Sentinel To Introduce You To Sploggers. What For?

Another interesting finding from Demo-07 is Blogwerx Sentinel – the solution for bloggers to track websites stealing their content.

The application has not got much media coverage yet but it was nice to see it on Scobleizer. I find this new application useful (until actually tested, at least) – but not absolutely necessary.

So how does it work? In 3 rather simple steps: it scans your content and the net to find duplicates; it informs you of content reproduction; it provides you with an opportunity to specify what websites copy your content legitimately and which sites are actually splogs.

Sure, this sounds like a good idea: I don't want other people to earn money using the content created by our authors for Profy. And I don't want extra links to be considered by search engines as created on purpose to increase our page rank – I don't want to bear the blame for someone else's wrongdoings.

So the idea is good (or seems good to me, at least). BUT… Why does not it work? I have received a confirmation letter – that part is fine. But now that I try to actually use Sentinel – nothing works. Not even the link to Upgrade: what if I'm so convinced it is something I actually need right now without even trying? Where should I bring my money to upgrade?

And I don't even know why it does not work. Maybe because the application was launched at Demo without enough preparation only to be on time. Or maybe after reading about the solution on Scobleizer every single blogger rushed to Blogwerx to register his or her blog (quite a wise move given the fact that no one verifies ownership of a blog) and the server was suddenly down? Maybe they should put some notice for all us bloggers to avoid several minutes of waiting in the process of "Crawling"?

And second: does the whole thing make any sense at all? I like the idea of pinpointing plagiarized content. So now that I know – what? Do you know any ways to stop the people who automatically copy your content from doing so? I don't.

At least I have once found a splogger who is shamelessly copying content from Profy simply through incoming links in my dashboard (the funny thing is that he automated the process to such extent that his tags linked to Profy). So what? I visited his website – only his name and no contacts, of course. But lots of Amazon ads. I tried to contact him everywhere – but in vain. I even contacted his hosting provider – but received no reply either.

So I guess the next step should be building some Digg-style community based on Sentinel: when a splogger is found (and put into black list by several users) some measures are taken to shut the website down. Possibly? I don't think so right now. But that's what I would find useful, would not you?