I just re-read every word I’ve written about this subject to make sure there could be no misunderstanding. I even wrote up a new entry to further explain this (which will be published shortly). No, that entry will not mention Pubsub or Mark any more. I’ve said enough about that situation. The point has been made. However, you have raised a new concern here that I would like to explore.

I never said Pubsub, the *company* or *service* was spamming. I said what their representative, Mark, did at this specific blog in our comments section was spamming. There is a huge difference in context there, so please don’t read something that wasn’t there.

I don’t think Pubsub, the company or the service, are spammers. I think what was done in the comments are of this blog sure seemed like spam to me and was inappropriate at the least. That is what I called SPAMming.

What Wyman did during Bloggercon III is another situation where promotion of the company — whether it was intentional or not — was brought into question by at least the program coordinator, Dave Winer. I didn’t even say I thought that situation was spam. Though I thought it was definitely being in the wrong place at the wrong time talking about something to do with their service.

If you don’t think what was done in the comments area here was spam, fine, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one, but please do not think or say that I was calling their entire company or the service they provide spamming. Broken, yes, absolutely, but spam? No. I did write that their service has been spammed in the past and left broken with spam showing for months. That’s not an inference, that’s a fact, but I never said the company and/or the service were spammers.

That’s out of bounds without specific proof and not anything I ever wrote or stated anywhere at any time. If that inference was made, even in the slightest, it is 1000% wrong and not at all what was intended.

Again, I read back through the text very carefully and I see nothing that says this, or even infers this.

I would like to explore more of what is and isn’t spam in the comments area though. But we’ll do that in the new post, if you like. And if we can do it without mentioning the company or their employee any more I think that would be good. There are other examples of this involving other commenters, so we don’t have to use PubSnub any more.

Saying their engine sucks, is OK (and maybe correct). For instance, my domain [http://www.pubsub.com/site_stats.php?site=kbcafe.com] doesn’t get indexed more days than it does. I have a dozen or so blogs, how they get 0 entries when I ping them everytime, is beyond me. That’s OK, most software simply doesn’t work.

Saying they are SPAMmers, is stepping over the line. We have clear problems with SPAMming and PubSub is not one of them. Bob has expressed to me that he’s concerned about his own database being overwhelmed with bad data. Bob and PubSub are on the anti-SPAM side.

What’s strange is that most of the things you mentioned could be fixed easily. Especially the one about the BBC. I saw a number of similar A class addresses but they were not grouped together. BBC has 3-4 of their servers on that list alone.

Perhaps they WANT to track which subdomain is linked more, but then that should have been defined. Oh well.

We’re splitting hairs here but even if the comment had something tangentially to do with the topic, it didn’t comment on the subject or text at all, instead it was a pitch (paraphrasing): “hey, go check out what we did today, here’s a link:” If the topic was about PubSub or linkrank stats in general, then maybe, maybe that would have been appropriate.

At best, assuming readers en masse believe it wasn’t spam, I think the timing and placement was horribly timed and ill-advised.

As for abusive? Well, Randy I have a very low tolerance for spam, as is evidenced by numerous posts about spam over the years. I encourage any other blogger, including you, to run the tests that I described in detail with their own blogs and then rewrite my review so it actually gets somebody with a wrench to actually fix the bugs. Bottom line is the data is inaccurate and PubSub can snub the facts or fix the bugs.

To use Wyman’s words, I found it “insulting” that Mark didn’t bother to run the blog he was pitching to through their stats and compare it against the publically available data before posting his comment. I seriously doubt Mark would ever have made that post if he ran the same basic tests I did.

Would you have done so? Anyone?

BTW, wasn’t this the same Bob Wyman who Dave Winer had to tell to knock off what he believed was vendor pitching during Bloggercon III? Yup, he sure was, in the “Overload” session, readers can listen here: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail278.html

And then more battling over the situation in Dave’s “Fat Man Sings” session and summary where readers can listen here: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail287.html

Wyman: “I said nothing about my product. I did not pitch my product … I do not believe that I crossed the line … and I think it was completely inexcusable that you jumped on me.”

In Wyman’s defense, some say Winer overreacted and I even wrote about the conference (though Wyman’s situation wasn’t specifically mentioned, Dave Sifry from Technorati was) here: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20041106/1132/

I see you wrote about this before too, Randy, and Wyman showed up to deny he was “looking for trouble” in that instance: http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/?guid=20041210141126

History of inappropriate marketing or being in the wrong place at the wrong time … twice? As I said in the post, it’s entirely possible that Mark was not trying to spam in that earlier thread, but it sure came off as spam to me, and the chronology of the events is that was *before* the review that Wyman dismissed as “abuse” and “insulting.”

Readers can/will decide if there is fire where there is smoke. Things that … Make You Go Hmm!

T - everything you said was right on the money. You didn’t even blow up at them like I would have. You gave every point that you thought was good or bad, and supported it with good factual points.

Finger pointing never gets anyone anything, but obviously they’d rather point it at you than fix their problems that you pointed out. Here’s one for PubSub. Ever look at BlogSearch for Google? See all the spam? Difference between PubSub and Google (at the time of post) is that Google listens to criticism and goes out and fixes it. Instead of contacting T privately, you left a comment thread for your product. He was nice enough to go review it. The review sucked. Deal. TDavid is one of the few people that doesn’t drum up the products and actually gives very brutal but honest answers.

Next time T, maybe you should have me do the review ;).