Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury brilliantly presented how the banality of evil could be exhibited wherever mankind ended up. The minor mundane awfulness of humans, even in what should have been fascinating circumstances, was depressing as all get out.
No offense, but I think you must have misunderstood something I wrote. NATS is in absolutely no way my competition. In point of fact, we have complementary products and services.
I am not making idle conversation. I have been a member of Slashdot for years and I only jump in when I feel my contribution has something special to offer. Maybe seeing disinformation spread about membership sites seems unimportant to you, but it is important to me and I felt I could share some more factual insight.
Which statement did I make that you'd like facts to back up? Because, unlike you, I am wholly prepared to back up what I have to say.
I don't want to know the name of your laughably fictitious anonymous source. I want to know how the data was arrived at because it strikes me that you have little concern for accuracy.
I own the leading affiliate program in my niche and I think your data is way way way off, so I find it highly flawed thinking for you to believe that one other program owner's guesstimate is gospel. You already admitted that you personally believed your own data was off by something like 200%.
Recap: You admit to being at least 200% wrong. I'm asking you to verify your data assertions. You are asking me to verify nothing in particular, but I'm not the one throwing around fictional stats from mysterious sources.
Awesome! An anonymous program owner almost certainly is privy to overall industry data about all other programs and sites in existence. I am a non-anonymous program owner and I'm pretty expert at what I do. The "public limelight" does not concern me, but accuracy does concern me. You can't just pull a random number out of someone else's secretive orifice and claim it is accurate.
What is your involvement in internet industry of any kind? Have you ever demoed an affiliate program back end? NATS or any other? What makes you think that software for the purpose of tracking affiliate sales across multiple billers would track consumer financial information?
I've seen estimates as high as that 95% of adult sites use NATS and that is just patently not the case. First of all, only sites which have affiliate programs would have any use for NATS at all. Many site owners who have affiliate programs use one of the half dozen other major affiliate program solutions out there or use a custom software solution.
I can personally vouch for the fact that neither BlueBlood.com nor SpookyCash.com nor any of their subsidiary or partner sites have ever implemented NATS in any way.
If, during the time of the alleged NATS security breach, you bought a membership to an adult site, the odds are that no vital data of yours was harvested. If you happened to buy from a site using NATS and anything was harvested, it was probably only your email address. Which sucks, but does not mean you need to cancel your credit cards and checking account. Some industry insiders allege that NATS knew about the data security breach and ignored it, some say NATS thought they had successfully fixed the problem, and some say there was no technical data leak and NATS people were the ones spamming. The specifics do not matter all that much to me because I don't personally use their software and I'm resigned to being spammed. Your credit card info is probably safer at an adult site than most places on the net because adult industry tends to lead technological advances in media.
I do think it is important for people to understand that a sites' members are vital for the site to continue. If you like the kind of content a site is posting, buying a membership is the most effective way to keep that kind of content being produced. It might seem like your few dollars, plus or minus, would not make that big a difference, but it really does. It is basically voting with your wallet for what you want to exist and flourish.
I'm totally with you on everything but the Mario Brothers thang. I thought that movie was hot. Of course, I wasn't a big fan of the game . . .
I feel totally sick about the new Hitchhiker's movie from just looking at its ads and site. I am so sad that one of my last secret handshakes of commonality is about to be coopted with so much else that I love. I used to feel like there was a good chance I would like anyone who understood why one might come to the answer 42. I suspect that will be totally meaningless in just a couple weeks. Unless Hollywood really really really didn't get it.
I would love to see that study . . . well, not the actual rat cannibal acts, but the stats they produced;-) Thank you for posting that insight. I think you are right. I think that the internet also makes people feel even more crowded because they can't escape from the crush of other people even in their own homes.
I think that as a culture we are being stingier with our respect across the board. It is becoming more and more of a norm to actively display distaste for someone who has a desired skill or ability or experience of any kind.
I know that I personally have seen about a 50% decrease in Google traffic to my sites which are powered by Wordpress. This may just be the engines correcting for oversending to blogs in the past, but the decrease is a pretty visibly trackable trend.
I agree with you on that to a large extent. There will be societal issues revolving around access to information eventually, but I'm not sure determining those is the job of the private sector.
I'm assuming that you have not used robots.txt to block spiders. Any idea why your site would not have been indexed?
I see that the Hot Nacho site looks fairly corporate and uninformative, but its whois info is public and it has been registered for many years, yet it does not have links in. It seems like, if an SEO spamming co would be able to do anything, it would be able to get links in to its own site.
So this company no one has ever heard of before which no one (total of approx one teensy site) has linked to before goes to Matt and offers him enough dough that it looks worthwhile to him to spam Google? I feel like there is a piece of the story missing. I want to know who owns Hot Nacho.
Most people who just have blogs or personal sites do not know the day they start their site that they can exclude the respectful engines from indexing them. Maybe I only think this because I've had sites for so long and the engines used to be a nonfactor to me, but I think most people create a site before they learn about how to get traffic to it and I don't think they bone up on Google TOS before they start sharing their content with the world.
I'd have to look up the code to keep a site out of the index if I wanted to. Obviously, that would not exactly be an all day job, but I think it is a good point to make that Google indexes sites whose creators have probably not read their TOS or agreed to them. I don't think this means that Google is then obligated to index junk or anything, but I found the point interesting.
But it is not that the basic Wordpress model does not have a good enough revenue stream. The basic model has no revenue stream. Amazon may be a bleeder, but it has a heck of a revenue stream.
I see so many types of sites which request donations. Everything from software dev to girls panhandling in LiveJournal. People get up in arms if they find out that someone they donated to has any other source of income, but fundamentally the whole donations concept seems flawed to me in the way it tends to work online.
(1) Person has thing they want to spend money on which has at least some vague possible value and they don't want to or can't cover it out of pocket or through a legit revenue stream.
(2) Person asks for donations, probably not exactly disclosing their profit and loss statement the way an official nonprofit would have to.
(3) People donate.
(4) People find out that either the money was spent on something else or the beneficiary had some source of funds besides their donations.
(5) People get pissed off at whatever person or org got the donations.
(6) Some other person or org asks for donations and people go through the cycle all over again.
I'm not going to pretend I've got the answer to end all questions on this one, but I know that the whole donations button thing kind of rubs me wrong because it seems to always lead to a flap like this one and it seems unfair to creative people who suck it up and just make something cool.
That said, I doubt whatever donations Wordpress has received cover all the costs and certainly someone talented enough to make such kickass software could have made bank getting a second job using the time spent on that software. Then again, he probably could have just covered it. Messing up search engine results aside, I don't think the whole donations thing makes it make sense for people to freak out after the fact that they didn't know where the money for Wordpress was coming from. If one is concerned about whether something is 100% donation-funded or where the money really goes, then that needs to be researched before one clicks the donate button.
If the software does not have a revenue stream, it seems like only kind of stupid venture capitalists would invest in it . . . unless they had ulterior motives like gaining tech to spam search engines.
Wow, I'm surprised by this. I had noticed Google traffic to Wordpress-powered sites dropping off. Do people think Google has known this for a while and been slowly penalizing Wordpress sites in its listings?
Slashdot Mirror
LOL
Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury brilliantly presented how the banality of evil could be exhibited wherever mankind ended up. The minor mundane awfulness of humans, even in what should have been fascinating circumstances, was depressing as all get out.
No offense, but I think you must have misunderstood something I wrote. NATS is in absolutely no way my competition. In point of fact, we have complementary products and services. I am not making idle conversation. I have been a member of Slashdot for years and I only jump in when I feel my contribution has something special to offer. Maybe seeing disinformation spread about membership sites seems unimportant to you, but it is important to me and I felt I could share some more factual insight.
I can't help it; business talk gets me excited ;-)
Which statement did I make that you'd like facts to back up? Because, unlike you, I am wholly prepared to back up what I have to say. I don't want to know the name of your laughably fictitious anonymous source. I want to know how the data was arrived at because it strikes me that you have little concern for accuracy. I own the leading affiliate program in my niche and I think your data is way way way off, so I find it highly flawed thinking for you to believe that one other program owner's guesstimate is gospel. You already admitted that you personally believed your own data was off by something like 200%. Recap: You admit to being at least 200% wrong. I'm asking you to verify your data assertions. You are asking me to verify nothing in particular, but I'm not the one throwing around fictional stats from mysterious sources.
Awesome! An anonymous program owner almost certainly is privy to overall industry data about all other programs and sites in existence. I am a non-anonymous program owner and I'm pretty expert at what I do. The "public limelight" does not concern me, but accuracy does concern me. You can't just pull a random number out of someone else's secretive orifice and claim it is accurate.
What is your involvement in internet industry of any kind? Have you ever demoed an affiliate program back end? NATS or any other? What makes you think that software for the purpose of tracking affiliate sales across multiple billers would track consumer financial information?
I read the 95% figure a couple minutes before I posted here. For that matter, where do you get the 35% to 40% figure?
I've seen estimates as high as that 95% of adult sites use NATS and that is just patently not the case. First of all, only sites which have affiliate programs would have any use for NATS at all. Many site owners who have affiliate programs use one of the half dozen other major affiliate program solutions out there or use a custom software solution.
I can personally vouch for the fact that neither BlueBlood.com nor SpookyCash.com nor any of their subsidiary or partner sites have ever implemented NATS in any way.
If, during the time of the alleged NATS security breach, you bought a membership to an adult site, the odds are that no vital data of yours was harvested. If you happened to buy from a site using NATS and anything was harvested, it was probably only your email address. Which sucks, but does not mean you need to cancel your credit cards and checking account. Some industry insiders allege that NATS knew about the data security breach and ignored it, some say NATS thought they had successfully fixed the problem, and some say there was no technical data leak and NATS people were the ones spamming. The specifics do not matter all that much to me because I don't personally use their software and I'm resigned to being spammed. Your credit card info is probably safer at an adult site than most places on the net because adult industry tends to lead technological advances in media.
I do think it is important for people to understand that a sites' members are vital for the site to continue. If you like the kind of content a site is posting, buying a membership is the most effective way to keep that kind of content being produced. It might seem like your few dollars, plus or minus, would not make that big a difference, but it really does. It is basically voting with your wallet for what you want to exist and flourish.
OT, but I love your sig. So apt to this particular thread.
I'm totally with you on everything but the Mario Brothers thang. I thought that movie was hot. Of course, I wasn't a big fan of the game . . . I feel totally sick about the new Hitchhiker's movie from just looking at its ads and site. I am so sad that one of my last secret handshakes of commonality is about to be coopted with so much else that I love. I used to feel like there was a good chance I would like anyone who understood why one might come to the answer 42. I suspect that will be totally meaningless in just a couple weeks. Unless Hollywood really really really didn't get it.
Thanks for responding. Much appreciated.
I would love to see that study . . . well, not the actual rat cannibal acts, but the stats they produced ;-) Thank you for posting that insight. I think you are right. I think that the internet also makes people feel even more crowded because they can't escape from the crush of other people even in their own homes.
I think that as a culture we are being stingier with our respect across the board. It is becoming more and more of a norm to actively display distaste for someone who has a desired skill or ability or experience of any kind.
I know that I personally have seen about a 50% decrease in Google traffic to my sites which are powered by Wordpress. This may just be the engines correcting for oversending to blogs in the past, but the decrease is a pretty visibly trackable trend.
I agree with you on that to a large extent. There will be societal issues revolving around access to information eventually, but I'm not sure determining those is the job of the private sector. I'm assuming that you have not used robots.txt to block spiders. Any idea why your site would not have been indexed?
I see that the Hot Nacho site looks fairly corporate and uninformative, but its whois info is public and it has been registered for many years, yet it does not have links in. It seems like, if an SEO spamming co would be able to do anything, it would be able to get links in to its own site. So this company no one has ever heard of before which no one (total of approx one teensy site) has linked to before goes to Matt and offers him enough dough that it looks worthwhile to him to spam Google? I feel like there is a piece of the story missing. I want to know who owns Hot Nacho.
Most people who just have blogs or personal sites do not know the day they start their site that they can exclude the respectful engines from indexing them. Maybe I only think this because I've had sites for so long and the engines used to be a nonfactor to me, but I think most people create a site before they learn about how to get traffic to it and I don't think they bone up on Google TOS before they start sharing their content with the world. I'd have to look up the code to keep a site out of the index if I wanted to. Obviously, that would not exactly be an all day job, but I think it is a good point to make that Google indexes sites whose creators have probably not read their TOS or agreed to them. I don't think this means that Google is then obligated to index junk or anything, but I found the point interesting.
But it is not that the basic Wordpress model does not have a good enough revenue stream. The basic model has no revenue stream. Amazon may be a bleeder, but it has a heck of a revenue stream.
Good point. I had not thought of that.
I see so many types of sites which request donations. Everything from software dev to girls panhandling in LiveJournal. People get up in arms if they find out that someone they donated to has any other source of income, but fundamentally the whole donations concept seems flawed to me in the way it tends to work online. (1) Person has thing they want to spend money on which has at least some vague possible value and they don't want to or can't cover it out of pocket or through a legit revenue stream. (2) Person asks for donations, probably not exactly disclosing their profit and loss statement the way an official nonprofit would have to. (3) People donate. (4) People find out that either the money was spent on something else or the beneficiary had some source of funds besides their donations. (5) People get pissed off at whatever person or org got the donations. (6) Some other person or org asks for donations and people go through the cycle all over again. I'm not going to pretend I've got the answer to end all questions on this one, but I know that the whole donations button thing kind of rubs me wrong because it seems to always lead to a flap like this one and it seems unfair to creative people who suck it up and just make something cool. That said, I doubt whatever donations Wordpress has received cover all the costs and certainly someone talented enough to make such kickass software could have made bank getting a second job using the time spent on that software. Then again, he probably could have just covered it. Messing up search engine results aside, I don't think the whole donations thing makes it make sense for people to freak out after the fact that they didn't know where the money for Wordpress was coming from. If one is concerned about whether something is 100% donation-funded or where the money really goes, then that needs to be researched before one clicks the donate button.
If the software does not have a revenue stream, it seems like only kind of stupid venture capitalists would invest in it . . . unless they had ulterior motives like gaining tech to spam search engines.
They have a report spam link, but it seems to operate slowly.
Wow, I'm surprised by this. I had noticed Google traffic to Wordpress-powered sites dropping off. Do people think Google has known this for a while and been slowly penalizing Wordpress sites in its listings?