Foof Is Not A Good Representation Of Semantic Anything
by
on June 11, 2008,
Foof came across my radar as part of a site called BzzAgent, where it was featured in a section of the site called the FrogPond. When one of my friends, a BzzAgent member, saw it and told me about it, I knew I had to check it out. I'm not a fan of ad blocking plug ins and applications as a rule and I was hoping that semantic blocking would be a better way to handle the issue.
Sadly, that is not the case. I was hoping for an application that would be the best of both worlds, a way for those who want a quieter internet to block ads, while those who make a living by running ads could still draw in readers who simply wanted ads better suited to their needs. Foof's semantic ad selection falls a bit short of the mark.
The concept of a semantic web is one that frequently gets panned by critics who think of it as an impossible dream. Plug ins like Foof are part of the reason the semantic web is having trouble getting off the ground as a concept. How is cluttering your browser with ads that don't even pay the site owner semantic?
Forget the semantic aspect of Foof for a moment and take a look at the ad blocking aspect. When it comes to blocking ads, Foof is no match for the original, AdBlock Plus. AdBlock Plus is a favorite of many people who want an ad free surfing experience. These people do not want to find ads that are better suited to them using some cobbled together semantic qualifier. These are the people who don't want to see your ads at all, in favor of a streamlined and ad free surfing experience.
It is interesting to note that Foof sells itself as a derivative of the famous AdBlock Plus. I'm not sure if the powers that be at Foof mean that they evolved from AdBlock Plus, or that they were a feature that AdBlock Plus considered and rejected. Either way, Foof is not the tool for me.
My main question about Foof is why anyone would want this? Why clutter up a perfectly good web site with "content" or ads when you have the option to surf ad free already with trusted apps like AdBlock Plus? That only serves to make the web a noisier, more cluttered place. That's hardly efficient, and it has nothing to do with semantics. This little application out of Rochester needs to go back to the drawing board.
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major
raj
CopyrightLawSucks 
kwarren84 
Michael Fidler 
Jaime A. Restrepo 
Yolanda
Hi Leslie. Thank you for reviewing Foof. So far the response on BzzAgent has been overwhelmingly positive.
I would just like to clarify a few points from your article. 1) Foof is a derivative of Adblock Plus which is open source. We layered our technology on top of that. 2) Foof does not place ads - we don’t get paid for anything we place (which is content such a YouTube, blog articles or even your own Flickr photos) and we don’t solicit advertisers - we are providing a service by offering relevant content to the page you are reading. The internet is full of interesting content as you well know, so why not discover what else is out there related to what you’re reading instead of another irrelevant ad?
Also, we kept the option of simply blocking the ad just as the original Adblock Plus does.
Leslie,
I just tried foof and beg to differ with some of your comments. It says clearly on the history page that foof uses the AdBlock Plus code to block ads. It also says that it replaces ads with News, Blogs, YouTubes, and Photos - not other ads.
I just tried it and it does exactly what it says. The news was related to the page that I was looking at. When I toggled the header, the blog articles were also related, amazingly, so were the Utubes.
I’m unclear what you are complaining about. If you are looking for a plug-in that replaces ads with better ads, this is not it.
JS
Foof is a modified version of Adblock Plus. I guess the developers plan to update it every now and then to the current state of Adblock Plus. As to “who needs it” - I’m very interested in seeing exactly that.