New server/Shelfari evidence
If you don't notice anything, you can congratulate Felius, who just moved us to a new, dedicated web server. Believe it or not we've been running our web server and our main "write" database on the same machine. (Also, we put forks in toasters!) Anyway, the new server should help us out in a number of ways, and we have some very cool updates coming soon. Among other things, we'll be increasing our library sources by many hundreds of libraries.
In other news, I just posted my evidence that one of our competitors, Shelfari, engaged in a campaign of "astroturfing"—posting blog comments pretending to be users. This follows my evidence that they're grown by something close to spam, a deceitful invite interface. It is certainly true that I've got the bit between my teeth on this—I have been holding back on this stuff for months. When you get right down to it, the evidence is so damning I don't care what people think of my motives. Anyway, I have been eager to praise other competitors for their sites (see both posts). Pick the best site, just don't pick the one that cheats.
"Social cataloging" has become something like an industry, with over 40 sites in a dozen languages. I think our success was a major factor, but we know we didn't start it.* When one bad actor—and the best-funded one!—behaves so poorly it reflects on all of us. Indeed, I finally decided to go public with my URLs after I told someone on a plane what I did and they asked if I was that site that was sending all those spammy invitations.
I'm proud of what I do. I think there's something legitimately interesting underneath (see my Library of Congress talk). A bunch of music people with a million dollars from Amazon and no ethics is not going to spoil the party.
There. That felt better. So, I've got them off my chest. Time to hunker down and pump out some useful and important features—collections, better language parsing, better secondary-author functionality. As always, thank you for all the support.
*Bibliophil did, or perhaps 37Signals' Singlefile.
In other news, I just posted my evidence that one of our competitors, Shelfari, engaged in a campaign of "astroturfing"—posting blog comments pretending to be users. This follows my evidence that they're grown by something close to spam, a deceitful invite interface. It is certainly true that I've got the bit between my teeth on this—I have been holding back on this stuff for months. When you get right down to it, the evidence is so damning I don't care what people think of my motives. Anyway, I have been eager to praise other competitors for their sites (see both posts). Pick the best site, just don't pick the one that cheats.
"Social cataloging" has become something like an industry, with over 40 sites in a dozen languages. I think our success was a major factor, but we know we didn't start it.* When one bad actor—and the best-funded one!—behaves so poorly it reflects on all of us. Indeed, I finally decided to go public with my URLs after I told someone on a plane what I did and they asked if I was that site that was sending all those spammy invitations.
I'm proud of what I do. I think there's something legitimately interesting underneath (see my Library of Congress talk). A bunch of music people with a million dollars from Amazon and no ethics is not going to spoil the party.
There. That felt better. So, I've got them off my chest. Time to hunker down and pump out some useful and important features—collections, better language parsing, better secondary-author functionality. As always, thank you for all the support.
*Bibliophil did, or perhaps 37Signals' Singlefile.
posted by Tim at 3:06 AM
19 Comments:
What do Google and/or the GMail terms of use have to say about the way the addresses are harvested for spamming?
I find it hard to believe that they want people giving their GMail password to third parties, or for said third parties to use it this way.
I'm apalled! I so wish that people would be ethical when using the internet. It's a sad state of affairs, really. Thank you for naming and shaming. I will pass this information on to as many friends as I can to ensure that they make informed and ethical decisions about who to support. In my opinion it will be LibraryThing all the way! Keep up the excellent work. Regards, Celeste
Go Tim!
any chance of spines being part of the new feature set?
You oughta trademark/copyright your cool innovative features because your competitors will if you don't, or just steal them outright. Sad, but how the tech industry works. Amazon did with the "1-click" feature and Amazon is clearly moving into this space.
I had casually joined Shelfari (before I'd realized the superiority of LT!). . . A few days ago I found a "message" from them, and when I opened it: a heart-rending appeal for me to send $$$ so I could reap a great reward of helping X unlock an account: you know this scheme (it's been around so long I marvel anyone falls for it). I immediately sent a message to Shelfari complaining and asking to be deleted from their membership rolls. Esta1923
I remember a saying that went something like "You can't throw mud without getting dirty."
I stick with Library because its the best. It remains a helpful community with great support from its creator. Thats enough for me. I don't need to hear why everyone else sucks.
"You can't throw mud without getting dirty."
I think there's some truth to that. I hope to allay it by laying out my evidene URL-by-URL, so that anyone can evaluate it. And I would like to notice that I've been backed-up on this publically by many, including both Goodreads (a competitor) and BookCrossing (not really a competitor, but much-loved by the same people; see http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/bookpatrol/archives/125803.asp?from=blog_last3). At some point industries need to distance themselves from the people who make them look bad.
And, fundamentally, I've never shrunk from speaking my mind...
Hey, you get dirty from being a door mat, too - with people walking all over you.
Anyway, I like hearing how every one elsesucks.
Everyone else sucks.
Especially my typing.
"I don't need to hear why everyone else sucks."
Not "everyone else", just the single rival indulging in the these practices.
And yes, I do think internet users need attention drawn to the numbers of people having spam trouble with Shelfari. With the URLs Tim has supplied, we can make our own judgment as to the seriousness and scope of the problem.
If we know something dishonest is going on and say nothing in protest, aren't we implicitly abetting it?
(By the way, I'm a different Celeste than the one who responded above.)
In blogging (as in life) there's a fine line between being respectful and being inauthentic. I think, Tim, you do a great job of being very authentic throughout LT and the blogs, while still maintaining a high degree of respect for your competitors. Enough respect that you'll call one of them out for not playing by the rules and trying to win without legitimate contribution to the playing field.
Thanks for all the good work! - agwieckowski
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tim and all Librarythings:
I support you on this 100%. I read Josh's blog and I don't for one second believe they didn't know what they were doing when they created the "email referral system" that they built. I'm sure there was pressure from their board and other sources to make quick gains on subscriber growth because of earlier entrants like Librarything, BookCrossing and others but I don't see how they thought this approach wasn't going to come back to bite them in the ass. While I respect Shelfari as another player validating the space, I think they'd get more value from their members in building services, rather than focusing on attracting subscribers that don't know what they're signing up for. Just my 2 cents. I love Librarything's service and as Tim said, we have a lot of "active and dedicated" members in common that share a love of books...that's what this all about. I can't speak for him, but I'd much rather build products and services for our loyal community and let them refer people in that actually care about us, than take aggressive/sleazy marketing tactics to get users that will never use the service.
My best,
Scott Sorochak
CEO BookCrossing
Hey Tim, good for you for calling a spade a spade.
The Shelfari guys are absolute tools, and deserve all the abuse they're getting. You've probably seen that O'Reilly's Radar blog calls them out, too.
I havn't written anything on the blog or the forum for a long tiem now. Mainly because I didn't have the time anymore. However I feel the need here to support Tim and Librarthing on this matter, because LibraryThing really seems to be one of those few Internet services that you can trust. In the past I had expressed my fear that LT might just end up like many of those promising and trustworthy startups, that is selling itself (and it's comunity)to mighty $ god. But I was proved wrong. LT keeps being one of the few honest players out there. I really like your way, Tim, of staying in touch with the community, sharing your opinions and commenting on ours, showing that you care. I believe all those social networks out there all too often forget that good part of their succes is mostly due to it's comunitiy. Keep the good work Tim & LT
If Amazon.com is funding Shelfari, then perhaps it is possible to put pressure on Amazon to stop Shelfari's "astroturfing". I buy an enormous number of books from Amazon.com, as I imagine other LTers do, too. If those of us who deplore the astroturfing wrote to Amazon about our disapproval of Shelfari's tactics, perhaps that would have some influence. It's hard to see how it wouldn't--Amazon is out for the almighty $$ and, seems to me, can't afford the potential of a boycott.
Am I out of line on this or is it a potential action?
FYI - i got a Shelfari invite from a friend in India. (Apparently it's growing quickly there.) Then, when i didn't respond, i got a second badgering email about why i didn't respond to my friend's first email and sign up.
Yes, they've done rather well in India—about half their members. That's why on Alexa they look larger than LibraryThing but on Compete, which is US only, we're twice as big. Anyway, I did some analysis of their members through random statistical sampling. The majority of members have more friends than books and 96% have less than 50 books.
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