October 2, 2006
Our first splog
The Ethiopian blogosphere has come of age. It has its first Spam Blog (read Wikipedia definition) - in this specific case a blog that sucks in everyone else's posts, publishes them on its own site, sticks adverts next to them and reaps the rewards.
And it is not just advertising. At the bottom right there is a donations box - suggested minimum $5 - presumably so it can save up for something nice from Amazon for us in exchange for giving it all of its content.
Posted by aheavens at October 2, 2006 4:42 AM
Comments
Dear Mr Meskel Square,
Am a bit disappointed in you because am assuming you write your own content so i would have thought your able to read and understand english properly.
Now its a good thing you included a link to a Wikipedia definition because ive read the whole thing and couldnt see a connection between that definition and www.checkoutethiopia.com - I would now take my time to go through the points one by one:
"Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs or Blam!, are weblog sites which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites"
By affiliated websites i take that to mean sites owned by the same owner of checkoutethiopia.com since in the next paragraph it talks about increasing the PR of the affiliated sites - Now incase i was blind please could you point out where on the site you see sites affiliated with checkoutethiopia?
"The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites, get ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed"
Now increasing a PR to an affiliate site doesnt make no sense at all because ive never seen any webmaster promote an affiliate site to boost their PR
Getting ad impressions? - I guess that would make sense if there was an affiliate program on the page that paid per impressions - can you point out any?
Using the blog outlet as a link outlet to get new sites indexed? - Where are the links to the new sites?
"Spam blogs are a type of scraper site, where content is often nonsense or text stolen from other websites. These blogs contain an unusually high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites"
Nonsense content? I guess your saying ur content is nonsense or the articles from article directories are nonsense or the news headlines from yahoo, allinafrica.... are nonsense
Stolen text ? Hmmmmm... Since when did syndicated content or RSS feeds or articles from article directories become stolen content?
An unusually high no of links? Where? Please show me i would like to know
So u see Mr MeskelSquare, you need to get your facts right before you come out and make a post
Posted by: Check Out Ethiopia at October 2, 2006 11:44 AM
I'm actually not that bothered about exact definitions 'Check Out Ethiopia'. There are many kinds of Splogs. Yours is just one of them.
The general point is that you are placing adverts next to someone else's writing. At the end of the day, we write the content and you get the advertising revenue.
If you check the Creative Commons license on this site you will see that it allows re-use of the content for non-commercial uses. Whether you are a text book Spolg or not, you are breaking the terms of that license.
If I have misunderstood the purpose of 'Check Out Ethiopia' I will be happy to set the story straight.
If you want to read more about 'Splogs' in the way I mean them, check out this posting from Scobleizer - http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/billy-jones-notes-my-copyright-is-being-infringed-on/
Posted by: andrew at October 2, 2006 1:19 PM
The funniest part? They ripped off your post about Check Out Ethiopia being a spam blog.
Posted by: fontaine at October 2, 2006 8:43 PM