AnalogSenses

By ÁLVARO SERRANO

Scams Against Publishers →

October 11, 2013 |

Marco Arment:

Josh’s position seems to be that for most publishers, permitting a news aggregator to reproduce their full-text feed is like a large-scale version of those “offers”. I’m inclined to believe him: navigationally and conceptually, people who browse in Flipboard are browsing Flipboard, not browsing the individual target sites within it. If you aren’t profiting directly from that browsing such as with sponsored links right in the feed or articles, I don’t see how you’ll ever see much of an upside.

Most news aggregators are explicitly designed to take advantage of other people’s work. Moreover, they even have the nerve to spin it as if they’re doing the authors a favor. I, for one, would rather keep my tiny audience and work it up on my own merits, instead of being routinely exploited by one of those services.