I suspect most people never see spamblogs, but let me tell you, there are a lot of them out there and they get weirder and weirder and weirder. I’m actually baffled as to why they exist. The evidence suggests that if you can get emails in front of lots of people offering penis enlargement, cheap mortgages, fake Rolexes, and stolen-money bank transfers, enough will bite that it’s worth doing so. But, as I said, most people never see a spamblog. When you see them, many have no ads at all. Of the ones you see that do have ads, the ads are totally generic, blah, uninteresting. Where’s the money? I suppose they’re violating the ongoing terms of use, but who cares, nobody’s seeing it... I think. [Update: James Robertson points out that in fact these things seem to be highly targeted at PubSub and Feedster users. Yep, that’s where I see ’em. Still, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually reading them, still less clicking on an ad. John Clingan emailed to suggest that these spamblogs are good places to plant malware, with the intent of infecting unpatched visitors via their browsers.] [Update: Toivo Lainevool, who runs fightsplog.com, thinks that splogs are trying to link to sites to boost PageRank, working around link-farm detection.]


author · Dad
colophon · rights
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October 14, 2005
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