Apr
15
Meme 13 - it’s a scraper blog
April 15, 2008 |
As I wrote in my ‘thoughts’ post this afternoon (via Steven Hodson’s post about it), I just don’t get the purpose of Meme13 - a site that is meant to track the posts of the last 13 new blogs that appeared on the Techmeme Leaderboard.
As Tony Hung points out, it’s not just pretty useless, it’s also nothing but a scraper blog:
What does is the fact that — irrespective of the engine behind it (I mean, it could be monkeys skimming the Techmeme leaderboard, for all that I understand about how it could be coded) — Meme13 is simply pulling feeds and republishing them all.
Like any good ol’ scraper blog.
Now, perhaps Rogers wasn’t around this weekend, but one of the larger memes was around Shyftr and how *IT* was pulling full feeds and republishing them (well, that was one aspect of it). I didn’t think it was such a hot idea, and others didn’t as well. In fact, there may be legal ramifications for republishing RSS feeds that two professionals (one lawyer, one consultant) weighed in on.
In the Shyftr discussion, I took the side of Shyftr because I think they create some value around our feeds - but Meme13 does nothing of that sort. It’s just a straight-up scraper. It takes the full feed - mashes it up with 12 other blogs and then publishes that feed. If there is one redeeming factor in this, it is that they at least give credit to the original author - unlike most scraper blogs.
As I’m writing this, I feel somewhat hypocritical, as just a few days ago, I said that you can go ahead and use my content in anyway you want. At that time (and I still feel this way) I didn’t think Shyftr was crossing any lines because it does create value around our feeds.
Maybe it is because Meme13 just feels ‘dirtier.’ Because it’s a straight-up blog, it’s going to get indexed by Google as such and will bring readers to the site instead of the original blog. Because most RSS readers with comments sit behind a login, they are not going to be indexed by the search engines in this way.
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Its interesting where that line is for all of us.
Seems like for you is in where the value is created; Meme13 will argue that its “curating” a special series of blogs for you to read, dynamically updated to keep up with one of the most popular tech-blogging benchmarks there is (my words, not his).
Isn’t that of any importance?
I admit it’s something I’m still sorting out in my head - maybe I have to stick to my line and say I’m okay with it because of the ‘curating’ aspect, but somehow this seems to cross a line because of the SEO aspects that come with it…
[…] More discussion on Meme13 at - DeepJiveInterests, ReadWriteWeb, BlogHerald, Winextra, Mathew Ingram, SheGeeks, TechDirt and The Last Podcast. […]
What confuses me about Meme 13 is this. If you wanted to “discover” bloggers from the lower end of TechMeme couldn’t you simply visit TechMeme and look at the bottom of the leaderboard? It’s like someone releasing a service called “Page 4″ and you give it a search terms and it gives you “Page 4 of Google results”. But that’s a minor thing…
This is major, to me: I would like to know how services like Yahoo! Pipes and AideRSS have come out of this weeks entire mess unscathed?? Can we see some fairness around here? Where is the REAL implication for the corporate bloggers income? In services like Shyftr and Meme13 who try to at least build awareness of the content and the source (neither one attempts to even APPEAR as though they own or otherwise have any authority over the content, it’s all about getting people in front of bloggers they will love to read/subscribe to)?? Or in a service like Yahoo! Pipes that allows anyone to “mashup” a web-service or RSS feed… including just the nodes they want, for what they want… we’re talking attribution stripped, content co-mingled with competitor content, links back to you potentially removed along with your logo/image for brand identity??
I just want the blogosphere to be careful. We are quick to react and slow to research. Shyftr, Meme13… these aren’t your enemies. These are on YOUR side… wanting to get exposure for YOU. Yahoo! Pipes encourages people to use their service to dismantle, disengage, and disenfranchise bloggers. Yet not one blogger has brought them into question regarding this mess. (And if someone has, I have not found them YET because we are in desperate need of “social” services around RSS… like Shyftr is!!! See the irony here?) So anyway… I would like to see bloggers with passion (Like Mr. Hung) start to focus some attention on the REAL problems… the Pipes, the Aides, etc. The people who actually ENCOURAGE feed tampering.
FYI, TechMacro.com (mentioned in your post) now shows only excerpts of feeds but have 2 options for our readers.
1. Go to original post (we always give BIG link back)
2. Read the post directly in the site (in an IFRAME)
I personally think full feed is the best thing in blogsphere and that is one of good reasons why your blogs have grown up so far.