BlogExplosion Banished Me
In response, I sent the following to them:
I’m not going to try to change your mind because it’s your right to do whatever you feel is best for your business, but I want to offer my opinion on this.
I blog about technology, the net, and I blog about blogging. I have opinions and I blog them. To me, that is the essence of blogging. If I have to censor myself in order to use your blog traffic service, then I guess it’s time we parted ways. It’s a shame because I have enjoyed BE and had every intention, up to this point, of continuing to use BE. For the record, blog traffic service users generally join several services, just so you know. They may have their favorite or favorites, but most bloggers I know have joined more than one.
When I mentioned BE in my posts about BM, the extent of my posts were to the effect of "BM is going to offer competition to BE", which was exciting to me, a user of these types of services. In fact, one of my *BM posts* even stated: "Say what you want about BlogAdvance, Blogclicker, Blogazoo, etc., BE beats them all hands down in my book." You know for yourself as a consumer, that when companies compete, it’s the consumer that wins. Seeing a service that promises to offer BE competition was interesting for that very reason. And that made it blog-worthy.
I’d also like to point out that I’ve not been a freeloader at BE by any means. I’ve *purchased* advertising from you a total of 7 times thus far. I’m a paying customer! And I had every intention of continuing to do so even after I joined BM. I’ve also had your banner on my site from day one. I know that it had generated numerous referrals to your company! I’m not an A-List blogger by any means, but I’ve received 35,586 visits since my site has been live, with an average of 2500 visits per week. That’s visits, mind you, not page views (Page views average 3500/wk).
Jeff, I’ve even posted tickets to BE to offer suggestions about features that I would like to see added or improved to make BE even better!
This will be my final suggestion: don’t try to censor your members. Banning people for joining, talking about, or using other services is just bad for your business. This behavior is going to cause more people to jump ship than if you had just let well enough alone.
I’ve very disappointed that things are going to end this way. I think you are making a mistake, but it’s yours to make, I suppose.
Farewell, BE.
(Fair warning - this opinion of mine will be posted on my blog)
Follow the conversation at YackTrack!
Okay - that’s it. I’m tempted to delete my account in an act of solidarity.
Jeff’s comment:
We did not want to suspend your account but as you pushed our limits we really had very little choice in the matter. Really — this is not what we wanted to do here at all ….
My partner and I have personally invested tens of thousands of dollars into BlogExplosion over the last year. This is not a hobby but rather a full-time business for us. We wake up and go to bed every single day making BlogExplosion the best site it can be. I dont remember the last weekend I had off… We have put everything we have as two people possibly can into the development of BlogExplosion.
We have to protect our intellectual property and we have to stop people stealing membership away from us. In the real world I cant just walk into McDonalds and sell BurgerKing hamburgers and although a poor example the same principles apply on BlogExplosion.
I can recall in your first big post about BM that it was your only post for days (or at least the first post on your blog).. That is not a typical posting pattern for you considering you post so frequently to your blog. Day after day your top post was about the launch of BM which you have promoted extensively for weeks now.
Over that time you used BE to refer members to BM and I imagine most of your referrals are from BlogExplosion. BM being a site that upon our request added a privacy policy (which they did not have originally) and that had people spamming our DB to refer new members to BM — BTW I applaud BM for taking the right position here and getting up a privacy policy and to put a stop to any spamming. I appreciated that.. but..
In their newsletter BM positioned their entire newsletter to directly attack the features on BE. Design, BOTB, 1:1 ratio, lottery etc etc. If this is how they want to market themselves then we have to address it accordingly. BM should concentrate on the benefits they can offer rather than comparing services. I have worked in marketing enough years now to understand their motivations at this point and how they plan to position their service moving forward.
To compete when we read about their competitive knock-offs in their newsletter Battle of the Blogs, Rocket and our lottery are all being re-designed right now as we speak. We will improve on what we have in place in a very short period of time.
BM 1:1 traffic ratio holds little value in how they will remove inventory from the system to offer a 1:1 ratio. The idea of replacing outside traffic at a reduced rate or an outside banner exchange means integrating low quality traffic to be able to offer a 1:1. As experienced traffic exchange owners of over 5 years now (200,000 combined members) we were literally outraged when we heard the methods BM plans to use to displace member credits.
I hope people out there understand the difference between QUALITY traffic vs. QUANTITY of traffic.. I hope BM provide stats to where all of the traffic comes from… You should demand this from them and you should be monitoring your traffic logs to make sure you are getting what they promise.
You DID pay for advertising with us in the past. That is not lost on us and we appreciate the support. Without that support BE cannot continue to improve for the future nor would we have made it this far without the support of our members. The issue is not whether you are a paying member or not but rather the issues at hand. Again no matter what we thank you for your past support and is a separate matter.
Your extensive use of BM screenshots, copying newsletters, “talking about sneak peeks etc” and generally pumping up BM like a hot .com to hit IPO payload type of hype is not going to fly if you use BE to primarily gain referrals of a competitive service. Your magnitude of hype left us again very little choice in the matter…
BE DOES has tons of competitive links in rotation. If a competitive blog exchange wants to market their service around our exchange then we have to protect our exchange. Legally we pursue anyone that “borrows then modifies” our ideas and have done so for over 5 years. Our traffic exchange scripts are programmed in-house and largely considered the best traffic exchange scripts around. But when a company copies our ideas like Phantom credits vs. mystery credits and to be seen other features we WILL protect our intellectual property.
I wish all our competition the best of luck but they have to come up with their own ideas. In the end the best product wins and always does but more so the members really win in the end as they benefit from using the best products available to them. But again.. This is a real business for us. We have invested heavily into BE and we are not going to let other exchanges leverage our memberbase. We protect our business just like any other real business out there online or offline.
Any action like this discussion we understand hurts us perception wise. We understand that in fighting back sometimes and is a price we have to pay to protect ourselves. We dont heavily censor members but there is a limit. You went too far.. Many other people have promoted BM if you surf sites on BlogExplosion and their accounts are fine..
You went too far.
I hope you post this to your blog so that people can make their own decisions. It is easy to say allow anything on BlogExplosion and let chips fall there they fall but if you actually owned BE perhaps you would potentially have a different opinion as well.
We do not wish bad on anyone, but if we want to keep BlogExplosion a free service or simply be able to continue to offer it in the future we need to protect ourselves along the way. We are doing just that.
Sincerely
Jeff
BlogExplosion.com
(permission to post this on your blog)
Jeff: I understand that BE is your life - I don’t expect you to welcome competition, but I expect you to live with it
I understand your concerns. And in fairness, I’ve posted your entire comment, unedited, on my blog. And I will post this one as well. But I have to defend myself in regards to what you have labeled my having “gone to far.”
You mentioned that my “first big post about BM was your only post for days (or at least the first post on your blog).. That is not a typical posting pattern for you considering you post so frequently to your blog. Day after day your top post was about the launch of BM which you have promoted extensively for weeks now.” This is just completely untrue, and since you are accusing me of pinning the post to the top (a feature Typepad doesn’t even have, btw), I have to respond.
You can view my October archives here: http://hyperculture.typepad.co.....index.html. The first time I mentioned BM was on 10-4. It was the 1st of 2 posts for that day. Again I mentioned BM on 10-8, and it was the 1st of 3 posts that day. I believe you’re thinking of the 10-16 post. It was the only post that day and I didn’t post again until 10-18. Yes, I took a day off. Although I’m a regular poster, this was not some sort of nefarious plan. I just happened to get busy with real life. So the post was up for 2 days. Or more like a day and half, Considering I usually post at night. It is still a far cry from “day after day.” I do have lapses in posting, anyone can review my archives and see I’m not a guaranteed daily poster.
Secondly, as far as the “extensive use of BM screenshots, copying newsletters” you mentioned, again I feel the need to set the record straight here as well. There has only been one newsletter. That one newsletter contained 4 screenshots. I did not even post these in the main body of the post — you had to click “continue reading” to even view them (the newsletter containing the screenshots). I felt that was pretty considerate of me, since I am a blogger who writes about technology and blogging and the like, I would have normally put all of it in the main post. I did that in deference to you. A courtesy involving self-censorship.
In total, there were 5 posts out of 36 in the month of October regarding BM. I don’t feel that’s excessive. Now if you accused me of “hyping” Google, that would be another story.
I guess you are just angry because you feel that BM is copying you. This I understand to a point. But I don’t see why BM’s Battling Blogs feature (which, btw, is not like yours at all) is any more of a rip-off than Blog Thunderdome?
But it doesn’t matter. I don’t want this to go on and on forever. Let’s agree to disagree, okay? The bottom line for me is that if I would have to censor what I want to write about in order to use your service, then I would not want to use your service anyway. Being able to write about my opinions is important to me, as a technology blogger. God forbid the other companies I write about treated me this way — Microsoft would take away my PC, Apple would take away my iPod, & the RIAA would take away my CDs! LOL!
Still, the liberal in me believes that you have the right to have an opinion and express it just as much as I do. And you most certainly have the right to do as you see fit with the business you run.
Best of luck,
Sarah
Jeff —
Oh my! Just read your comment! And one more thing - all BE vs BM commentary will be posted to the comments section! God forbid my weblog because some sort of BE vs BM war zone. Do you *really* want your response at the top of the page? Do you really want my banishment to attract that much attention? If that’s what you want, I’ll happily post your comment to the top of the page. Just ask. But maybe you could ask nicely instead of accusing me of even more things?
Sarah I agree with you - and I’m fighting your corner on the BE forums, while sticking in the ToS by not naming anything.
Out of your front page only two posts are about BM, this one and more Juicy Blog Mad news, which was only a paragraph or so long.
I’ve also mentioned this in BA - naming names. Hopefully I’ll get the blogging community on your side.
Jeff’s response -
Simply I want people to know all the details rather than us simply banishing you… No war zone here as we are way too busy and I am sure you agree waste of time spending more time debating this.
Not accusing you of anything, just asking for equal exposure. We have followed your posts for the last month now and in the end had no choice but to take this action. Believe me nothing against you at all and just a business decision we are forced to make.
If BM launches with 100% of their own ideas and stop marketing around BE we have no problems with them and will be respected as a good alternative service.
Sincerely
Jeff
Jeff,
It is not personal on my side either. I’m sure you are a nice guy, but I disagree with your business decision in this case.
So do you want your comment posted as a weblog entry or are you fine with it being in comments?
That is such bullcrap. Could they BE any more lame? Guess what? I don’t think you are making a ton of money off of your blog. I know I’m not making crap from mine.
Jeff’s analogy of going in to McD’s and selling Burger King is way off. It is more like you are going in to McD’s and while eating a Big Mac, talking about the greatness of the Whopper.
I DARE YOU to find one McDonalds that would throw you out.
Horrible business decision.
Hum… Being French I’m not sure I understood well what’s happening here? Sarah, have you been banished from BlogExplosion because you are watching a similar service that is being developped ???
I believe this is the worst thing BE could have done . First because ,it shows they do not try to find any other alternatives to keep their users - which shows a great lack of professionalism, secondly because it shows they don’t even know what a blog is supposed to be: freedom of speach and opinion, thidly because people will know what’s happening at BE, and finally because this will indirectly promote BM…
mmmm I guess I’ll start to close my account right now ( Maybe i can simply blog about BM, Sarah, you got an invite for me?
)
HAHAHAHA Thats pathetic.
From what I have seen, the BM Developer gets banned, now Sarah, who is next?
Why not also ban every other person that has a blogmad banner on their blog?
Jeff’s Response:
I will ask this one more time. Please add it as a post.
Thanks
Jeff
Wow. What a bad business decision. It seems to me if Jeff was an avid reader of your blog he’d know you post about all sorts of different blogging and technology news. He just made himself look like an ass and therefore, I won’t be using his service.
Honestly, did he THINK before he acted?
Jeff: I guess that’s aimed at me.
BlogExplosion and censorship
Have you all with blogs used Blog Explosion? Well you might want to think twice before using it again. A fellow Tampa blogger, Sarah, found out a disturbing truth about BE the hard way; that they censor. In fact, they’re insisting an editorial veto ove…
Duh, duh duh, Duh DUH, duh duh duh! Duh Duh DUh duh duhduh DUh Duh DUh! Furthermore Duh DUh And I’m an ass!
What a fucking toolbox that guy is. HE wants you to post his response as it’s OWN post on YOUR website. Fuck that arrogant shit! This duochebag bans his customers, who does that? I think you would have continued to use his site and still promote your blog though his “advertising” but no, he doesn’t want your business if you’re going to talk about another service. So what if I’d never heard of BE and found your site through BM or BA and saw your banner for BE, that would bring him traffic, right? Seeing as the analogy for fast food restraunts is out there I’ll go with it.
He owns a McDonalds and because there is a Burger King down the street he has the road ripped up between the two restraunts. Now yes, he has stopped people from taking that road in front of his restraunt to the Burger King but he has also stopped people from taking the road in front of Burger King to his restraunt. Maybe that’s business sense but it sure as hell isn’t common sense. Sounds like a dictatorship anyways, emphasis on the “DIC”
Russia fell under a dictator, Iraq fell under a dictator, maybe BE is next!
i just read through this entire entry and well…wow. i’m amazed. i’ve honestly never heard of either blogexplosion OR blogmad! BUT the actions blogexplosion has taken leads me to believe they aren’t a place i’d like to take my business.
jeff’s insistence on getting his own blog post is really strange. he says his post was “buried” in the comments. IT’S TWO COMMENTS IN! i don’t see how that’s buried at all! i saw it right away after reading your post. i don’t see how not posting his response as a separate entry to your blog or possibly as an addendum to your original post would make any difference.
i’m honestly confused as to the reasoning blogexplosion used in banning you. i understand cringing at someone promoting a competitor…but i still think blogexplosion crossed the line.
i read all of jeff’s comments thus far and find his case to be less concrete than yours.
” In their newsletter BM positioned their entire newsletter to directly attack the features on BE. Design, BOTB, 1:1 ratio, lottery etc etc. ”
The newsletter that Jeff is referring to can be found here
http://www.blogmad.net/newsletter.html
and I read it and read it again and again and again and I am stumped. The only thing that they mention about the Battle of the blogs is that they plan on coming with a fair alternative. Other than that I see no attacks on BlogExplosion, so if Jeff assumes that the mention of a lottery, a 1:1 ratio and a sleek and sexy design design is an attack on blogexplosion, is Jeff admitting that BlogExplosion is flawed?
from the BM newsletter
“Features
A simple, sleek and sexy interface…
The internet has become cluttered with sites that are slow to load, hard to navigate, difficult to understand, and awful to look at - so we have opted for an extremely sleek and sexy design for BlogMad using colors that are easy on the eyes and most importantly is the large, easy to navigate menu which is simple to use.”
So if thats an attack on BlogExplosion then am I right in understanding that jeff is admitting that blogexplosion is Slow to load, hard to navigate, difficult to understand and awful to look at?
Jeff thats the only thing I can agree with you on…
Again I have to mention something.
“BM 1:1 traffic ratio holds little value in how they will remove inventory from the system to offer a 1:1 ratio. The idea of replacing outside traffic at a reduced rate or an outside banner exchange means integrating low quality traffic to be able to offer a 1:1. As experienced traffic exchange owners of over 5 years now (200,000 combined members) we were literally outraged when we heard the methods BM plans to use to displace member credits.”
I went and cruised around some of the sites affiliated with blogmad and there aint nothing wrong with em.
and Jeff’s concern is that BlogMad are going to be using some of their affiliated sites to displace credits and get outside traffic.
Damn straight that sounds like a damn fine idea!
What the hell, I don’t want just bloggers reading my blog, I want other people reading it too!
Great idea BlogMad, you have my vote and my support!
impending implosion
I’ve never used BlogExplosion, so I cannot talk about their service. But sarahintampa has used them. It looks like I won’t be using BlogEx, either, because they freely admit to censoring their own customers. It seems BlogEx didn’t like that s…
If Jeff and the others really believed in the quality of the service they are offering at BE then they would not be afraid of tons of people jumping ship. Obviously this is not the case.
It seems its not only blogs they are banning, but whole FREE bloghosting sites because its owned by a competitive traffic exchange??
Read my sites new entry. http://www.bloglegion.com/masterdebate
i really dont understand it. all it was was a review.but ok. whatever you think.
i dont understand why but blog explosion never accept me
i dont understand why at all
holy crap … what is up with b.e.??? i used to think they were such a great service. i guess they’re just intent on blowing it up once BlogCharm starts making them buku cash.
Eek! Am I crazy or does this exchange remind me of something?
http://www.thesuperficial.com/.....space.html
Thieving Bastard
A week ago, Jeff from BlogExplosion said that something big was coming that would leave sites like BlogAdvance trailing behind blah blah blah wank wank ad nauseum. Little did we know that this “something big” was, in fact, that Jeff…