Looks like my /etc/hosts file just got one line longer. :)
/etc/hosts is for your systems, use AdBlock for the junk ;-)
Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
111–120 of 187 posts
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#112Let me ask you guys something: would you be upset if HN did this?
Not at all upset. It would give me a 30-minute project to circumvent it.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
FF makes money off revenue generated when you search and click on google ad. They do not replace links on content that you generate without telling you. Apples/Oranges my friend... Personally I use posterous as my personal site and I don't appreciate this.
would you rather have banner ads? they have to make their money somewhere. as long as they're not rewriting existing affiliate links, this is about as unobtrusive as it gets [edit: rewriting the links directly, instead of using a third party that necessarily obfuscates the url would be less obtrusive, but the principle is still the same]
>> they have to make their money somewhere
I'm not against Posterous making money online to provide me a free service. However, they should be transparent and clear about it. When I sign up, I want to be notified about this. I'm going to create a blog, publish posts, make readership and stay a good time there; so I want to know whatever thing happens in my blog and not only be surprised about it when it happens.
Point 2 is that they didn't have a clear strategy how to monetize themselves (which is crucial since nothing runs for free) from the beginning.
Come on, but this is like saying "Get your free domain here" and then telling you that the domain is free, but only if you pay for the hosting :(
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd probably be willing to roll the dice. VigLink has investment from Google Ventures (Google's in-house investment arm), First Round, etc. Peculiar, eh? I agree that Google should be miffed about such things.
They really thought this through. I was wondering why they didn't implement the "technology" in-house, without having to split their ramen with VigLink, but it looks like a well played position.
My guess is that VigLink maintains 100's of affiliate accounts, so it would take a lot time to get the same coverage in house.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless googlebot runs a javascript engine, I don't think it will ever be able to find out... unless a human over there reads this and adds this information to their PageRank database. Google does this themselves for their search engine pages, in a way... if you have JavaScript running, there is an onmousedown pingback added for every link in the search results so they know what you click on. The link itself remains a…
Google does execute javascript, and even some flash, but not on all its crawlers (which is very understandable; building a DOM for every page on the web is expensive, even for Google. I say "build a DOM" because abstract interpretation is still far off, specially for the web and its cruft of languages, standards and quirks.) http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/new-reality-google-follows-links-i... http://www.labnol.org/interne…
This is interesting, but it leads me to ask, what can you expect a JavaScript-enabled web crawler do? Load the page into the DOM, wait a few seconds for the dust to settle, start firing click events on everything and recording what requests are generated? It would seem a crawler could cause some really undesirable behavior on your site if that were the case. Imagine click events that post comments, delete things, downvote them, or generate emails. Since they are hidden behind JavaScript a web developer might expect a crawler not to try them...
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your blog http://gpapps.com/ is not hosted on Posterous. This is unrelated to the discussion at hand.
I post on our blog via postereous. Meaning, I email my blog post to posterous and posterous posts on my wordpress account. My original link in my post was http://www.apple.com/wwdc , but it does this crazy URL forwarding that viglink added in. It clearly affects users.
Even if you are somehow using Posterous to post to WordPress (I'm not familiar with Posterous' features), they're not the ones doing your redirect.
It actually looks like WordPress is doing the same link affiliation as Posterous. They're using Skimlinks, not VigLink, but the result is the same. (Open a javascript console while on your blog and take a look at the skimlinks function.) FYI, Skimlinks is based in the UK. That probably explains why the original apple.com link bounces through euro.apple.com.
As easy as it is to miss, I bet there are a lot of sites doing this now.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#117Hey guys, Posterous partnered with Viglink.com back in December as an experiment to see if we could generate revenue by adding an affiliate code to links that don't already have one. We chose to work with Viglink because their technology doesn't interfere with the user experience at all. 1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way 2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks and adds an affiliate code when possi…
1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way
2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks...
3. Affiliate codes are not stripped...
4. Copying links is unchanged
5. All outbound clicks are recorded by an obscure 3rd
party server without my consent or knowledge.
I wouldn't mind if you were changing the href attribute of the links so that hovering over a link would've showed the real destination. But, alas that would've not fly with way too many people. Google link pointing at api.viglink.com looks suspicious and intrusive. What makes you think that hiding this redirect behind some javascript hackery makes it any more acceptable?
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sachin, if I were hypothetically your in-house SEO, and I read this post at 3 AM in the morning, I would call you on your cell phone and wake you up. The potential for business-level risk terrifies me. My guess is that you get a huge portion of your traffic from Google. Google needs the Internet's link graph to work. Dynamically retargeting links would be a catastrophe for Google if it caught on. It is possible that…
I'd probably be willing to roll the dice. VigLink has investment from Google Ventures (Google's in-house investment arm), First Round, etc. Peculiar, eh? I agree that Google should be miffed about such things.
Google Ventures is a semi-autonomous fund. I would say that their participation does not necessarily imply synergy with Google, nor does it imply that Google's search team has vetted the impact on their results.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overall, I think you handled this well, but... > Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous, especially when it affects your blog and content. I'm sure users will be forgiving, but your credibility may be blown (re: transparency) by not announcing something like this. Why is it so trendy to be 'transparent'? Why claim to adhere to principles that you clearly didn't follow? (Sorry to nitpick…
Nitpicking. You (where "you" is any "you") don't have to be 100% transparent. You are expected though to be 100% non intentionally-opaque. Not the same.
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Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#120Did anyone else here read this and immediately install VigLink on a site?