Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
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Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#2Really shady stuff.
>Apparently Viglink said they would not be overwriting other affiliate links, however in the comments at Practical Ecommerce, it seems to indicate that it is happening in practice, and affiliates driving the links are not getting credit for doing so.
So basically bit.ly is cookie stuffing.
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#3Rule #1 of the internet - if you're not a consumer and you're not paying for something, you're actually the product.
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#4One does not anger one's users in a market where one is replaceable with zero effort.
So long, bit.ly
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#5Guess this explains how they became profitable https://medium.com/@markjosephson/why-profitability-matters-... , through shady tactics
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#6Back in 2008, the owners of digital point forums got sued by ebay for something similar, dropping cookies on people visiting their forums for amazon. I wonder if bit.ly will be sued for this.
Shameless plug: Check out http://www.tracker.ly, where you can create every type of redirect link in one place.
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#7> However, to stay within the character limit constraints of the social media platforms, you use Bitly to shorten the URL.
Why are people still doing this? The only major platform with such limits is Twitter, but using a shortener no longer does anything - Twitter runs every link, bar none, through t.co and counts that URL length against you (which leads to fun situations like the 11 character link http://j.mp being treated as 22 characters).
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#8Rule #1 of the internet - if you're not a consumer and you're not paying for something, you're actually the product.
http://powazek.com/posts/3229
> We should all stop saying, “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” because it doesn’t really mean anything, it excuses the behavior of bad companies, and it makes you sound kind of like a stoner looking at their hand for the first time.
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#9The real issue here is that bitly is doing these affiliate conversions without the FTC mandated disclosure¹. If I create a non-affliated link for a amazon product for a blog post and use bitly to shorten it and dont disclose it as a affiliated link (after all, I shortened a unaffiliated link), Someone is liable to be sued by the FTC.
IMO, Bitly may be putting every publisher at risk for legal action. Even though such legal action may never happen nor be likely, its still pretty shitty to do and as stated, illegal.
¹ https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
Re: Bit.ly and Viglink Adding Affiliate Cookies on Shortened Links
#10Rule #1 of the internet - if you're not a consumer and you're not paying for something, you're actually the product.
http://powazek.com/posts/3229 > We should all stop saying, “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” because it doesn’t really mean anything, it excuses the behavior of bad companies, and it makes you sound kind of like a stoner looking at their hand for the first time.
Also, because its wrong. In the usual case, you are the supplier of the product, being paid for the supplied product with the "free" service, and recognize that -- rather than viewing yourself as the product -- is more useful because it frames what you should be evaluating: is what you are receiving for the product you are providing worth the cost to you of providing that product.