Popular Firefox add-on, AdBlock Plus, is ticking off a lot of website owners by blocking ads on their websites. To many website owners, revenue generated from advertisement helps to pay for expensive hosting costs. In retaliation, some websites are calling to block Firefox users all together. Let’s look at the argument from both sides:
AdBlock is the greatest invention mankind has ever known!
Personally as a user who spent hours visiting different websites daily, I think AdBlock works extremely well in blocking all ads on every website I visit. It cuts down loading time tremendously. It’s even more useful in sites where the advertisements are extremely intrusive. Take a look at the following images of ESPN homepage with AdBlock on and off.
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In a surprising move, the FTC announced guidelines for bloggers to disclose payments from ad companies and celebrities will be held to account for promotions. This is huge win for average consumers who often research online for product reviews. There are many sites out there who appear to be offering genuine and unbiased product reviews when in fact they are receiving the products for free from the advertisers. In some cases, they may even be compensated for their reviews.
The FTC said that endorsements on blogs appear to be “word of mouth,” but that is not always the case — sometimes companies create their own blogs that can give the aura of objectivity.
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A family facing foreclosure is anything but a unique story in these troubled economic times. But for the Sampsons of Aberdeen, Maryland, the kindness of strangers — boosted by the Internet — made for a happy holiday.
With no job, no car and no income, and facing foreclosure unless they could come up with $10,000 in two weeks, the family turned to one of her oldest friends, Jaki Grier, for help. A self-described geek, Grier started blogging years ago. Since then, she’s contributed to a magazine’s Web site and regularly posts thoughts and life happenings on her LiveJournal page. So, she published the Sampsons’s story, along with a link where people could make a donation.
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One might say the Internet is anything you want it to be—a truth machine or spreader of lies—maybe it’s both. In light of recent events Apple would say it’s the latter. Twice over the past month, a blogger has sunk their stock.
It’s not so much the lie that matters, sometimes it’s who repeats it. That one blogger posted about Apple’s fictional $800 laptop was inconsequential. That the New York Times dropped it into their vast echo chamber was catastrophic. Investors thinking Apple, during turbulent economic times, had finally decided to tap a hugely untapped market—the low price laptop market—drove the price up, and upon discovery of the fiction stocks subsequently tanked.
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Read Write Web conducted a survey with some quite interesting results. They asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants (that they claim to know and trust) what kind of money they make with their blogging gigs. The agreement was for RRW not to disclose their names, and for the bloggers themselves to be honest about their earnings.
“We hope that no one will be too angry with us if these numbers lead their employees to feel newly shortchanged and protest,” says RWW’s Kirkpatrick. “These folks are at the top of their field.”
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A Russian blogger who referred to local police as “scum” in a post received a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, leading other bloggers to express concern over online free speech.
Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 940 miles north of Moscow, wrote a post that suggested the police should be dealt with by burning officers two times a day in a town square.
He was convicted for “inciting hatred or enmity,” and given a one-year suspended sentence. Free speech advocates fear the ruling could set a bad precedent for free speech online.
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The AP’s disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it’s now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles — as few as five words.
A meeting between the Associated Press’ Vice President for Strategic Planning Jim Kennedy and Robert Cox, who heads the Media Bloggers Association, is now planned for Thursday of this week. The subject at hand is the AP’s attempt to find a new way of sharing AP content, which now involves a fee per excerpt based on its word length.
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Blog-focused advertising networks are all the rage right now, with both Federated Media and Glam pulling down big valuation financing rounds in the last few months based very early growth metrics. Other startups, like Six Apart, have launched their own blog advertising networks as well.
As we predicted, Technorati now joins them with the launch of Technorati Media later this morning (the site will be password protected until 9 am PST today), their own blog advertising network. This comes just a couple of days after news leaked of their new round of financing.
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An increasing number of bloggers are being arrested for criticizing governments and exposing human rights abuse, according to a report from the University of Washington.
Since 2003, 64 citizens have been arrested for expressing their views on a blog. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006. Over half of the arrests in the last five years were made in China, Egypt and Iran.
The report said the increasing number of arrests was evidence of the “growing” political importance of blogging. It found that arrests typically increase in times of “political uncertainty,” like elections or large protests.
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Companies that create fake blogs in order to hawk products violate what most people would consider basic truthfulness. Starting May 28th, they may also be violating UK law.
An 88-page document gets into the specifics, but it appears anyone or anything misrepresenting itself to consumers could get in trouble thanks to new regulations. The potential penalties are serious: “a fine or imprisonment not exceeding two years or both.”
That’s the sort of stuff that’ll make a lot of marketers play it safe. Judith Lewis, who seems to have been the first person to notice the fresh policy, wrote, “Be aware black hats in the UK - if you get caught the stakes just got criminally high.”
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