Spivot Hijacking Your Content?
Thursday, March 15th, 2007 by Mike Rundle
Spivot is yet another content aggregation site in a long line of content aggregation sites like 9rules, Newsvine, Topix, Daylife, etc., only Spivot might be a few months late to the party.
From the email I received, Spivot is an “all-purpose media reader… [that] brings together the functionality of news aggregation (Google News), with social news (Digg), with the capabilities of a feed aggregation tool (Bloglines).” A better description would be, “combines feed aggregation (like Bloglines, but less intuitive) with social news features (that Newsvine and a million other sites already have) with blog suggestion/aggregation (like 9rules, but Spivot doesn’t ask before they take your content) and mashes it together.
The Lock-In
When you bring in content from independent, outside sources (like bloggers) then you better be giving them something in return. After all, they’re doing the hard work of researching and writing articles on interesting topics, so if you have their content syndicated on your site, there has to be some benefit to the blogger or else you’re in the same bucket as those damn splogs we all hate so much.
If you visit the Art & Design blog section on Spivot, here’s what you’ll see:
- A list of blogs in the sidebar that produce the content that section is displaying. Click on one of those links on the left and guess what? It doesn’t go to the actual site.
- A list of articles in the center column from their sources in this category. Click on one of the article titles and you head to a page straight out of 1998 with a frameset and a “spivot toolbar” on the bottom so the actual article URL is hijacked. Most blogs have a “email this article” feature built into the site, but just in case that was too complicated, Spivot provides an email service, except the emails it sends out do not include 1) the author’s name or 2) the actual story URL. In fact, no links in the email land you at the real article at all, they all stick you back at the Spivot site. Oh, and if you don’t have JavaScript turned on, there’s no way to kill the annoying bottom frame nor use 90% of the website.
- The only direct link to a source blog on the entire Spivot.com website can be found by clicking on the favicon next to a story. Think it’s going to take you to the blog? Think again, the link takes you to the RSS feed of the blog so you’re staring at code.
It seems like Spivot takes your content without asking, republishes it on their site, and then doesn’t mention your name as the author, doesn’t link to your site, and doesn’t link to your article anywhere. The only thing that could make this worse is if they shoved AdSense blocks next to blog author’s content.
They Could Definitely Have Done Better
Spivot is brought to you by the folks at Involution Studios, a digital product firm founded by two guys (Dirk Knemeyer & Andrei Herasimchuk) for whom I have great respect. Andrei was the first user interface designer hired by Adobe and designed most of the Photoshop interface we’re all used to today, and Dirk is an internationally-known champion of usability and product design with presentations all around the world. Too bad they took all that experience and knowledge and left it behind while they developed Spivot or else maybe it could have done well.
Oh, and before I forget. This whole concept was cooler when it was called Kinja, that site from another era that Gawker let slip into oblivion. Some of the design reminds me of Kinja too, weird.
Reader Comments
5 Responses to “Spivot Hijacking Your Content?”
There are a number of issues in this article we’d like to address.
Spivot is not trying to steal content or undermine content creators. We’re dedicated to connecting people with content, with the intention of helping good content get a wider audience and for the creators of that content to enjoy a larger readership. There is no intention to undermine or steal content. In fact, one of the inspirations for Spivot was its potential to democratize content, to bring mainstream media and the blogosphere together, to let the independents get their voices heard right next to the big guys and be treated with a comparable level of respect and validity. By displaying content from your feed next to content from NYT, Spivot is empowering the independent content provider.
We do not scrape anything, we only use free, available RSS feeds and open APIs that people broadcast of their own volition. It operates very much like a Bloglines or Newsgator Online at its core. It’s a news aggregator that simply uses RSS to find stories you might find interesting. In this regard, Spivot’s sole purpose is to help people find content they are interested in reading and help them get there. It is a tool to help users deal with the content overload on the web, in the same way that RSS readers and social news sites are.
You state that clicking on the links at the left don’t go to the site. This is true because the left side panel acts as a Table of Contents. We discussed ways of making those links act as both a TOC list as well as a shortcut to the source site itself. When we have a solution that works, we’ll add it.
You state that Spivot hijacks the URL. This is not different from what Google Image Search or Netscape does. Spivot does so for a few reasons, but the current toolbar that went live is not the final design that will make this obvious yet. The next iteration will have the email form directly inline (so you do not have to return to Spivot for the convenience of this feature) as well as related stories to the one you are reading. Combine that with ratings and the only way to allow these features is to use a toolbar in the manner we are. Like all products that employ this interface device, it can easily be removed.
As for content credit, the source name and author name are attributed when provided properly in the RSS feed itself. Also, it is true the favicon is a link to the feed and not a direct link to the source site. This is because when people add their own feeds to track after signing up, they can add feeds from places like Feedburner where it’s not obvious what the original source URL actually is.
The purpose of creating Spivot was because we could. The best way to design something is often to do just do it. In the case of Spivot, it is a first iteration on the product’s design and we chose to release it even though we are aware it has issues. Why? So we could get some real people using it to find out how to make more useful for them rather than designing it in a cave and hoping for the best. Outside of that, I’m not sure how being “late to the party” serves as any useful criteria for measuring a product’s potential. Google was at least seven years late to the Search party, right? Imagine if they had told themselves it was much too late.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
“By displaying content from your feed next to content from NYT, Spivot is empowering the independent content provider.”
Andrei, I don’t know what the rest of this marketingspeak comment actually says, but the bottomline is that you are using other people’s content without asking them and *their* content makes up your entire site. In the email I received it said you guys wanted to raise capital to continue Spivot or sell it immediately, so basically you’re selling access to other people’s content that you never asked if you could use in the first place?
You say that you are empowering the independent content provider when you never actually link to their site (which on t3h Internets is considered a “thank you”). You get around the idea of having to link to their site by linking to a frameset that you control, linking to a page on Spivot that contains all that source’s blog entries (instead of just linking to their blog). In fact, it’d actually be drop dead simple to link directly to the site or directly to an article, but you guys went out of your way to obscure the actual URL of your source, so please tell me how that is empowering anybody except yourselves.
“Like all products that employ this interface device, it can easily be removed.”
Then remove it and link directly to your source’s article since they spent time and effort producing it.
“We do not scrape anything, we only use free, available RSS feeds and open APIs that people broadcast of their own volition. It operates very much like a Bloglines or Newsgator Online at its core.”
Ever think that RSS feeds are published by independent content creators for the personal usage of their readers, not so some aggregator site can pull it in and try to make a buck? No, you don’t operate like Bloglines or Newsgator Online because both of those applications actually let you click on a source’s URL and reach their site, not some frameset meant to hijack your browsing experience.
Here’s how to fix Spivot:
- Kill the single article page frameset, link directly to your source.
- When you link to a source on your site, link to *it* not some page on Spivot.com that lists all their entries.
- Ask each and every blogger *before* you use their RSS whether it is okay to use their content commercially on your web application.
Top Ten Sources had similar problems when they launched but they were addressed quickly. I’m already on the front page on Google for a “Spivot” query, so hopefully the next time I write about Spivot it will be because you fixed the important issues I’ve brought up.
March 16th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Wow this is the first time I’ve heard of Spivot and I already think they are shady. Not linking to their actual sources is probably the most selfish thing I’ve seen a site like this do. They need to get hold of this situation right now because crap like this just won’t be tolerated by bloggers.
John
March 16th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
The loading up of pages in a frameset with no clear links to the content creators is indefensible; I am surprised that Andrei is even trying.
My blog is in Blogburst, not the same as an aggregation site I know, but is does use content from independant publishers feeds to make money. How ever the fact is Blogburst emailed me and invited me into their system, which is a must if you make money entirely off content created by other people, anything else is pretty much akin to stealing.
An example post of mine used on a Blogburst customers site can be found HERE: HERE There are 3 pretty clear links which when clicked go directly to my site and should I choose to I can opt out of their system with pretty much a click of the mouse.
March 17th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Thanks for the heads-up on this. I come from an academic background, and taking content without doing everything possible to attribute the source is just dead wrong.
March 25th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
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