1. BNN/Mastio’s primary motive is to make money off of bloggers, not to create community in the blogging world.

2. BNN/Mastio added many blogs to its site without the permission, or even knowledge, of its authors.

3. BNN/Mastio ignored and long refused the requests of many bloggers to opt-out of its site.

4. Mastio claims BNN’s purpose is to help bloggers, thus implying it is on the side of bloggers; yet his actions (refusing opt-out requests, etc.) and words (just read the condescending and lengthy comments he has left all over the St. Louis blogosphere) prove otherwise.

5. Mastio has created similar uproar among many other bloggers across the country; this is not limited to St. Louis

6. “I blogged [about BNN] because I wanted to hear what members of the blogging community thought about the idea. . . Apparently, merely asking about it called my motives into question — something I will never understand. . .” Many St. Louis bloggers vehemently object to other people making money off of their content without their consent. They also vehemently object to BNN not promptly and respectfully removing many blogs from its site upon their authors’ request. So it stands to reason that your post about possible partnership with BNN would cause similar concern.

Rebecca,

I understand that tone is hard to read on the Internet, so some may have legitimately found my tone mean or condescending. That was not my intention. I don’t know what length has to do with it at all. My intention was to be accessible and answer questions.

However, much of this conversation has had little relationship to reality with accusations about what BNN does that were simply not true. You are one of the cases that mystify me most.

You asked to be added to BNN. I promptly added you. You asked to be removed. I promptly removed you. Yet here you are acting as if you personal experience didn’t exist.

Further, you say what my primary motive is? How on earth would you know without reading my mind? Whatever my motives — and I have been pretty consistent for two years that my motive is to make it easier to find good local blogging from all points of view — running a web site built on a sophisticated and fast database requires revenue. It is far from free.

In my opinion, this post is clearly leaning in support of BNN and unfairly characterizes myself and others as ‘raging’. I was never ‘raging’ nor did I ‘rage’, where as in fact, I corresponded directly with Mr. Matsio. In my emails, I sought understanding and answers.

Additionally, your article appears to me to be characterizing the blogs as attacking you and the idea of helping bloggers. Bloggers in St. Louis would love some help. Help by being spotlighted and recognized as true and equal content producers. For my own blog, new just two months ago, has grown from 0 to up to 200+ readers each day, and still growing. None of that due to aggregators or professional media organizations helping.

Additionally, your facts appear to misrepresent what Google Reader does. Google Reader is a tool. It does not automatically aggregate web sites, nor does it have ads within the tool. The tool, which is embodied in a web site, allows each user of the tool to pick and choose blogs to subscribe to. Those blogs are listed clearly as to author, blog name, and additional information about the feed. At no point does the Google Reader tool make it unclear in anyway what blog a user is subscribed to or it’s source. Google Reader use again requires user log in, and is user specific in subscriptions etc.

BNN on the other hand is not a search too, blog reading tool, or a sign in for subscription too. It is an open site where blogs have been aggregated and listed. Many of those blog authors were not contacted yet their blogs appear listed as if they opted in. Additionally, BNN does not allow for blog reading features, or tools. It does however sell ads next to all content.

It is fortunate that bloggers in St. Louis became aware of BNN and other potential issues regarding use of their blog content. In many cases those blogs are publicly and clearly copyrighted as well as trademarked in a few.

Blogs are not the same thing as the AP news feed, free to be remixed or quoted in their entirety. Blogs are not owned by the public, but they are exposed to the public. Much like the content on StLToday, in the public but not owned by it.

Kurt, your desire to help bloggers in St. Louis is admirable. For me, you could help by visiting and commenting on my blog, listing my blog in a public and highly visible blog roll here on StLToday.com, quoting w/attribution from my blog for commentary on that content. One huge opportunity is to link to local blogs at then end of articles here, where that blog has relevant content. I like it when folks link to my blog posts, especially if they have something nice to say.

Regards

Dave,

This is the last I will say of it to you: it is not simply about my experience of opting-in and then opting-out. (And, I will say, my opting-in was a result of my own ignorance; I naively mistook your site as another stlbloggers.com. Had I known better, I never would have opted-in; and upon learning of my mistake, I quickly opted-out.)

The blogging world is not a solitary experience; it is a community, especially here in St. Louis. And there are many bloggers who were wronged by BNN. They were added to the site without their permission, consent, or knowledge; and they were not removed promptly and respectfully upon their request. And so, despite what my own individual experience was, their collective experience trumps that. I stick up for them; I stand in solidarity with them.

Hey, Todd. Thank you for commenting and I’m truly grateful for the feedback. I tried to be careful not to characterize anyone specifically of “raging.” I’m sure you’d agree that tempers flared on a number of exchanges. I don’t feel attacked either, just a little disappointed that I didn’t get the benefit of this valuable discussion with my original post.

Also, I’ve added this sentence to my original post, because I want to be perfectly clear about where I stand: “Additionally, this isn’t the way for me to work with the local blogging community. The discussion around this topic has brought the issues into clear relief. I appreciate hearing the conversation around this.”

I am sincere about my motives and pleased to get the feedback.

Kurt, maybe the STL Blogging community is more savvy than the rest of the nation?

Hell, I WANT my content linked as much as possible - the more people that listen to my podcast, the better!

However, Dave’s business model is frankly a little slimy, if not illegal.

He is NOT a search engine. He tries to equate his model to Google’s but it’s far different.

Google does not present advertising until a user searches - thus complying with Google’s TOS.

Google reader, news and iGoogle do NOT display advertisements.

I’m pretty sure this is how Google got around the whole sticky “caching of content” lawsuit that Dave likes to bring up.

To put it briefly - Google is not directly profiting from the creative work of others. They are displaying content that is crawled and cached by a user of their service. THey are merely a go-between.

Google works by - “Hey, you want to find something, ok… let’s take a look! Here’s some results that you requested and maybe some related ads. We hope you’ll be kind and click those ads, since you did use our service and all”

BNN works by - “Hey, here’s all this content I went and grabbed regardless of what you were looking for. Now, click my ads, philistine!” I’m paraphrasing here.

As well, from BNN is a usability nightmare to find the click-through to the original blog’s website. The blog roll goes to another internal BNN page, the “permalink” goes to another BNN page, the Blog’s title goes to another internal BNN page - with more ads, which means more ad views which means much more chance for Dave to earn revenue off of another person’s creative work.

To get to the blog (and this is only when his redirect script is working, because I have experienced it erroring out on a number of occasions) you can click on the POST’s title or three little periods at the end of the excerpt (yes I know they are elipsis).

Dave is crafty because one would EXPECT from a usability standpoint that the blog title (the largest text), or the blog roll would take them to that blog’s actual site. They don’t. They take you, as mentioned above, to more revenue potential for Mr. Mastio,

Again - he’s probably in the realm of legality, but he IS directly profiting from the creative work of others who have to opt OUT as often as opting in - many blogs did not opt IN - they were just scraped, without notification - just a, “Well you COULD HAVE OPTED OUT, MORON!” from Dave. I’m paraphrasing again of course.

I opted in, because I like seeing SFP poop jokes on a “legitimate” website.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the whole thing is slimy and Mr. Mastio can act as innocent as he likes, but he WAS a speechwriter for someone very important which means he’s pretty bright. And maybe it also means he thinks that he brighter than a lot of other people.

I hope that made sense.

You can’t get fooled again!

Craig,

If we could get past your name-calling and accusations of bad faith there might be a useful conversation here.

Since BNN launched in July 06 in one state, we’ve changed it fairly frequently to respond to blogger and user comments. The point has always been to make it a better service for bloggers and the people who want to find them.

As I have read all this stuff in St. Louis, most of the original untrue accusations have been dropped. The two points that stand out as worth exploring are changes to the blogroll and making the blog title a secondary element of each blog excerpt so that the most prominent link is the headline (which redirects to the source blog). I had thought that the obvious place to click was the headline since whenever you are reading in an rss reader the headline links back to the originating post. Maybe it needs to be more obvious.

We probably won’t have figured out what changes to make and how until later this week.

Not to split hairs, but I don’t think I called you any names.

And to have an accusation of bad faith one would assume that there was an original attempt at good faith.

Which would mean that your intent would be to help bloggers who are included in your splogging site.

Please tell me how you are helping bloggers?

I’m really just playing devil’s advocate here because I don’t seem to see eye to eye with you on your intent.

It seems to me that your intent is to make money and that’s fine, just don’t pee on my shoe and tell me it’s raining. You aren’t helping bloggers or the blogging community.

It seems to me that you are using bloggers to make money.

You aren’t even providing original content of any kind, unless I’m missing it - which is possible because the navigation on your site is a nightmare.

That said, as a web designer I am giving you the free advice to simplfy your navigation! Flashy navigation is clunky and annoying. But I digress.

Anyway, I don’t think anything I’m saying here is a great leap. Is it?

Craig,

I have answered that question all over the St. Louis blogosphere. If you don’t accept it, that’s your choice.

As BNN is the 2nd web site I’ve built, I ‘d be glad to have the advice of a web designer, but getting rid of what’s “flashy” “clunky and annoying” is a smidge vague. If you can be specific, then I can see if there are areas where I agree with you and BNN can improve.

I don’t know if anyone has said it yet, but I am thrilled that STLtoday.com has decided to find better ways of acheiving their/your goals.