Dear Seth, No Splenses Please

An Open Letter To Seth Godin…
Dear Seth,
You’ve been really busy with the launch of “Squidoo”:http://www.squidoo.com/ so you may not have been paying much attention to all this talk of “splogs” (spam blogs) taking over the blogosphere.
The fact that blogging sites like Google’s “Blogspot”:http://www.blogspot.com/ make it _way_ too easy to set up fake blogs is causing a real headache for anyone trying to find anything useful via blog search engines like “Technorati”:http://www.technorati.com or “Icerocket”:http://www.icerocket.com/.

And people aren’t taking it anymore. Bigwigs like “Mark Cuban”:http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000717063627/, “Chris Pirillo”:http://chris.pirillo.com/blog/_archives/2005/10/16/1302867.html, “Dan Gillmor”:http://bayosphere.com/blog/dan_gillmor/20051016/spam-blogs_googles_mess_harms_everyone, “Danny Sullivan”:http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051017-162209, “Steve Rubel”:http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/10/the_state_of_th.html, “Scoble”:http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/10/17/chris-pirillo-tells-google-to-fix-blogspot/ and “lots of others”:http://tech.memeorandum.com/051017/p20#a051017p20 are getting _really_ ticked off!
I know that Squidoo is entering “invite only beta”:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/about_the_squid.html. I guess that means we’ll be seeing “lenses” (your name for user-generated web pages) on the Net really soon.
I’m not sure if you’ve thought about “splenses” (spam lenses), but if you haven’t, I would humbly suggest the time to do so is now, before you launch. We don’t need another system out there for spammers to game. My guess is the days when people can launch systems that are easy to spam or game are numbered – you could set a great example by launching with safeguards in place.
I think everyone would be happier if they knew that you and the Squidoo team were on top of this. Any chance you could give us a bit of detail on how you will avoid being gamed by spammers like Blogspot?
As always, I am at your service.
Cheers,
Ken Schafer
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Schafer Group – The Internet Best Practices Company
“www.schafer.com”:http://www.schafer.com
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One Degree – Where Canadian Internet Marketers Gather
“www.onedegree.ca”:http://www.onedegree.ca
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