When Did Splogging Become a Business Model? Fav.or.it

First Keith Teare, now Fav.or.it. The long in beta service Fav.or.it has launched and despite word that it was suppose to be an advanced feed reader, Fav.or.it has launched with a portal that reprints content from other sites then tries to build conversations around that content, as well as offering a feed reader.

I wasn’t happy with Shyftr for trying to do something similar, but Fav.or.it makes Shyftr look like school boys on a country outing because under Fav.or.it’s model, content is republished in full in areas fully available to the casual browser.

If that’s not rich enough their we won’t publish your content rule is beyond belief. This page demands that people who don’t want their content published in full on Fav.or.it must apply a creative commons license and only then will Fav.or.it decide to only publish an excerpt instead.

Their defense of the service: comments are pushed back to the source. That and it offers a similar service to commenting systems like Sezwho with comment tracking etc…

The only word that I can think of: leaches.

This is going to be defined as a blogging 2.0 service and in use it offers an interesting and somewhat appealing package to the end user. But in doing so it steals page views away from the original content creators, creating a win/ lose situation where there should and could be a win/ win one.

To be fair they don’t republish all content in full, but the fact they are doing it on any content unless their stupid criteria is met would be a DMCA notice waiting to happen if the company was American (they aren’t unfortunately). Republishing in full of anyone’s content should ALWAYS be on an opt-in basis, not an opt-out basis for a legitimate service, and copyright laws in most countries would mandate that this is the case, particularly when the content is republished for commercial use (in Australia, some personal use copying is legal).

And exactly when did splogging become a business model again? It’s like a whole chunk of the world missed the memo that ripping peoples content off for your own commercial gain is immoral and wrong, no matter how well you flavor the end product. Or am I simply a dying breed of online creators who believes in a fair go for all and that content creators still have some rights over the republication of their content in full?

The bonus takeaway: try clicking on the names of the blogs on each post in Fav.or.it: they’re even trying to scam Google juice on the blog names through an internal linking scheme. Links to the original post are via little tiny boxes, one next to the title (to the post), one next to the blog name to the blog itself.

Update: Fav.or.it reminds me of Topix. Topix republishes excerpts from blogs and other news sources and builds a community around that, but notably they license the rights for any content they publish in full. In only publishing the excerpt they comply with copyright, and they also drive traffic back to the source. Everyone wins.