video.tailrank.com

Pete.... ping me and I'll give you beta access to our next release. Actually I'll just ping you as soon as its available :)

Well Tailrank is indexing WinExtra:

http://tailrank.com/1005691/Technorati-not-the-...

And it's a part of our index.

The main reason here is that we have an open index which grows over time.

Really?

Even if this money were going to feed children for 6 months? You'd let them die?

This isn't a strawman. You could easily put adsense on Craiglist in a place that isn't annoying an make more than $10M per year.

Kevin

Also..... link baiting by controversy. :)

I totally think that in hindsight a Firefox logo would have been funnier/cooler...

Also...

"But, did you leave a comment on their blogs saying 'I have a PR problem and a legal problem for you that I need to get through to someone about?'"

Huh? There's no way you would get a serious response.

I'm actually curious about though. In about a month after this thing has blown over I'm going to pick a random MS blog and post that comment and see what happens.

Would be an interesting experiment to see if MS legal reviews their own blogs.

One problem is figuring out who to even call. If Niall wanted to receive compensation for the use of his image it would have taken months.

Now of course he could have done a DMCA takedown. That would have been interesting.

The point I'm trying to make is that if MS's IP were "stolen" they would have been on you in a second but when the reverse is true it's David vs. Goliath and a bit harder to seek justice.

Good thing I don't take many pictures of MS employees. :)

Kevin

Hey Pete.

Two small issues.

Tailrank has had a mobile version since we launched. Guess there's no news about a product we already had ;)... it's at

m.tailrank.com

Also. We reward bloggers that scoop the story even if an A-list blogger dominates. We try to be as meritocratic as possible.

For the record Diggdot.us is MORE than welcome to index Tailrank. We certainly won't be sending them a C&D anytime soon. :)

Hey Pete.

We're actually working on some next gen KILLER stuff for Tailrank.

I'll hook you up with an early beta in a couple of weeks.

Speaking of which.. we just opened up a beta program so that we could get earlier feedback.

http://www.feedblog.org/2006/11/want_to_be_in_t...

For FAST BREAKING news most memetrackers will fall down on the job I think.