Going through the comment spam on another blog and had a good laugh. Because this doesn’t really fit any topic over on that blog, I’m sharing the God comment spam (pictured above, text below) here:

This website is very nice and colorful too. Its nice to have something to show others where you attend church and to show all the smiling people filled of the goodness of the Lord. You have a wonderful website here. May God rich bless you always.

Maybe Judy is not a comment spammer, and hopefully I won’t burn in hell for bringing the following things to light, but there are some problems with her description of the blog in question. Let’s take a look at the blog — it’s my TD Scripts Wordpress plugin and mod blog. Here’s a screenshot for reference:

 

Does the above design seem "colorful." The design is like 95% whitespace. Ok, maybe the blue hyperlinks (the internet default, yes?) are colorful. The text is mostly black, so no hit there.  She called the website "very nice" which I’m honored if she felt that way, but doubt that it’s sincere, especially when the comment comes with a link to a site trying to sell such wonderful things as Penis Growth Pills (sorry, no link here) and Penis Growth Oil. Judy, Judy, Judy.

So what should I read into a comment that leads readers to male enhancement stuff? Now I know "Judy" what will "show all the smiling people the goodness of the Lord." Something tells me God has seen penises of all shapes and sizes.

I took the liberty to check your IP location, "Judy" because, well, I’m sure God might appreciate a friendly remember where another lowlife comment spammer hails from:

Yes, I smiled thinking about how God feels about "Judy’s" penis enhancement comment spam. Assuming there are such places in the afterlife, comment spammers who combine religion and penis size deserve a one way ticket to hell.

Like every other blogger on the planet with comments enabled, Hmm gets its share of comment spam. A lot of this spam is pharmaceutical. Most of these sites offer very little in the way of value and are likely created by a very small number of people. Don’t see as much blatant spam coming through services like StumbleUpon and FriendFeed.

That’s how I came upon stillsleepy.com which is one of the best looking pharmacy promotion sites I’ve seen to date. It has videos, information, a clean design and is SEO personified. If I ever was to consider going down the dark path of being a spammer — and don’t worry I’m not — this is the type of site I’d want to promote.

It’s almost useful. Even though I don’t have a sleeping disorder, this site makes me go hmm.

Check out the track how sleepy you are widget to the left (the primary reason I made this post). Unfortunately the website mentions the drug Provigil dozens of times (don’t worry I’m only going to mention it in this paragraph) but check out the side effects of this drug:

may cause you to have a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization or be life-threatening. If you develop a rash, hives, sores, swelling, or trouble swallowing or breathing, stop taking PROVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency treatment.

Think I’d rather have sleeping problems than a serious rash or allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization. Not to mention hives, sores or swelling? Being sleepy sucks, yes, but taking this drug sounds potentially worse than, well, just taking a nap.

Are you a power napper?
As I get older I’m finding power naps to be helpful. Just short naps here and there, usually after lunch get me raring to rock and roll for the rest of the day. I don’t know if this is something normal as one gets older, but I’m about 99.5% certain I’d never take any drugs if I was too sleepy. Yes, even if prescribed. I hate taking meds. I’d much rather go natural. Eat more fruit and vegetables, exercise more, swing from vines, whatever.

Those reading who despise spam might be interested to learn that the nation’s first felony conviction for spam was held up in Virginia today.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world’s top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Almost all 50 states have anti-spamming laws. In the 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Jaynes’ claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Jaynes’ lawyer claimed this was a blow to first amendment rights but it’s hard not agreeing with the courts. Should sending bulk unsolicited email be protected speech? It clogs our inboxes and wastes our time.  It’s one thing to be an aggressive marketer, but this guy seems to have gone way too far.

Do you agree that mass unsolicited spamming should be a felony?

If news that 11 spammers have been indicted over pump-and-dump stock schemes doesn’t make you even more skeptical of financial tips from strangers, maybe the following story will.

I received this message from TC through Zecco this morning:

Hi, new to investing and was wondering if you would give some tips which would be a good newsletter to subscribe to for my short and long term trading? Is this robot Bull**** or does it work. Thanks for your time.

The “robot” TC is describing is advertised as a Google contextual ad showing at Zecco (pictured atop) and a clickthru leads to the site along the right DayTradingCoach.com (sorry, no link).

I had never heard of this program but am immediately skeptical of any deal which is presented like this on a web page. It’s in the whole get rich quick format which you see on thousands of different one page pitches. Too many sites which use this format have gotten rich off selling information that can usually be found with some specific internet searches, not rich from the information itself.

Being a geeky guy, I was intrigued if I could find this “robot” for sale anywhere. Can you actually buy the “robot?” It doesn’t appear from my searches that you can, but hey, you can buy a newsletter.

Surprise, surprise, all that Michael and Carl want is your email address and name. There’s a “don’t worry we won’t sell your name and address” disclaimer at the bottom of the page. I decided on TC’s behalf to enter in a specially tagged email address and see what their email autoresponder sent my way.

The first email was a validation link from somebody named “Jens Clever.” This isn’t the Beav’s mom (June Cleaver), and was coming from the following address:

Trading Coach LLC
100 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005, USA

Before clicking the validation I would be giving this organization permission to send me information, I wanted to sniff around a bit more. I was on a mission to find this stock robot promised in the Google served ad, not be sent in a circle buying into newsletter offers. I perform some Google searches for “Trading Coach LLC” and see what others on the web were saying. I was led to the site spamstocktrader.com which tracks a fictitious portfolio of buying and selling spam stocks. Now check out the email disclaimer reposted by spamstocktrader (emphasis mine):

You are hereby advised that Daytradingcoach.com / Trading Coach LLC / Jens Clever is receiving a cash fee of two thousand and thirty two dollars from the company shown above (or its agent) as compensation for the distribution of this email.

$2,032 for distributing information about a stock trade in an email. TC, are you paying attention to this? You don’t need to be a farmer to smell this manure. No thanks, Jens Clever, I passed on giving you my email address so you could send me stock tips that you were being paid to put in emails.

The spider web of email finance newsletters
Now back to the original web page. Page two was another web page going on and on about a (second?) newsletter. Imagine that, another page with another sales spiel for, yes, a newsletter selling hot stock tips.

But where is this amazing “robot” that the ad teased? Apparently the “robot” is just used by the people who write these emails? Is it a “robot” that must only output information when money is scanned into it?

Sorry there is no bot for sale, only a newsletter with “468 spots left” so act quick! I wonder if the next prospect who comes along sees 468 spots left too or is this some random number for each prospect? Are you kidding? A newsletter with a limited number of subscribers? I’ve never heard of any email newsletter that was only allowed to a limited number of subscribers, have you? Digital limited, I guess, just don’t expect any of those subscribers to forward to their friends and family.

And then another request for a name and email, only this time no disclaimer that my name and email address wouldn’t be whored out:

Still only interested in the robot, not subscribing to some newsletter. I passed on filling out the second email. Ironically enough, Michael’s office is in downtown Seattle “across from City Hall” according to the web page at the following address:

Global Marketing Company LTD
93 S. Jackson Street #56595
Seattle, WASHINGTON 98104-2818, UNITED STATES

Oddly, the phone number offered isn’t a Seattle-based 206 area code number, it’s a number from the UK. . Here’s a link to a Google hybrid map of the area or embed below for those with readers that allow IFRAME:

View Larger Map

Michael offers availability of his physical address to the lifetime subscribers of his newsletter. Pay only $47 and you can stop by and see him during office hours any time. I should go down to 93 S. Jackson Street #56595 and see what’s actually there. Being it’s Sunday, it would have to be a work day. Maybe someday when I’m down that direction I’ll drop in and see if Michael is available.

Moral of the story for TC and others
I’m sure by now TC who I’ll be pointing to this post in a response will see what you need to do with advertisements and offers: verify the information and sources are credible. Perform Google searches and see what others are saying about the service. Due diligence.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t any stock newsletters or that the ones mentioned above might occasionally offer stocks you can actually make money by following their tips but you have to ask yourself if those tips were so great overall, so irresistibly financially attractive, why would they be selling the information? Wouldn’t they would be using those tips to make themselves a fortune and not be focusing on the very profitable business of getting paid to share these stocks in paid newsletters?

In our ongoing stock competition between my wife and I, both our portfolios are available for the world to see for zero, nadda, nothing, not even one penny. Open, transparent and including dollar amounts, # of shares when we bought and when we sold, and even notes about each trade. I’m far and away no stock expert and don’t write or sell newsletters offering stock tips, but I’m happy to offer three common sense guidelines for those new to stock investing: research, research, research.

Yes, that’s the same word repeated, but it’s the truth. TC, and friendly readers, if I was to trust somebody online that I didn’t know with making financial decisions, I’d look for a similar level of transparency about what stocks are being bought and sold. I’d examine the history and compare that to the information being shared in his/her/their newsletter. I’d perform Google searches and see what others who bought these newsletters are saying and how transparent they’re being about their own results from following the advice. Research, research, research.

Let’s close by going back to TC’s questions at the top of this post. I don’t subscribe to any paid stock newsletters so I’m not a good source to ask for what the best ones out there are for short term and/or long term trading. I do most my research through the search engines, analyzing companies including both past and recent news articles. In some cases my direct customer experience will compel me to buy or sell a stock.

As for if the “robot” mentioned in the ad is BS? Draw your own conclusions from the information available. Speaking purely for myself, if I could buy this bot somewhere and it wasn’t prohibitively expensive, I’d try it out and share the results — for free — not in any paid newsletter.

Maybe some readers have had positive experiences with paid newsletters? I understand Fool.com has a paid newsletter. At least that’s a name that’s been around awhile, TC, but no clue as to how good or bad the performance has been there. Just be careful out there. That’s the best advice any stranger or friend can give you involving any financial tip on the web.

We could be seeing a major battle in the making between Amazon and Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) down the road.

Look at what Amazon’s been having a huge amount of success with lately: their S3 storage and server processes. They are building out datacenters and bulking up servers, quietly getting more and more companies and developers to use them as their server infrastructure. Their recent S3 competition had the winners taking a giant gold hammer to a server. The message: you don’t need servers to scale, you need us.

Let’s not forget Amazon tried to take on Google with Alexa search and failed, then they tried OpenSearch and didn’t make a dent. The new battlefront is hosting.

Meanwhile Google is offering mostly ad-supported products and services with clean UI where they provide the hosting. At first glimpse one might wonder why Google wants to be in the content business. If you’re in the content business you have to deal with spammers.

Controlling how the world’s information is searched is largely impacted by having the data at your disposal. The more direct control Google has over the information, as they do by hosting, the easier they can combat spam and search what they feel is the best content. Google is extremely careful to clarify what I italicized there, by saying it is what each individual user deems the best content, but Google — and any search engine — already decides what is the best on some level in the way the results are returned.

Ranking.

This is becoming very tantalizing with news of their Google Knol project. In their own words, Google Knol:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

This sounds like a promising, worthwhile project and history shows that not everything Google does is a runaway hit. A lot of what they do, most of what they do frankly, isn’t as successful as their search and Adwords.

Writers could always write, long before Google and long after Google will be gone. Do writers want to make Google the new Random House? It’s one thing for Google to organize the world’s information, but they are fast becoming the hosting company of the world’s information with only Amazon as their major competition on this front.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to wonder if I want Google to be my hosting company. Giving any one entity too much control and power requires a huge amount of responsibility.

Can we continue to trust Google to do the right thing?

The growing Google content business
Google has already been in the content hosting business since buying Blogger from Pyra Labs. The number of Google content-related projects include, and this list is incomplete, the following services:

Blogger - create and store your own blog, hosted by Google
Google Base - store items that rank better in search
Google Code - download APIs and open source code
Google Page Creator - create and share your own hosted web pages
Jaiku - mobile microblogging service like Twitter
Picasa - store and share pictures
YouTube and Google Video - share and store videos created

It’s way too early to speculate on what impact Google Knol will have, it’s in invite-only stage at this point, but if it can make the list above as a viable alternative to the heavily spammed Squidoo and what Techdirt labels too early to call Mahalo, I’m sure both those services won’t be pleased.

As for being any competition to Wikipedia? Predictably, many are out there already talking and speculating too. Remember how Google offered at one time to host Wikipedia and was denied? Google would rather host Wikipedia than compete against it. But what do they do when they are denied? They find another path to take. Welcome to Google Knol.

A fascinating move by Google (disclaimer: I own GOOG stock) that appears punitive for blog networks excessively crosslinking (B5Media and AOL/Weblogs) as well as some of the bloggers and, get this, mainstream media sites, who sell text links and don’t use rel=nofollow or JavaScript. Some are speculating that this is also being extended to paid reviews and paid to blog sites.

Just check out a couple of well-known sites that had their page rank downgraded:

(AOL/WIN) Engadget - PR7 to PR5
(AOL/WIN) Joystiq - PR6 to PR4
(AOL/WIN) AutoBlog - PR6 to PR4
(B5) Problogger - PR6 to PR4
Search Engine Journal - PR7 to PR4

And I’m sure you’ve heard of these sites:

Seattle Times - PR6 to PR4
Forbes - PR7 to PR5
Washington Times - PR6 to PR4

Notes: daily blog tips has more. Andy Beard who founded the NoNofollow group at Bumpzee has a nice write-up on the topic with a few more listed. Andy’s Page Rank was slashed awhile back and is a PayPerPost blogger.

Curious if former frontman of Weblogs, Inc, Jason Calacanis, has weighed in on this situation? Nothing on his blog as of this writing, nothing in his Twitter stream. He’s not on Skype at the moment or I’d ping him there. I’d like to know how he feels about this since he was a direct beneficiary in the sale to AOL of network crosslinking. Check the comments below. Maybe he’ll leave an answer there.

Acquistion by AOL not the case for the B5Media network, they have to weather the storm. Except for Duncan Riley who managed to get through a post at his TechCrunch writing gig entitled “Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms” without mentioning he used to be one of the partners at B5Media and departed somewhat suddenly.

Lately B5Media CEO Jeremy Wright’s personal blog (PR4 now, don’t know what it was formerly) is filled with daily unrelated Twitter updates (offtopic: lame, can’t people just follow these on Twitter, Jeremy?), no word on the B5Media blog about this Google situation either. B5Media company line is silence? I doubt that. When I interviewed Jeremy about B5Media last year it struck me that they had some good things planned over there. Is this a noteworthy setback?

Darren Rowse puzzledly addresses the issue in the comments section of his Problogger blog:

At b5 we link to other blogs in a channel in our sidebars - so that people can find more content on similar topics - it’s about giving readers more content that they can use and showing them what else we do. If it helps with SEO I guess I could see why they might disallow the power of such links - but to penalize for them is a little bizarre as they are a legit part of our business of showing people where they can read more content that we produce.

Is Darren legitimately confused or naive? Nepotism links on blog networks are essentially crosslink spam in the eyes of search engines. These links have been touted as a benefit for buildinig and running a blog network. It’s how crappy blogs like the ironically titled spam blog at Weblogs, Inc made the original CNET top 100 list, but were later replaced when CNET readers complained.

Fewer, higher quality blogs in blog network seems like better strategy
The Gawker blog network (Lifehacker, Gawker, Valleywag and others) seems to have a philosophy of fewer, higher quality blogs make a better overall network, but even they’ve had to shutter some blogs (Sploid, Screenhead) in the past.

B5Media is boasting over 290 blogs and 10 million unique visitors a month. Gawker does a lot more traffic than that with a dozen or so blogs. AOL has more traffic too, but with a number of blogs somewhere in the middle. Different blog network strategies.

Is it right for Google to punish sites that sell links passing PR?
I’m going to do something unusual in this post. Instead of giving you my opinion on this question, I’m going to request yours and carefully digest the answers. Long time readers know I’m not a big fan of blog networks and how writers work is treated (undervalued like most of the publishing industry), but this issue goes beyond blog networks.

I’m going to talk to other webmasters and bloggers in further depth on the issue. Let’s discuss this in the comments below, on Twitter, in your blogs, your place or mine, whatever.

Obviously these PR penalties are having no financial impact on Google. And some people are saying that the Page Rank isn’t that important any longer. Several of the sites having their PR reduced are fans of Google and follow their every move. Hmm, indeed!

In a post titled “Sleazy Linkers Lose An Ally” Jeremy Wagstaff describes there being a “groundswell building against internal links” fingering Valleywag, Techcrunch, Mashable and other tech blogs of linking on the words of companies, sites and service leading to internal site pages. He ends his acrimonious post with:

What to do? Maybe a name-and-shame list until these recalcitrants start respecting the intelligence of their readers?

Blog Mccarthyism? Please. Before sharing some actual reader benefits of a site internal linking let me remind you of the most popular worst site on the internet for internal linking: Wikipedia. None of the blog posts I read cited Wikipedia as an example of internal links run amok. Ever been to an article there and wanted to visit the source and found yourself in a maze of internal links trying to find .. the … external … link? And yet look how Google and other search engines continue to idolize Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that some other sites are taking this practice to extremes.

And now for my own disclaimer. I’m guilty of being in this dark, “sleazy” club for internal linking on site names. Did this terrible deed here in two separate posts recently with AmazonMP3 and Zecco instead of linking to AmazonMP3.com and Zecco.com respectively. Before striking up torches, you should know that I’m not trying to do this as any kind of disservice to readers. Quite the opposite actually. Remember, writers are readers too.

Let’s consider the facts first. I removed banner ads from this site in September which took away 10-15% from the bottom line of this site. There are currently no ads running on this site that we get paid for by page views (CPM). They’re all cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA).

Absolutely yes, I’d like readers to stop by and read more than one page before leaving. I’m hoping they’ll become subscribers and want to stick around and figure out this whole web thing together. And you know what, if they come to trust and like me over time, maybe we’ll do business someday. What comes around goes around. And if I write about something and mark it as an affiliate link and readers want to sign up and cut me in on a few $$ they wouldn’t see anyway, what’s wrong with that?

All site visitors that aren’t trying to do something malicious at the site are valuable to me, but I’ll freely admit those who are just passing through to click on the first link they see and leave are not as valuable as people who leave comments, get involved, subscribe and/or write about posts made here from their blogs. The fact that I’ve taken a few minutes in the wee hours of a Saturday morning to address Jeremy’s post in detail should be evidence that I care. If I mention AmazonMP3 in passing in a post on Apple iTunes, which is more helpful to readers: linking to the past post with an easy to find link or linking directly to AmazonMP3.com? Hopefully those who care about what I have to say and do, will understand the link I chose was there for a good reason, not intended to manipulate them or the search engines.

Searching for the best linking convention
Admittedly, I’m still working through linking conventions — and I’m working on completing year five of this blog and over 10 years as a webmaster — but I want to make it easier to identify links by linking the domain name rather than the name. To me if it’s the domain in the link text it should always be linked to the domain. I’m not convinced that using the name by itself, however, should always be treated the same way. Again, I point to Wikipedia. Do a little digging around subjects there and then compare. They not only have names linked internally but even the logos of companies linked internally on pages about the companies: like Microsoft. There does come a point when linking too much is bad and I think in cases like this, the Wikipedia goes overboard.

And you bet I added rel=nofollow to that link, touche for Wikipedia that adds rel=NOFOLLOW to all links on their site. The don’t think it’s important enough to help the search engines see the sources they use to build articles. Roach motel.

It’s not all transitory
New readers should be able to understand a bit of the history written on the site about each of the sites, products and services mentioned. Otherwise, why am I writing about these things at all? Just to be a point for people to stop by for a few seconds and leave to the other sites? Is it all just transitory?

Not always.

Isn’t it possible, Jeremy and others who despise this practice, that it’s actually helpful backstory to link to a prior review with screenshots or detailed text entry that fully describes a company and what it does — and in that post prominently link — to the subject website? Like how would you know how I feel about Zecco? Am I affiliated with the company somehow? Have I signed up for the service? How long have I been using it? What is my stake in writing about them, if any? You can only put so much backstory in each new post. I think it’s insulting your regular readers intelligence and irritating to keep repeating the same information instead of linking to it when relevant. No, not internal linking every time you mention a company’s name like Wikipedia, not even in every other post about a company, but when you’d like to give readers a chance to read more of the backstory and the history is relevant.

Here’s a sobering reality: an increasing number of sites I’ve written about and linked to aren’t on the web any more. This creates an operational issue for me: do I go back and remove the linkrot when something has dramatically changed? Leave it alone?

As a reader, I find it disappointing when a search engine leads me to a blog post or article about a site that is so short that I have to visit the external site to understand the context of the piece the search engine linked — only the link is now dead, so I’m off to the Wayback Machine or Google cache to try and figure out what it’s all about. Who really provided me any service? The blog/article site could have by providing more detail and history. That’s where the Wikipedia has thrived because they’ve created a more permanent experience.

Why longevity will be the new black on the internet
Longevity will be the new black on the internet, mark my words.

Blogs are riddled with dead links (including, regrettably a growing number here). So by linking to a main review or central page, bloggers are actually providing some sort of context to new visitors from search engines and they are also helping themselves to keep their archives updated and organized. I write detailed reviews for a couple reasons, one of which is I expect the review to have some sort of longevity. It’s also easier for me to return to one page and update that with the changes than updating dozens. That is a helpful service for readers.

With all that said, I’ll concede being frustrated with sites that excessively internally link for non altruistic means. Just wanted to point out that it is not that black and white though which Jeremy’s post doesn’t take into account. If it was, Google wouldn’t have assigned so much importance to Wikipedia, the most incestuous site on the internet for internal linking.

A person’s name isn’t something, it’s everything. Machines have a hard time understanding the emotional nuances of identity, human beings shouldn’t.

If you’re out there personally marketing a blog with your latest, greatest post, always be certain to get your contact’s name right. Double check, triple, quadruple if necessary. This extends to leaving comments on blogs and all other communication online. Step #1 to becoming an online “Rock Star” Ich.

Today’s early morning lesson in the Twilight Moan.

This morning’s reading led me to pcmag.com and I noticed the McAfee SiteAdvisor (Hmm SiteAdvisor review grade: B+) label turn from green (good) to yellow (warning). I right clicked and looked at the site details to find the following:

After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 28 e-mails per week. We had some difficulty unsubscribing.

28 e-mails in a week? That’s extreme, I wonder if the SiteAdvisor bot got caught in some kind of loop? Seems like I get a bunch of those E-Week emails (rarely do I read them, do you?) which I’m pretty sure originate from the Ziff Davis / PC Mag camp. I used to be a fan of PC Mag but one too many ads and questionable renewal tactics sent me packing. Still have a subscription to their download utility service which at 20 bones a year for all utility downloads is a good deal versus $7.97 per download.

Several reviewers in the SiteAdvisor comments indicate that these emails are opt-in and that it can be hard to unsubscribe is confirmed. I don’t see many yellow label warnings for bigger, established sites like pcmag.com. Have you seen other bigger sites with yellow or (gasp) red labels?

On a somewhat related note, our blogging group has been waiting awhile for SiteAdvisor to kick out a report for vtoreality.com. Anybody know how long this process actually takes? That site remains stuck in the gray (not yet rated) status which in some cases makes me as wary as seeing yellow. Every site older than a couple years we operate including Hmm that I checked is showing green. Might want to check your sites and see if you’re green, not so mellow yellow or dead red.

Historically as a webmaster it’s been inefficient dealing with the invite-only system many of these new websites are employing.

You write about a service that’s in invite-only status and have a few invites to pass around. After your friends and family what do you do with the leftover invites? If you post that you have invites on your blog then inevitably the comments area will fill up with people stopping by and saying they want one. That’s cool, that’s the web working.

But.

Most of these people from my experience only stop by for the invite and then are seen nevermore. In one case the number of “send me an invite” comments after it was stated several times the invites were gone got so bad that comments needed to be closed altogether. I love sharing and that makes up a great part of this blog, but having to tell people who stop by so briefly that they can’t even read the post and comments that we don’t have any more invites to share is a time waster for both of us. More importantly, it puts the burden of distributing and thus promoting a site on the webmaster, not on the site/service. At least if a site is going to make us part of their marketing department, they could make it an affiliate program and pay us for the work.

The existing process makes me feel like we’re being used.

Some people might not have a problem feeling or being used, but I do. Frankly, my enthusiasm in a new website / service wanes considerably these days if it’s setup as an invite-only deal. I’m not talking about private invite-only situations, I’m talking about public invite only distributions. I realize there are some legitimate reasons a site might want to go invite-only, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in too many cases. I’ve seen a disturbing trend develop, what about you?

This morning Thatedeguy was first to tip me off to the service InviteShare, followed by TechCrunch. That’s just the order of how the posts came in my RSS reader but maybe Techcrunch was first. I gave them both links for writing about the topic, but no link for InviteShare after I learned that they are already trying to auction away their site on Sitepoint (picture above). A number of TechCrunch commenters are annoyed as well. What’s the deal, guys, are you just using Techcrunch (and other bloggers) to pump up the sale price of your service and then dump on the highest bidder?

After seeing this, I don’t care how useful this service is or isn’t, this gives me a very sour taste in my mouth.

If you’re site/service is so new that it’s in invite-only, why are you auctioning your site? Or even thinking about selling your site, if that’s the story here? You haven’t even launched yet. I’m surprised that Arrington hasn’t updated his post to point out the site is trying to pimp itself and using a “front page listing on TechCrunch” to increase its value. Talk about leading your readers down a potential dark path, Mike. Shane does tell his readers that it can be bought in a “by the way…” at the post end but doesn’t seem to have any problem with this concept. I can understand being duped and writing a post about the site before you learned these details, but now that you know what they are doing at least update your posts and make readers aware of this important sidestory and how you feel about what this means for how your reader’s information might be used.

Unless of course you want your readers to sign up for something and then have their emails sold to the highest bidder. I’m not saying InviteShare are spammers or intend to do anything nefarious with your information, but that doesn’t mean whomever buys their service won’t be. A lot of ifs, ands and buts here, but I’ve been around the web too long not to be more cynical than the average bear. Just what we all need, more spam.

Unless InviteShare drops the auction and plans to be around a month from now, I’ll continue searching for a service without baggage like this to better deal with the invite situation, which I still believe is a scheme in and of itself, no thanks to Google and others.

Update July 21, 2007 5:02pm PST: TechCrunch ended up buying InviteShare in the auction for (the rumored?) price of $25,000. So they contributed to making the price even more expensive, Mike admits. At least TechCrunch won’t be putting this one up on the auction block write away and it already has more buzz than Edgeio.