Techcrunch reports on a site which Michael Arrington titles as a 1000Tags - Another Stupid, Brilliant Idea. Uh, well he got one word out of the bunch right. At the end of the piece, the opinion is somewhat redeemed by:

Is this an incredibly cool new web 2.0 business? No. But it is a smart idea that I wish I had thought of and executed on. Good for them.

No, it’s not even smart, keep reading.

The idea behind this site is folks are meant to buy tags by character at $5 per character and the ones who spend get a bigger font size making it appear as if they are more popular, twising and confusing reader confidence. For those readers not familiar with tag clouds, they are essentially a bunch of keywords that users have assigned and the more folks who have used the tag, the bigger the font size. So, here we have a place that is selling out for the size of the tag?

That’s stupid, not brilliant. Worse, I think it’s downright deceptive. But then again, I haven’t much cared for tag clouds anyway.

When I looked at the actual 1000tags site I quickly realized that:

a) most the links were affiliate links
b) a deal existed that allowed anybody who wrote about 1000tags.com to get a free tag, maybe, see the add tag section for details.
c) Arrington doesn’t say one way or another if that was what he was doing with his post — pointing to it to get a free tag for TechCrunch or pointing to it because he actually like the idea or pointed to it just because it was something new (the point of TechCrunch)
d) the site design is about as dry and uninteresting as paint drying, it looks like something thrown up in five minutes (why is Techcrunch giving crap like this exposure?)

Speaking for myself, I would like to be able to trust those I read and stuff like this makes me go hmm — in a negative way.

Nowhere in the TechCrunch post is it mentioned that by writing about the piece, Techcrunch was elligible for a free tag while the rest of his readers are essentially being told they have to buy a tag to get involved (at least some of them looked around and saw what I did and commented). I have no way of knowing if this was an honest omission or if this was intentional, but it seems like an important part of the coverage about this site for Techcrunch readers. I left a comment for Mr. Arrington questioning this omission and recommending it be an addendum to the piece.

But … it gets worse
Also, this isn’t the first time Arrington has seemed to admire something that I looked at and thought: what am I missing? This site isn’t cool or brilliant, it is a link farm. Those who buy a link to this page risk getting on the wrong side of Google, see the following Google page:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Why should I pay or even want it free a link from a site like this? I’d rather have Google search engine traffic than 1000tags.com traffic. I put a rel=’nofollow’ on the 1000tags link above — only the second time I’ve ever done that with a site linked here — and no, I won’t be asking them to put up a free tag cloud for this site. There, my disclosure.

Awhile back I though the idea of the Million Dollar Homepage (MDH) was a “creative idea, but seems just too spammy for me.” The Techcrunch piece in question relates to MDH but what it did was spawn a bunch of mostly bad copycat sites. I was getting dozens — yes, literally dozens — of comment spams from other MDH clones. Look at the post yourself. I eventually had to shut the comments down because after asking nicely in the comments for folks to stop, they ignored and kept telling me about their cool spinoff of MDH. Argh.

I sure as hell hope this post doesn’t spawn yet another series of 1000tags clone sites. People, please save yourselves from being part of a linkbait farm. It will not help your sites in the long term and in fact, it might make your site look like you’re part of a “bad neighborhood” to the search engines.

This is a webmaser beware world. Write good content, be ethical and honest in your dealings, watch who and what you link to and get involved with on the web and you’ll be just fine.

Now those who are pissed at me for calling a spade a spade, flame on. It can’t be any worse than the Nintendo fans for getting on me about saying the dogs don’t poop when they do.

Update 3:57pm PST: Qumana guru, Tris Hussey, writes: ” Business model? It makes sense. People go for curiosity, click a link or two. Advertiser might get some extra traffic. Maybe some sales. I guess this is a tag cloud that really does have a silver lining, heck maybe even gold.”

Arrington’s response thus far: “Wow. My skin is getting thicker still.”

I sure hope he doesn’t write this off as some inconsequential detail. I appreciate what he does for the rest of us out here with his blog, but this situation has a foul stench to it. I hope he does the right thing. Says something if he doesn’t. I’m not sure I can or will be looking at his blog and the companies/products/services represented there in the same light heretofore.

Did this post make you go hmm?

Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)

• Technorati adds related tags
• How Ted Leonsis worked his blog to the top for a Google vanity search
• The biggest problem with AllYouCanUpload
• Comparing The Crunchies to the GRAMMYs is hilarious
• Create a Google coop custom search and connect to an Adsense account
• Please don’t go Feedburner promo link crazy like this