I would be shocked if scribd offered a paid link (cough, cough) service as they probably are looking to stay on Google’s good side.

I am not choosing sides with this one. I definitely appreciate the TOS aspect
of what you are doing, and thank you……But,
Are you sure you want to battle the likes of Don Crowther and StomperNet?

Could have nasty consequences for Scribd.

Funny, I don’t recall ever making such statements. Please inform me oh learned one.

By the way Jason, you sure spend a lot of time on this little backwater self-serving blog. My my I am flattered.

Things must be slow up in the Penthouse today huh?

…watches watch to see how long it takes for Jason to descend into the swamp

:L

The Mad Ape

Still, that doesn’t change the fact you’re flat-out lying to people.

Be careful Jason, the outbound links gremlin is giving scribd a beeeotch slappin’

The Mad Ape

“My hub was flagged as overly promotional, what does that mean?

Purely promotional offers and Hubs designed only to promote other sites or businesses are not allowed. In particular, the following actions are likely to get your hubs flagged:

* linking repeatedly to the same site within a hub or across many hubs
* including links to a page that contains largely the same content as your hub
* linking to products or services unrelated to a Hub’s content”

I swear this ape guy is out to get everyone banned form their favorite sites.

The Mad Ape

or should I say…My Dear Watson,

Scribd is a dead duck. Hubpages.com offers outgoing links plus a great monetization method for subscribers. The game’s afoot and scribd has cut themselves off at the knees for not handling this properly!

The Mad Ape

Jason from Scribd didn’t stand for it either, because he obviously has some scruples. It sounds like those complaints were from banned spammers trying to come up with an excuse for spamming, but Jason can characterize it more accurately than I, since I didn’t read their emails.

The facts are:

1) The “run” on Scribd started near the end of 2007, while Don Crowther’s video was released in January. I know that Scribd was identified as a sitting duck for link spam in at least one well-read blog post, by more than one person at Pubcon (early December), and that at least one coaching program (not ours) was teaching people to spam Scribd. It was inevitable that Scribd would need to address the spam problem, regardless of what Don said in January – once spammers smell blood, they pounce.

2) Don Crowther didn’t tell anyone to spam, in fact, at several points in the video he tells people not to do that. Don believes very strongly in social marketing strategies that add value. It’s unfortunate that some people decided to run off and spam, but Don didn’t tell anyone to do that, and he won’t be teaching spam in his course.

3) I do have some questions for Jason about what Don advocated that would violate their TOS, but we are reaching out to Scribd and Jason directly on that. The Scribd TOS has changed, but we have a copy of their TOS from January 5th, and the recent additions weren’t present in that version.

Dan

It is there for all to read:

‘As expected, we received a storm of complaints, and of course, many mentioned the StomperNet video. After I watched the clip, one fact stood out to me: whether through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, the guy instructed everyone watching to actively violate Scribd’s Terms of Service without any kind of disclaimer to that fact. This was reflected in the common threads were consistent throughout the many complaints and apologies we received: “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong” and “I never read the Terms of Service.’

I did watch the video. Watched 3 times so far. I was all set to subscribe to scribd then this unfolded.

I will wait for the new scribd model to be rolled out. I can hardly wait!

It is funny to see that I am the one being attacked here. Seems that the ole ‘if you don’t like the message then attack the messenger’ is alive and well.

If people do not like my tactics. Sucks to be them. I say grow up!

The Mad Ape

And why is that? Please explain. I posted your response to an email that I had sent you that I had posted on here prior to you replying. Why are you having such a hard time with that?

I have been transparent. Everything about this is on the table. Show where it isn’t. Your kid and teacher scenario, while amusing, shows exactly who the child really is.

My blogging is accurate and you do not like the fact that it is public. Sucks to be you little boy!

The Mad Ape

“The number of documents that crossed the line from “marketing” to spam dramatically increased toward the end of 2007. We’d already started to reevaluate our HTML policy when suddenly, over the holidays, Scribd was flooded”

Scribd has been getting a lot of buzz in SEO circles since last fall, and a flood “over the holidays” can’t be attibuted to Don Crowther’s video. More likely, it was due to the number of people at Pubcon who were talking about how to spam Scribed.

You might want to watch Don Crowther’s video yourself, since spamming is exactly what he told people not to do.

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