There was a big kerfuffle a few weeks ago when RTE.ie mailed some Irish bloggers to let them know there were redesigning their fashion site & planned to aggregate a select number of blogs on the site.
They asked the bloggers if they would like to be part of the feature on the site, and they could email for more details.
Cue an over the top, knee jerk reaction blog post from Beaut.ie accusing RTE of wanting to steal traffic.
A rep from RTE appeared on the thread to clarify what (to me) was already clear when I read the extract of the email.
All they wanted to do was carry:
"the first line or two of the blogger’s post only. For the reader to access the post they would click through directly to the blogger’s site generating page views and traffic for the blogger."
Not only that - RTE (from the original email) said "if you would be interested in being part of this feature on the site..."
Meaning, IT WAS OPTIONAL. Giving an option was something that RTE didn't even have to do. All they planned to publish was the first line or two of the blog post. If RTE were really trying to rip off Beaut.ie and other sites they would simply have done a Huffington Post and published more in depth summaries of an original blog post as their own, with the option of linking to the originating blog. That would be worthy of shouting about.
Every respect to Beaut.ie for the immense success of their site, but a big thumbs down for the disingenuous way they painted the RTE.ie plan to drive traffic to their website and that of other Irish fashion and beauty sites. Maybe *that* is the actual issue though. Maybe by giving other Irish fashion and beauty sites some limelight, it might drive clicks away from Beaut.ie?
Whatever the reason. It speaks volumes that a reply on the Beaut.ie thread from the developer working on the RTE Fashion site (shown below), elicited just one reply from Beaut.ie, which was simply "racing off to a meeting, Karl thanks for your comment!".
No acknowledgement that, you know, RTE really aren't trying to steal traffic and all they are doing is no more than this site is doing - showing a TEENY TINY portion of the first line of a blog post which, if written well, will encourage the visitor on RTE.ie to click through to the bloggers site.
That's hardly a crime & that's why I set up this website.
This website by @lecraic
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RTE Developer replies on Beaut.ie:
"howdoyoudo? allow me to introduce myself, i’m the developer who probably caused this furore by not being able to eloquently explain the mechanism of this aggregator in the first place – so let me try redress that here.
in the interest of full disclosure – i’m karl, a contract web developer currently working in RTE (so speaking as myself here, not an rte representative), i know feck all about fashion, and less about blogger politics (i do know how to prove the world is round if that’s still an issue? 
)
anyways – i’ve called this thing i’ve been developing an aggregator because it … well ‘aggregates’ links to blog posts onto one page.
the reason for developing this is because link exchanges and blog rolls are crap – they’re static, go out of date and link to dead sites, they rarely give any indication of what you’re actually clicking through to, let alone any reason why you’d want to.
so – what i’m doing here is more akin to a twitter feed/blog roll mash up thingy, where we read in the rss feed, and use the story details (headline, author, date, summary) as links to blog *posts* rather than just generic links to the main blog page – and so hopefully fix all the issues mentioned above.
it should be a low maintenance, win-win situation – and i don’t quite get how it’s been so badly misinterpreted here as “steal all your content, republish without any accreditation, and steal all the ad monies…”
as for giving back to the community, this uses and open source component and so the finished app will also be release back to the open source community (as python/django i’m afraid, but knocking together a php version as a wp plugin would be no big deal – any bloggers here who are interested in using it – just gimme a shout)
i’m subscribing to this feed and will try answer any questions about this that anyone wants to put to me,
cheers,
karl"
