I’ve also been busy giving presentations and creating more free videos for you too.  Doesn’t leave much time for blogging…

That said, today’s Friday so I decided to give myself a short break and pass on some news to you that you might find just a little interesting…to say the least.

Brandjacking

First, let me put a scenario to you.

Let’s say that you owned Home Depot.

All over the internet on places like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg and the like, there are comments about your business…both good and bad.

Now, let’s say that there was a big famous website that everyone knew about that aggregated all of this data in one easy to find spot.  All of the good comments, bad comments and the in-betweens.

By the way “aggregated” is a nice way of saying “scraped or stolen content”.

And let’s say that you found this website and wanted a way to manage those comments or at the very least respond to them.

But to do so, you’d have to pay $400 a month.

Sound unethical?  Illegal?  Preposterous?

Well, ladies and gentleman, think again.

That is exactly what’s happening at Squidoo.

Seth Godin, author of such books as Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable and All Marketers are Liars as well as the founder of Squidoo, announced recently that they have a new product called “Brands in Public“.

“Brands in Public” takes content already existent on the web and places it in one easy to find spot within Squidoo on each company’s own special page.

This page is meant to be a resource for potential customers to read reviews and such (good or bad) about the company.

All right, now first of all, they’re using scraped content…that is taking content from the internet and putting it all on one of their own pages for instant content.  A big no-no for little guys online…but evidently quite alright for someone with notoriety to do.

If you don’t like some of the things that are published there (remember the good and the bad are published), and you want to edit the page that:

A) You didn’t request in the first place.

B) Most likely didn’t give permission to use.

Well, guess what?  You have to pay Squidoo $400 a month (yes, you read that right) $400 a month to edit the page yourself.

If you think this sounds just a tiny little bit…ok, a BIG bit like blackmail then you are not alone…you and countless others are screaming FOUL! at the top of their lungs.

Personally, I’m shocked.  To me, it nearly screams “Help!  We’re Desperate!” and all of that respect that Seth had is starting to dwindle as more and more people actually realize what’s happening here.

You can read Seth’s original announcement here.

Here’s the breakdown:

• No Spam.  Ok, not exactly “new” but they’ve reiterated it…again.
• No more X-rated material.  So if you’re in that market, you might want to start considering moving your material to a new home or changing the Squidoo content page(s) you are using to comply.
• No “Junk Topics”.  Now, “junk topics” mean different things to different people.  Just what constitutes a “junk topic”?  Well, here’s Squidoo’s list of them:
  • Drugs/Pharmaceuticals
  • Weight Loss / Dieting
  • Affiliate Lenses promoting affiliate programs.
  • Gambling
  • Credit Card Debt, Mortgages, Currency Trading, Envelope Stuffing, etc.
  • Hate Lenses (now, my question is, why has this not been a “Squidon’t” already?)
  • Ringtones
  • Lyrics Lenses.  According to Squidoo “…a serious copyright issue.”  But, according to an article on USA Today from NMPA not necessarily.  As a matter of fact, she pretty much says “we don’t care if you’re not making any money off of those lyrics.”
  • And a few “…harder to generalize, but obvious when we see them.”  In other words, it’s our opinion what stays and what goes.  (Does that sound familiar to you?)
• There’s a new limit on overly-promotional lenses.  They state “…this doesn’t mean you’re limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole lens…just 9 to the exact domain.”  However, they also state “any links generated by Squidoo modules (like Amazon or Wikipedia) don’t have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Zazzle module) or modules that your readers post in…”  Do with this information what you will.  They’re practically telling you exactly what to do.They’re also whitelising Allposters affiliates and placing Clickbank affiliate lenses in the middle ground; not whitelisting nor blacklisting.

If  you’re worried about any of your lenses, don’t worry, you still have time to act.  None of this will take place until Mid-July so you still have time to export your content if you feel as if your lens(es) might get dinged.

The entire piece is listed here for your reading pleasure.  Note though that you do have plenty of time before these changes go into effect and if you do read the content (which I suggest you should) also take the time to read what they’re *not* saying.  In other words, read between the lines because you can come up with some great ideas for future use.

And no, I’m not saying to try and “game” the program.  They’re flat out telling you what’s acceptable and what’s not if you want to stay listed but they’re not playing Google at this point and just “doing it” without your knowledge.  As a matter of fact, they even give you some great advice.  I suggest you use the information they’re handing to you.  It’s a lot more than people usually get.