Sponsored advertising destroys Swickis potential
I sent this email to Eurekster, creators of the Swicki, a moment ago.
"This afternoon I gave a Web 2.0 Presentation to a group of teachers and academics in Singapore. I have flown from Australia to give this presentation. During the presentation of Swickis one of the sponsored links at the top of two search pages was: 'Your Porn Surfing Activity Has Been Traced. Click To Remove'. That advert unnerved me. That advert sabotaged the entire presentation and was the worst possible advert for your product. How could teachers and academics use a product that posts embarrassing adverts like that? Shame. Shame. Tell me now what are you going to do about it? That advert appears on every result. Why?"
It was an appalling moment. The sponsored advertising is a bad move. The advertisements are located at the top of the results. That particular advert is most annoying and since it is a tech advert relating to hard drive "cleaning" software it appears on results generated by the tech related Swickis on my site. I shall remove the Swickis that I have established. That is the end of the Swicki for me I feel. All that potential lost due to advertising. I felt that the Swicki was a great idea with potential. Not now.
"This afternoon I gave a Web 2.0 Presentation to a group of teachers and academics in Singapore. I have flown from Australia to give this presentation. During the presentation of Swickis one of the sponsored links at the top of two search pages was: 'Your Porn Surfing Activity Has Been Traced. Click To Remove'. That advert unnerved me. That advert sabotaged the entire presentation and was the worst possible advert for your product. How could teachers and academics use a product that posts embarrassing adverts like that? Shame. Shame. Tell me now what are you going to do about it? That advert appears on every result. Why?"
It was an appalling moment. The sponsored advertising is a bad move. The advertisements are located at the top of the results. That particular advert is most annoying and since it is a tech advert relating to hard drive "cleaning" software it appears on results generated by the tech related Swickis on my site. I shall remove the Swickis that I have established. That is the end of the Swicki for me I feel. All that potential lost due to advertising. I felt that the Swicki was a great idea with potential. Not now.
Labels: Technology, Web 2.0
posted by john | 8:02 PM
3 Comments:
John, I feel your pain. Nothing like a great service blown to bits by a single bad move. Fair warning for all free services.
Hmm... I wonder how much they received for the ad. And what's the cost of losing your support. How consistently does that ad pop up? I'd be interested to know if they have a response to your feedback. :)
Thanks Kevin and Ivan,
When one conducted a search using the Swicki the results would appear as usual. Unlike Google the advertisements would appear as two or three links above the search results. The adverts looked like a search result. The offending term was in a bold font and a different colour. I took a screen shot of the advert. I will post that later. That advert appeared 80% of the time and for different Swicki search engines (Music, eLearning, History, etc). It is annoying. I sent the Swicki team and email and in fact you could choose a category for the email from a drop down menu. One of the categories was advertising on Swicki.
The web site has changed its complexion and sentiment somewhat from the early days. Perhaps Eurekster has been bought by another company? Making profits seems to be their mian goal now, unashamedly.
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