Now You, Too, Can Be a Spammer for Only US$19.99

Filed Under Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 98 Comments

Don’t Just Sit There, Make More!!

I just had a most disturbing Skype conversation with Darren about an awful new service called Buy Blog Comments (buyblogcomments.com) offered by a person calling himself Jon Waraas (Jonwaraas.com).

Yes, folks, it’s true!!! For as little as $19.99 you, too, can be a spammer to targeted blogs!!!

Buy Blog Comments.com offers
100 Blog Comments Only $19.99!
500 Blog Comments Only $99.99!
1000 Blog Comments Only $199.99!

Finally you can purchase quality blog comments without the stress of finding someone to write the comments, or buying some high priced automated program. We specialize in selling blog comments for blackhatters who are looking for good quality backlinks. We have three different types of packages, you can either buy 100 blog comments, 500 blog comments, or 1000 blog comments at a time. . . .

This concept isn’t new to us. We’ve run into astrospammers around Net Neutrality, but it’s never been advertised quite such a in-your-face, out-in-the-open, damn-the-ethics-and-the good-guys manner.

We talked about the ethics of paid commenting last October in Bloggy Question 26, Do You Wish to Comment? and we sure did.

Who Is This Guy?

As Sundance would have said to Butch Cassidy . . . “Who is this guy?” Just go to Google. He pretty much tells you himself.

Sept. 2006 . . . In an interview 10 months ago, at basementguru, Jon Waraas reported his age as 19 and said . . .

I believe in making a website for the user, not the bot. What SEO is is tweaking the bot into giving you a better ranking. I donâ€™t believe in doing that. Make a high quality website with lots of original content and the bots will follow.

That was then.

Not sure of the date . . . On ReviewME, his profile says he’s an “unethical swearing marketeer.” US$500 per review.

Jan. 2007 . . . He joined 7 months ago. Isn’t he a lovely girl?

Last night . . . at jonwaraas.com/seo-service-launches/

Well im off to bed, I cant wait to wake up and see all the hait mail/comments (exaggeration)

This morning . . . at Buy Blog Comments. com . . .

We currently have 6 people working with me (Jon waraas) that speak english really well. We dont use people who cant even speak english. It is important to have well written blog comments so that they wont get deleted by the blogger.

How considerate!

What Can We Do?

Darren has a fine discussion and is asking the legal question . . .

Iâ€™d like to hear from those with a legal background comment on the legality of such a business. I know that of late spammers have been getting taken to court for sending unsolicited emails – Iâ€™d be interested to know what the legal standing would be of a company who so openly offers to leave spam comments on someone elseâ€™s web property.

I’d like to know too.

Even more . . . What can we do?

Some lines we can’t let bad guys cross.
One is the threshold to our house.

We can’t let folks drop trash in our kitchen
to make their property have more value.

We can’t rely on other folks to clean up
stuff bad guys bring across our doorways.

End of story.

They’re OUR blogs those comments will be landing on.

Let Mr. Waraass.com know.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Blog Herald: Flying Cars Are Unlikely

Filed Under SOB Business, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 6 Comments

Did They Promise You Flying Cars Too?

When I first got to the Internet, I unconsciously tried to give everything a place, north, south, east, west. Being visual, I still find myself, thinking about peopleâ€™s blogs and websites on a map of the world in my head. But thatâ€™s only half of the story.

Like any 3-D company â€” building and people â€” that I might drive to, the Internet is a place, but itâ€™s also the people that live, work, and play every day here.

However, we have to remember that the two Internets â€” the place and the people â€” donâ€™t sit on a world map or follow 3-D rules as the two companies in the physical world we are used to. Doc Searls says it well in his notes on the wrap up summary by Karim Lekhani at the Internet & Society 2007 Conference.

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Congratulations on the Tag Page at Technorati! Is it Our Turn Now?

Filed Under Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 49 Comments

The Exciting New Tag Pages Go Live Today!

When you go to Technorati this morning — oh you’re one who’s stopped going? — well go on over. They have exciting news! David Sifry has announced the new and updated Tag Pages in honor of the second anniversary of Technorati tags. At the Technorati weblog, where he makes the announcement, David explains the beauty of both the tag pages and the value of tags.

And, with the launch of our new Tag Pages, we’ve improved the way that you can check out the Live Web, too. A Technorati Tag Page shows you everything in the known universe (blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, music, people) tagged with your topic or interests, all in one place. [ . . . ]

The beauty of tags is that theyâ€™re metadata: data about data. What does that mean? Tags actually describe their subject, as opposed to, say, keywords, which just occur within them.

Is It Our Turn Now?

I’m delighted with your new Tag Pages, Dave. Seems every time I turn around there’s another new feature or an improved whistle to one. I bet it feels grand to be growing and winning technology awards. I just wonder how many customers asked for this one, because the Technorati users that I know have more basic things at the top of their wishlist.

Every morning and throughout the day, I play a game I call Technorati Roulette. I get links on posts, and I check in. There’s no predictability to whether my link count will go up, go down, or even change. I might have the fun of seeing my archive chronology suddenly rearrange time in some alien fashion.

Every time Technorati does a reset, upgrade, or anything new, I lose 20 or more links, just like that! I’ve learned to expect it every weekend. It’s a fact of Technorati life.

You might say that’s because Technorati only tracks 6 months of links. That argument doesn’t work. That might work if my archives went back 6 months but they only go back 60 days!! And there was no weekend in the history of this blog that I took on as many links as I’ve been losing in one fell swoop. So that math doesn’t work.

Things at Technorati I have been broken since five months before I wrote Dear Niall Kennedy and David Sifry at Technorati. That would be about 16 months now.

Here are my problems today:
Janice does her best to address what’s going on. The engineers look. The issues remain. There are plenty of emails with screenshots about the problems. Sorry to do this out loud, but behind the scenes hasn’t worked. Maybe this way some folks reading will feel they are not alone.

This is my link archive page — Question: What happened to the links between 20 hours and 4 days ago? Answer: They’re scattered among my other links throughout my link archive chronology. (Click to enlarge.)
I still have rogue links that repeat and repeat through my archives. I’ve discussed this one and sent screenshots too often to detail it here. Page through my link archive chronology, and you will see four or five of the same links crop up over and over.
Random Example: Page 61 of my link archives lists my links from 29 days ago — except for the two entries that are from 24 days ago. Many/most archive pages have one or two entries out of chronology like that.
Somewhere around link archive page 115, EVERY ARCHIVE PAGE REPEATS. I HAVE NO LINKS OLDER THAN 60 DAYS. I HAVE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR MONTHS.

That’s just me though. What about the folks I know who haven’t been indexed for over 100 days? What about the folks who can’t get indexed at all? What about the folks who can’t claim their blogs? How important is an improved Tag Page to them?

David, I’m sorry to rain on your parade. But c’mon. Where are you looking? It’s our content that you’re indexing. We’re stakeholders in what you do.

Sooner or later, someone like Blog Pulse is going to provide a service that works and folks will go there. We’ll go there because it’s more reliable than Technorati roulette and because it’s more fun than writing this kind of post to a guy that I really like.

When is it our turn? When is our wishlist important enough?

– ME “Liz” Strauss

~~UPDATE: WHEN I PUBLISHED THIS POST I DROPPED 10 MORE LINKS. I CAN’T QUIT LAUGHING ABOUT THE TIMING OF THAT.~~

UPDATE: THANKS DAVID, JANICE, AND THE ENGINEERING TEAM FOR RESTORING MY LINK COUNT. I APPRECIATE IT. :p

Metrics: Who Are We and How Are We Feeling?

Filed Under Audience, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 4 Comments

Information as Art: A New Look at Stats

In August of 2005, the We Feel Fine project began harvesting data from weblogs. In this metrics of feelings, the system scans the Internet every few minutes for new blog posts sentences that include the phrases, I feel and I am feeling. Whenever possible it also gathers from the blog additional identifying data: the age, gender, and geographical location of the blogger who wrote the sentence.

The database now contains several million human feelings and grows by 15,000+ daily.

Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar have organized the data into “six movements” — each artful, entrancing, and compelling in it’s presentation of humanity. They describe We Feel Fine in this way.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles’ properties â€“ color, size, shape, opacity â€“ indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. . . .

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what’s on our blogs, what’s in our hearts, what’s in our minds.

Click the image below to go explore how we’re feeling.

The people who wrote these sentences are our readers. They are also us.

What do you think of how we’re feeling today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 12-22-06

Filed Under Business Book, Strategy, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 12 Comments

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.