There is a blog storm happening around a “Social RSS Reader” called Shyftr. What Shyftr does is takes RSS Feeds and publishes on its own site, of course these articles have comments, and a community around it, which they call as Social Network for RSS Feeds. The idea is interesting, but Shyftr is doing this with out the consent of the original author, some think it is ok to do that.
Some are worried about conversation happening outside of the original source, this type of conversations are already happening (Friendfeed, RSSmeme, Friendfeed and RSSmeme both use partial feeds and i am cool with it). I don’t care whether the conversation is occuring at my blog or somewhere, but i do care where my content is going and how people are using it.
What Shyftr in its current form does is the same as hundreds of Splogs are doing, taking the feeds and republishing with out the original consent of the author. Tony Hung thinks Shyftr crossing the line and i agree with him.
The ones who don’t agree that Shyftr is a splog please tell me how it is different from a splog. Is the community and comments around shyftr articles make you think that it is not a splog. So now, for example i will take hundred RSS feeds and create a wordpress blog with comments and registration enabled, will you participate and tell all others that it is a legitimate service and not a splog. If you are cool with it i am gonna create one more shyftr. 🙂
What do you think about all these aggregators? which doesn’t add any value.
Further Discussion: Matthew Ingram, Techmeme, Broadstuff
Update: Finally Shyftr changed their tune and now only shows title, author and date.
Much discussion happened around Shyftr in the last two days but to me it seems like guys who are pro Shyftr are worried a lot than Shyftr itself about the negative press it generated, I wonder why 🙂
The way it differs is simply this: YOU CONTROL your RSS distribution, not Shyftr. No one is saying “publish your full article through RSS”. You can make a partial feed. Simple solution. It adds a ton – you have readers who otherwise never would’ve found you, you have a community to discuss your article AND others’ articles, and you have ways to save articles and come back to them.
You’re like saying “Ok we are going to go on a date but you are ONLY allowed to discuss one topic, and once the date is over you can’t discuss it anywhere else.”
That’s why I’m afraid of posting my best texts on the web. 🙁 I don’t want people to steal them.
That’s the net today man, get over it… todays net is nothing but aggregation and mashups.
Well if its not without the permission of author, then its not the right way.
@Notasplog
Yes i will contro my RSS feed. I am giving full feeds for the convenience of the reader not for splogs to republish it with out my permission. I publish full feed doesn’t mean that you can use it to fill up your site, profiting from some one’s content with out their permission is a bad business and that is what content scrapers do. It doesn’t add anything rather than creating a business out of others work. I never said discussing at other places is bad, if you read it carefully i said i don’t care when some one discusses at other places. I only care if some one is publishing the articles in full.
There are some big Indian websites which are doing the same …scraping content…now thatswhy i have to shifted to partial feeds..
@bob
I agree aggregation and mashups are good, that is what Friendfeed likes do but no one questioned them. There is an ethics thing on how you do the aggregation.
@Nirmal
I agree that is the whole point of post
@Shashank
That is true, but i won’t turn to partial feeds. I like full feeds and i expect my readers also.
Publish a feed and make another comment section for it? That sounds theft-y to me. Bad Shyftr!
I’m glad to hear that Shyftr has reversed course and will not be displaying the full feed. I think that is the right thing to do in this case.
However, this argument has brought out the best and the worst in the blogging community. Some have attacked bloggers that want to protect their content and publish full feeds to better serve the readers while some, on the other side, did take their attacks on Shyftr a bit too far.
This one was much more balanced than some of the posts I’ve read (and avoided commenting on) and for that I thank you.
It seems that bloggers, almost unilaterally, were against what Shyftr was doing while commenters seemed to be the ones defending the service. It makes sense, but it does paint a rather ugly picture where things could dissolve into an “us vs. them” issue down the road.
Right now, it seems cooperation wins out and that is a good thing. But this won’t be the last time this issue comes up. Many feel that they have the right to do something simply because they have the physical ability and there is no clear legal ruling against it.
That will always conflict with those that take a more balanced view.
Shyftr has listened to some of the negative feedback, like this, and responded. They’ve now turned off full feeds where discussions and comments were taking place. In my opinion, they didn’t need to, but they are working with the blogosphere, not against it. The site’s authors aren’t thieves. They’re entrepreneurs trying to find a way for friends and peers to share RSS feeds and learn from one another. Our job as bloggers is to be aware of these new venues for commenting and participate. If we don’t and we remain stubborn, we can be left behind.
@Jonathan Bailey
Thanks for your comment its really appreciated. I agree this one is going to stay for some time. What bothers me more is that people argue that it is not the responsibility of the blogger to give full feeds or partial feeds and it is not the responsibility of services like shyftr to check whether they are doing right thing or not. We are giving full feeds for the convenience of our readers, not for other sites to use it commercially.
@Louis Gray
“In my opinion, they didn’t need to, but they are working with the blogosphere, not against it.”
I don’t understand what you mean by that, they as a business had to listen to the users, content owners(becoz they are using content) and should respond timely. If they don’t respond to the feedback and concerns of the content owners what business are we talking about. I expect being a PR professional you should understand this better than me. No business can be successful by pissing of the users and the community. They don’t enable comments on their own blog, i feel that they are not interested in the community. And they are talking about building a community.
“Our job as bloggers is to be aware of these new venues for commenting and participate.”
I said i don’t have any problem where conversation is happening, what i am worried is how full feeds are being used.
It may not bother you and me, we have day jobs and blogging is a part time thing for us, but there are lot of people who are doing blogging for a living they will lose Ad revenue or page views because of these type of services.