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A few days ago Damien Mulley and Maman Poulet posted that Something.ie was stealing their content. I didn’t pay much attention at the time but at first glance it seemed like they were complaining about their RSS feed being syndicated. RSS feeds are meant to be syndicated - Google and technorati do the same thing right?

Then today, Something.ie published a response making much the same argument. They argue that they are simply syndicating the RSS feed and that they are no different to other aggregators such as Politics in Ireland

I’ve built a few aggregators in the past so, having an interest in this area , I took a closer look. And it seems to me that Something.ie are on the wrong side of what’s acceptable etiquette for aggregating RSS feeds. Here’s why…

What is an acceptable use of your RSS feed?

There is certain accepted etiquette to aggregating other peoples content from their RSS feeds. Most people provide the full posts in their RSS feed because people are more likely to read your post in their feed reader if you give them the full content.

So at one end of the spectrum you have spam blogs which take your content and republish it on their website. These usually don’t link back you your website and try to pass off your content as their own. This is obviously evil and an unacceptable use of your RSS feed.

Then you have sites that republish the full content but retain the link back to your website. Most people find this unacceptable too. This is mainly because they don’t like their content being republished in full on another website, even if attribution and linkage is being given.

Then you have blog reading software. This is the most common type of aggregation of RSS feeds. Sites like Google reader and Bloglines will aggregate the full content of your website. People read your content at these websites but they may click through to your site if the post is interesting and they want to leave a comment. (The main reason this is acceptable and the previous one is not is that your content is not republished on the public web but rather as part of one persons personalized view within the Blog reader website).

Then you have sites that don’t aggregate full content - they just publish an short extract of the content and a link back to the source. A reader will see the title and possibly a short extract of your content and if they are interested they click the link and are sent to your site to read the full post. This is an acceptable use of someone else’s content. This is what Google and Technorati do and if this wasn’t acceptable then the web would be in big trouble. However Something.ie have subverted this model in a subtle way which I think makes it unacceptable.

Lets compare Something.ie to Politics in Ireland, another aggregator which they claim does the same thing.

At Politics in Ireland, each post links back to the source site. Click on any of the entries in the index and your are directed to the original post. It doesn’t try to keep you on the site.

At Something.ie this is not the case. The aggregated links link to other pages at Something.ie.

When you click on one of the links above you’re sent to another page at Something.ie.

This page contains a short extract from the article and does contain a link back to the original source. But again the title links to Something.ie. The link back to the source is in smaller text with the name of the source website rather than the title of the post.

This differs from standard aggregators such as Politics in Ireland in several ways.

• The title doesn’t link to the source. This is a standard convention of aggregation. Instead the title links to another page at Something.ie
• They introduce an extra step to get to the original source post. Instead of just clicking on the title in the list of articles you have to click on the title, load up the next page and the find the smaller link with the name of the source on it.
• They create an individual page for each of your posts on their website using the title of your post. These pages have ads on them. Creating individual pages for each entry is not aggregation. You cannot aggregate singular items.
• Google will index all these individual pages. So your are effectively competing with your own content on Something.ie for Google ranking.

So I think that Something.ie’s version of aggregation is different from what most other aggregators do. The differences may seem small but they’re important. It changes the tone of the site and what its aim is in aggregating other peoples content: It’s looks like their main interest is in keeping people at the Something.ie site rather than directing them back to the source posts and using other peoples content to build up the content on their own website.