Cheers, Scott
----- Original Message ----- From: "ANDREA STREIGHT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:49 PM
Subject: RE:[wdvltalk] a new spam=link spam
[I posted this message on another discussion list, but since it's so important, to my mind, I've decided to post the same message here on this list. Apologies to those who subscribe to both.]
**********************
You've heard of email spam, and comment spam, some may know of trackback spam and RSS feed spam.
Now there's a new deceptive spam-like practice, that I'm loosely labeling
"link spam" for lack of a better term. I just discovered it two minutes ago,
but I thought I'd mention it and see what others have to say about it.
What is "link spam"?
You're reading an article on a subject of interest to you, in my case it was
Seniors and Internet Dangers.
I see a blue underlined hypertext link. When I hover my cursor over it, lo
and behold, the link destination is totally unexpected, and basically
undesirable. The destination has nothing to do with the article or what I'm
researching.
So the blue underlined hypertext link is a blatant violation of user expectations and the philosophy of linking in general.
The link is deceptive, because an entity (person, URL, organization, fact)
is mentioned in a sentence, so I assume that the hypertext link will lead to
information related to the topic of the article and the sentence. WRONG!
A "Sponsored Link" box pops up upon hover state, and it's just like a
sponsored link in a search engine result page, with a headline, a paragraph
of description, and a blue underlined hypertext link.
This is not good. This is destructive of hypertext linking, very deceptive and annoying. Not saying it is criminal or immoral, just a very bad practice.
This is not a "rant." This is a warning, and a plea to not imitate this troubling development.
I will give you the location where I first encountered this whole new species of spam:
www.bizreport.com/news/7968/
I wonder what reactions I'll get to this?
*******************
To clarify: this spam link leads to a commercial site, selling something. Thus, I feel justified in calling it unwanted commercial link spam. You don't expect a link to take you AWAY from the topic of interest, and TO a site trying to sell you something. Am I the only one who hates this bad new spam-like development?
Steven Streight
Web Usability Analyst/Web Artist
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.vaspersthegrate.blogspot.com
www.streightsite.blogspot.com
www.arttestexplosion.blogspot.com
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