What do you think about this new way of advertising?

Personally I find that as another form of spam. When you downloaded KaZaa, did you really want to be invaded by external advertisements?

I'm not fond of seeing this type of advertising but I think it will catch on.

>>When you downloaded KaZaa, did you really want to be invaded by external advertisements?<<

I don't mind the ads in the KaZaA program but when you surf the net using your regular browser you see all these words underlined. I really did mind when I went to my web site and saw these underlined words. These are external links out from my web site that I have not put there! Visitors will think I'm recommending these other sites.

From an advertising point of view - just think about how much traffic these sites who advertise using this system get. I'm now thinking about buying "bahamas real estate". Just think - where ever a surfer went and saw the word "bahamas real estate" on any web site it will be underlined and linked back to our site. Won't increase link popularity because the links are only being viewed in the browser however it will increase targeted traffic.

Gavin

This is basically the same thing that Microsoft is/was trying to do with Smart Tags. A couple of observations:

1. As a user these things are unbeleivably annoying. I don't know why anyone would voluntarily want to use them.
2. When KaZaa installs this thing it doesn't do a very good job of telling you what else it's installing and what that is actually doing. It does have a screen called "Partner Programs" - which, simply out of habit, I skipped through the first time I installed.

Quote: * TOPTEXT - a browser plug-in which gives Internet Explorer relevant quick links.

Rather vague, don't you think? It also installs 3 other browser plug-ins with similarily vague explanations:

Quote: * ONFLOW - a browser plug-in for dazzling, animated messages.
* WEBHANCER - measures and reports speed of web sites for optimizations.
* NEW.NET - a browser plug-in to access new cool domains, like .mp3, .sport etc.

These are accompanied by links to their respective privacy policy and terms of use but no links to more information about what these things are actually doing.

So most users, eager to start using KaZaa, would probably click right through the option to install those without knowing what it's doing.

Now, as a webmaster I find it very offensive that some third party is going ahead and adding advertising to my sites 1. without my knowledge and 2. without sharing the resulting revenues with me. As a user they're just annoying - annoying when they add one of their links to an existing link, annoying when their chosen destination has nothing to do with the word in its stated context etc. etc.. Before I figured out what was going on I just switched over to mozilla to avoid them - and I'm not switching back either.

>>Before I figured out what was going on I just switched over to mozilla to avoid them - and I'm not switching back either.<<

This only works in IE?

Quote: Originally posted by gavin681
This only works in IE?

Yup

Discussed this new advertising with the powers to be and have decided Knowles Realty would not like to be associated with this. It's basically spamming other web sites.

Although it was tempting at first. What if our competitors bought the keyword "bahamas"? Everywhere on our web site the word appears. This would be links to their site! Thought about grabbing "bahamas" before anyone could but decided it better to not.

I think Ezula will soon be in a lot of hot water over this "Top Text" incontext advertising.

Gavin

i agree that ezula will be in hot water once the many large heavyweight companies are shown screenshots of how more and more of their users are seeing their sites.

whenever something is not popular it doesn't catch much attention, but i don't think the big boys will sit by and take it when they have the legal departments and the means to grind small ezula.com into the ground once they become aware of what is happening and once kazaa is downloaded enough times to make a difference. ezula just cannot afford to fight in court once challenged, they are barely scraping by as it is, just a small privately funded company.

anybody agree?

Yes, I agree. This reminds me of another third party plug-in that came out... I guess it was maybe two years ago... called Third Voice - this allowed user to post virtual notes on sites. A little icon would show up if a note was posted allowing other users to read it and add to it. Obviously this provides ample opportunities for spamming and deflamation not to mention copyright issues. This company is now defunct.

Now, ezula is a small company and doesn't have a lot of influence, so it's easy to say that they're not going to last. However, this TopText is basically the same thing as Microsoft's Smart Tags. Will MS have enough power to overcome the opposition? This relates to the thread about MS in General Discussion - MS wants to take over the web... can anyone stop them? Scary.

I havent looked at the program and I don't intend to I really wouldn't want my browser covered in links.

Although I think that it is a good idea I wouldn't mind knowing that I have links to my site from thousands of others as I'm sure all of you think the same.

However I wouldn't like MY site to be linked like that because it is just another form of spam in my opinion and in other ppl's as i see.

Quote: Although I think that it is a good idea I wouldn't mind knowing that I have links to my site from thousands of others as I'm sure all of you think the same.

not sure what you mean by this, but your site does NOT have links pointing to it from thousands of toptext sites, only advertisers who pay in a ton of money get those links (this is not a search engine, it's a keyword pimping system, companies like wells fargo, charge.com, bmg music, and other giants control the keywords since we cannot outbid them). it starts out at .30 cents per click, but only if you purchase an enormous volume of ad space that only the biggest companies can afford (right now they are allowing nearly free test campaigns though, but that won't last for long).

by the way, ODP/DMOZ directory has created a whole new sub category for EZULA and it's unethical practices, listed below.

any new anti-ezula pages are being expedited and added within a day or two from what i understand, so if anybody adds an anti-ezula page to their site and submits it then it will surely get added to ODP very quickly:)

http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Business/Allegedly_Unethical_Firms/Ezula/

This new software is simply disgusting. There's no other word for it.

This company is making a profit from your website by altering your websites content (which is illegal) without your consent. And you also realize that if there are more external links on your website, more of your traffic will leave your website through these external links. Which basically means that your hard-earned traffic is being sold to some corporate client, while you're making less sales.

I don't understand why any of you even need to "think about it". This is Internet revenue hijacking at it's finest. They're stealing your advertising and sales revenue.