Entries tagged with “aggregation” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Excerpting Best Practices Hinge on Intent
Mac Slocum
March 2, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen 
A piece in the New York Times reignites the fair use debate by asking: How much excerpting does fair use cover?
It's a reasonable question, particularly since Google News, the Huffington Post and countless other sites rely on excerpt aggregation to drive traffic and sell ads. But the rules of excerpting are also -- to steal a line from Steve Jobs -- "a bag of hurt."
Fair use is a doctrine, and as much as editors, bloggers and others with an excerpting bent wish for structure (word count, percentage used, image size, etc.), it's not going to happen. Fair use is contextual and case-by-case. That's why Henry Blodget, co-founder of Silicon Alley Insider, has the right perspective:
"To excerpt others the way we want to be excerpted ourselves."
Intent is the key to proper excerpting. If your intent is to single out someone else's work, and drive attention and its associated benefits and detriments to the creator of that work, then excerpts will be short and filled with outbound links. But if your intent is to fool Google, boost your traffic, and use someone else's material to further your own efforts, then excerpts will be long and link-free -- or they'll contain links to your material.
Excerpting is an extension of white-hat vs. black-hat search engine optimization. The white hats understand that search engines are the essential utility on the Web. Gaming them for personal gain erodes value and reduces opportunities for everyone. Black hats care only about short-term efforts, so they do anything they can to turn attention into quick advertising revenue. What black hats don't realize -- or care about -- is the impact their actions have on the structure of the Internet. They're jackhammering the foundation they're standing on.
Sites that push the boundaries of excerpting are engaged in the same self-destructive behavior. They may see short-term traffic and revenue spikes, but the source sites will eventually cry foul and enact their own Draconian countermeasures. Long-term, this doesn't benefit anyone. Sites that rely on excerpted information will lose access, and originating sources will lose attention. To be effective, excerpting needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship that provides value to everyone involved. The only "rule" is intent.
New York Times Settles Linking Suit
Peter Brantley
January 27, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
In what many of us thought was a slightly bizarre case, the New York Times Co. has settled with GateHouse Media in a suit attempting to cease the automated aggregation of Gatehouse content on Boston.com's affiliated properties (Boston.com is owned by the Times Co.). It is not clear why the settlement was reached, since precedence was on the side of the Times' operation.
Mathew Ingram examines the settlement at the Nieman Journalism Lab:
Because while the settlement is not a legally-binding precedent -- the one piece of what might be called good news -- it still involves the New York Times voluntarily refraining from what many would argue is perfectly defensible behaviour. As Joshua Benton notes in his post at the Nieman Journalism Lab, that could well embolden other publications to launch similar cases, on the assumption that if the NYT caved then someone else might too. [Links included in original post.]
The Future of Chunk Sales ... Today!
Mike Shatzkin
October 2, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
The blog PersonaNonData pointed us to a new model that might bring the future into tighter focus for some publishers. At AcquireContent.com, a new Web site from Gale, they have made their content available for sale through "customer pull" transactions.
We have tried to make the points that new revenue opportunities will be small dollars and we've suggested that XML-structured content facilitated profitable exploitation of those opportunities. Gale has taken a big step in taking costs out by sharply reducing transaction costs for both buyer and seller through this Web site. Gale already has rich databases of content so they can create a standalone offer. Other publishers will be waiting for vertical aggregators (one of which is Gale) to pull their content into offerings like this.
It is pretty likely that those vertical aggregators will find XML-structured content easier to ingest and offer seamlessly than content which is not. And the quantity of content suitable for a vertical will be another way an aggregator will rank the potential providers of content, so the sooner content starts to live in XML, the more attractive a publisher will be when opportunity knocks.
- Stay Connected
-
TOC RSS Feeds
News Posts
Commentary Posts
Combined Feed
New to RSS?
Subscribe to the TOC newsletter. 
Follow TOC on Twitter. 
Join the TOC Facebook group. 
Join the TOC LinkedIn group. 
Get the TOC Headline Widget.
- Search
-
