TIP: don’t try to translate the title with babelfish!
Originally I didn’t want to write about this peticular, somehow unnoticed event but the abscence of ‘voice’ in the blogosphere made me write the following lines…
If you haven’t noticed about this item, you’re probably just a curious reader interested in mobile, but most probably you’re not one of the ones concerned, or you haven’t found the time to get into this topic in detail, or you might just be discrete which is ok to me of course, or then again you just might not care.
I just want to explain briefly here why I refused to be integrated in Mobikyo’s Wireless-Watch Community portal project (password protected acces only)
I am not going to repeat the whole story, if you’re not aware, you can read Debi Jones’ original post, comments and conversations and her It’s Hard Out Here Being a Blog Pimp and Why Mobikyo was a No Go afterthoughts to understand what the story is about.
With all respect to the work, the people and the reputation of Mobikyo - anyone makes mistakes of course- I’m the kind of guy that appreciates discretion once in a while, but the story went public before I could dig into the subject myself… Still I thought it usefull for any collegues and bloggers out there to point out that you better do some thinking before you decide your blog to be republished somewhere else, and you don’t want your brand to be dilluted by republishing your content through another portal service…
Apart from the copyright and blogging independence issues Debi pointed out in her posts, I would like to point out the subdomain and tagging issues I really see as significant the way the portal service sub-domain trick can drive away traffic from your own content.
” a. Publishing my full posts on their site with the post title linked to http://mobile-jones.theirdomain.com instead of a link to http://www.mobilejones.com locks the reader into the Mobikyo site making it less likely that they would visit my blog.
b. The collection of a number of blogs under their domain means that SE rankings would favor my content under someone else’s domain rather than my own. In essence, I’d be competing with myself for traffic with someone else benefitting.”
This is the way it looks with a blogpost url example of my blog:
http://m-trends.org/2006/03/15/open-letter-to-vodafone/
becomes
http://wireless-watch.com/2006/03/15/open-letter-to-vodafone/
But it doesn’t stop here… When clicking one of the web 2.0 tagging services buttons like del.icio.us, watch below what I get with my automatic tagging extension.
Get it?
Simple and efficient but, everytime branding the portals domain name before your own, isn’t going to look nice for your SEO in a couple of weeks.
Well, anyway I decided not to be considered for this one though some of you might think it’s more opportune to be there - we’ll check again in a couple of months.
What I am a bit surprised though is that nearly no-one of the blogs mentioned originally commented or posted anything on the subject. Darla and Charlie seem to be the only ones given a bit of attention to this.
I cannot understand how the ones like The Mobile Weblog, Tech Dirt, Smart Mobs and Russell Beattie are willing to participate and willing to diminish their brand for some peanut advertising bucks… Stuart, Martin? Still in there? Maybe they cancelled as well? Who knows?
I wonder what my other favourite blog writers decided … Soon more at Wireless-Watch Community?
Tags: mobilejones.com mobikyo wireless watch
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6 Responses to “Mobikyo Farce”
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I’m still taking part - for now.
I’ve explained why here.
Thanks Suart for explaining your reasons which I understand and respect of course. I will have to get you writing about me being mentioned in there then
Hey Rudy, I completely agree with you and Debbi and have decided not to go for it either. I like my independence. I didn’t write about it on my blog because I felt the topic was already well covered at Debbi’s and Marla’s blog (where I left a comment). Am I hiding behind them?
I chose to participate out of a spirit of cooperation — the folks who asked me were legitimate observers/analysts of the mobile tech/business scene. Isn’t the Internet all about cooperation? And I’m not really in this for the bucks, which amount to around three cents per hour. I do want to spread the word about the issues my blog covers, so why not? On the one hand, I am troubled that some people think it’s a scam — I don’t want to lend my name or our work to a scam. On the other hand, it’s not possible to do anything at all online without someone looking askance at it for some reason or the other.
Thanks Martin and Howard for you comments.
I do agree of course that the internet is all about cooperation and my first reaction was also one of this thought and about the great idea.
I was also flattered to find my blog amongst all the other blogs on mobile I read and respect for their quality writing and insights.
I don’t mind the advertsing split idea either, though I’m not blogging for the money and I think this kind of feed portal idea is not going to create a lot of extra revenue for the smaller blogs.
I am sure the original intentions of Lawrence are not one to create a scam either and I don’t think this project is one either, I’m respectfull to his work and references of Mobikyo.
What I really think is not right is the sub-domain hack and the not reffering/linking directly to the original source. I don’t think that’s the right cooperation spirit since it’s going to benefit their brand with better SEO results then the blogs cooperating with, and providing content for them.
Most probably this is not going to affect the bigger websites/blogs like SmartMobs.com but I am convinced that the smaller blogs are not going to come out well in the end on this one.
But ok, I hope the blog discussions on this topic has helped them correcting their original idea, in the end I still think it’s a great idea if it’s executed well.
Rudy, gee, that’s a good point about the impact to a well established brand like Smartmobs versus we smaller fish. Brilliant insight you had there.
However, Howard shouldn’t ignore the impact to his and his contributors copyright when the articles they produce can be marked with a Mobikyo copyright by virtue of their participation on the site.
What if a year from now you decided to publish a book from the writings and articles on your blog? Mobikyo would own the copyright to those materials is some way that can only be described as confusing and unclear. Would you be required to include attribution to Mobikyo in a formal publishing environment? Would you still retain sufficient rights to publish the content?
What if you decided to participate in newsvine or other compensated participatory publishing effort? What if you could publish an article in mainstream media through Blogburst? Does your agreement with Mobikyo impact those opportunities?
There’s another distinction that I’ve noticed in reactions to the Mobikyo effort. Blogs like Smartmobs that are a collection and aggregators have a different view of their content than do blogs like m-trends.org and mobilejones.com where all the content is created by one person and tends to be original perspective, analysis and recommendation. I suspect that Rudy and I feel a stronger connection to our blogs as it was more work to produce. Further, Smartmobs is more than one degree of separation from Howard’s identity due to it’s many contributors. m-trends and mobilejones are have zero degrees of separation from the indentities it’s relative authors’ identities.
And finally, there were problems with the project implementation, communication and some of Mobikyo’s actions following the disagreement they received. Those actions brought more concern over future interactions and communications into consideration for some of us.
And no we’re not talking about a scam in the sense that Splogs are scams, but I don’t think the best interests of bloggers were primary in Mobikyo’s planning and implementation.