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Roadkill

Is The Times Spamming Furl?

The popular social bookmarking systems - Furl, Digg & del.ici.ous amongst others - tend to have a lot of the same "top urls." However Furl is unique in that it is the only one that regularly has listings from Times Select which is the New York Times paid for subscription service.

And it's not just the odd Times Select listing now and again. Today, there are 4 Times select listings in the top 25 - none of which appear on the other top urls lists. In fact out of the top 25 Furl listings today, there are 9 New York Times listings. Del.ici.ous has none. Coincididence?

Looking at who has Furled all these Times links results in: anonymous, anonymous, anonymous.

Has the net descended into such a mess that even The Times is spamming now?

del.icio.us Furl digg Reddit TailRank Add to My Yahoo co.mments Monday, May 29, 2006

Comments...

Blogger Mike

I think the anonymous Times Furls are simply the default name Furl assigns when someone from TimesSelect hits a "Save" who uses the right click tool outside of the Times site.
I know it sounds lame but it's the best reason I can come up with.
Anonymous user is not just one "member".
It would be nice if LookSmart could explain it.
Sadly though it looks like LOOK is doing an ostrich impression lately!

11:47 AM  

Blogger Ted Ellis

Its not the Times that is spamming Furl. It is users who are paid (and I use that term loosely) to bump up spam sites so that they are on top every day.

Furl is working on this (trust me) so that users can mark something as spam forcing the site down in the rankings.

11:12 AM  

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