Okay, I will have to tell you the truth tonight about one of the biggest social networking sites, SpambleUpon, or most people call it, StumbleUpon.
They are making so much money off bloggers, basically StumbleUpon “scrapes” bloggers’ content and makes millions of dollars off you! Even though no one has really “sued” them, they are in big trouble if bloggers start sueing them one by one.
Google should really ban them for “splogging”, every one of SU users’ blogs are “splogs” made up of content written by bloggers like you and me. (My traffic actually boosted after SU banned me, I think I was getting penalized for duplicate content by using SU. Besides, don’t rely on backstabbing social networks who make millions dollars off your content and simply ban you later for “spamming”??? Are you kidding? Go look at my DIYs, they are all original. Lol…at least my blog isn’t full of splogs. Here’s a post you can read about how to protect yourself against splogs although it won’t work with SU.)
Why?
Well, every “blog”, they say, is a “splog”, every image consisting of an image scraped off a “copyright protected” blog (Mind you, every “blog” is actually naturally protected from scraping, this site has about 10 other sites’ images w/o their written permission) . So, we simply took at the most top-left blog on their “Top Stumbler” list.
Well here it is:
As you can see, the image is “scraped” off another “original” blog. If you go to any of their “splogs”, the results is the same. They almost store 0% of their “splogs” images on their servers and simply scrape and live off other blogs. SU is like a real big mosquito that lives off your blood, your blog post that “you” wrote and uploaded images. Their future will only rely on other bloggers’ content and NEVER their own.
So, what can you do?
You can always file a “copyright enfrigement” notice and lawsuit to SU, which their headquarters addresses I couldn’t even find, AND uninstall that hideous toolbar that takes too much of your life, time, and 50 pixels of height on your browser. (Most of their admins are “fake” people behind stupid 50×50 pixel images. They “pretend” they created a special technology when I could re-create a similar service within days.)
Then, simply head over to SiteHoppin, where every site is not “splogged” and is simply “bookmarked”.
Okay, here’s the 5 second wrap up:
1. Every blog on StumbleUpon is a “splog” made up of scraped images and text from other blogs
2. The only reason they don’t get sued is because they send websites traffic and a lot of website owners are happy about that.
3. Every blog in the world has now a “copyright enfringement” against SpambleUpon. If your content is on SU, you deserve the right to sue them for scraping your content.
Now, we don’t have to sue them. You do. So, in all, just stay away from these SpambleUpon guys and stick with the American Dream, SiteHoppin, where “real” developers develop w/o scraping bloggers’ content.
Now maybe we may be a little bitter but at least we fight for our right to be conscious about the “real truth” behind everything. Yeah, SU fucked up this time bad….real bad…let the truth be known even if you do continue to use SU, you will remember this when you get banned.
Here’s the address to send your copyright infringement letters about their “Splogs”: (This is the only real contact info you can find on their site baby)
StumbleUpon, Inc.
Attn: Copyright Agent
StumbleUpon, Inc.
140 Second Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
phone: 415-979-0640
fax: 415-896-2600
email: copyright AT stumbleupon.com
