Web 2.0

Think of your content and the work you put into it as a work of art. Now imagine someone walking into your studio and walking out with your painting. This is what some social networks are doing, right now, under your unsuspecting eye.

The truth is that every time you submit a story to Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, Del.icio.us, Twitter and so on, you are actually contributing to their sites. Your gain (traffic and some links, sometimes “nofollow”) is smaller than theirs: your contribution improves their content database, and your very presence on the site boosts user metrics, site usage, traffic, search engine rankings and ultimately helps these “free” social networks get venture capital and other financial gains.

So, instead of being thrilled to have such active and generous users like yourself, some social media networks want to exploit the users even more, to gain even more by virtually stealing content and traffic from other publishers. Digg and Facebook are desperate to sell: as popular as they are, they hardly manage to generate the revenue to justify their current VC or other investments. They had to find a way to prove their sites “worthy” of funding, and sadly they found one of the most repulsive of all: hijacking other websites.

Think of your content and the work you put into it as a work of art. Now imagine someone walking into your studio and walking out with your painting. This is what some social networks are doing, right now, under your unsuspecting eye.

The truth is that every time you submit a story to Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, Del.icio.us, Twitter and so on, you are actually contributing to their sites. Your gain (traffic and some links, sometimes “nofollow”) is smaller than theirs: your contribution improves their content database, and your very presence on the site boosts user metrics, site usage, traffic, search engine rankings and ultimately helps these “free” social networks get venture capital and other financial gains.

So, instead of being thrilled to have such active and generous users like yourself, some social media networks want to exploit the users even more, to gain even more by virtually stealing content and traffic from other publishers. Digg and Facebook are desperate to sell: as popular as they are, they hardly manage to generate the revenue to justify their current VC or other investments. They had to find a way to prove their sites “worthy” of funding, and sadly they found one of the most repulsive of all: hijacking other websites.