louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:27:00 -0000

Shyftr got caught stealing people's blog posts and now people praise them for removing the stolen content quickly. Amazing...

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Dave Stanley — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:23:00 -0000

Thomas, I appreciate how you feel. We took a lot into consideration before making this decision. If a publisher is offering full text feeds, you can still read the full text in the reader.

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Tony Hung — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:55:00 -0000

@Louis -- let's be fair.

I have compared them to scrapers only because they were grabbing and reposting full posts (from feeds) -- which are what scraping services do.

I think any service which does this is what it is.

I'm happy they've changed things, and all the best to them in their future endeavours for that.

Cheers
t @ dji

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

edwink — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:07:00 -0000

I just read Tony's post and I think that his major concern is not as much fragmented comments as it is the "publishing" of full posts without the approval of the author of the content.

I think that Tony is raising an interesting discussion...but there might be simple solution to all this: publish partial feeds. I am curious as too hiring why tony does not use that solutions.

I think that the bigger problem behind this discussion is the creation of a simple compensation model that would allow talented people who write great content to be financially rewarded when their content is syndicated.

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Thomas Huhn — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:49:00 -0000

Ok Shyftr, to my opinion this was the wrong move. Have a look at my comment on Louis last post and tell me why you didn't just implement trackbacks for comments? Everyone would have been happy, because it would have been exactly the same and established practice that is in use for blogs since quite a long time...

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Webomatica — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:29:00 -0000

I feel this is a good move for them, as it's not a good idea to bite the hand that "feeds" you (pun intended) meaning if your service profits from content creators, you better be respectful of their desires for the content - as misguided as it may be.

And as for the "dark side" of the web - YouTube profited enormously from upload of copyrighted content uploaded by users. I don't think that was right either. A lot of Web 2.0 services get away with borderline behavior in the name of garnering traffic and I don't think sites should get a free pass just because they're startups and we are in love with the romantic ideal of small businesses that struggle to succeed.

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

louisgray — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:26:00 -0000

Eric, I believe this means when you read it passively, as your RSS reader, it's a full feed, but the "discussion" area would show the link and excerpt only. Dumbing down the reader to not show full feeds would have been a killer.

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Matt Harwood — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:18:00 -0000

I also had no qualms about shyftr's practice, and do really like the service, but they have handled this perfectly.

They took (and obviously actually read) people's concerns, made a solution, and executed immediately. The best part is the changes do not affect the actual function of shyftr one iota. So many egoistic companies would have handled this differently (... fav.or.it?)

Well done shyftr team!!

Re: louisgray.com: Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy

Eric Berlin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:17:00 -0000

Just showing the title, link, and excerpt makes a huge difference and places shyftr into the range of services that delicious, digg, etc. provide.

However, I find the language from Shyftr somewhat unclear -- sounds like they may show full feeds sometimes, or show the full text until someone leaves a comment on the shyftr side, perhaps?