PayPerPost, a company I still consider highly distasteful (when you’re forced to change a core aspect of your business because of the FTC, that’s a bad thing) has bought Performancing Metrics. On the bright side, Performancing’s ad and Firefox products were not part of the deal.
From what I was told… The only thing payperpost purchased was the domain and the metrics.
I’m still trying to figure out what the big beef is against PPP. I use it, I’m open about it. Now those that have to use have to say they’ve been paid for their opinion. What’s wrong with that?
Great – just what the world needs, another reason to not trust a fundimentally bad business model.
PayPerPost has just acquired metrics on thousands of blogs – I’m sure that can’t be a good thing.
At least the core business was out of the deal.
Shoemoney, yep that’s what the announcement post said. Looks like they’re going to move the Firefox and ad bit to different domains. I think it’s a very good deal for the Performancing guys, who I like, but I’m sad that their best offer was from PPP.
I have used the Performancing metrics for many blogs I have and I’ve been very happy. Sucks that the reputation and ethics or PPP is now coming to a Nick Wilson’s product.
I had recently been considering switching back to Google Analytics (or investigating other options) – now I know I will. It seems as if many Performancing members are thinking the same. A quick look over the comments shows quite a few people jumping ship.
It’s unfortunate for PPP if a lot of people switch after the acquisition, but I bet they were more interested in offering the technology to their users than acquiring the existing users.
It’s interesting to see how much usage of the product was tied to the reputation and respect of the developers as anything else.
There’s really only one reason to purchase metrics of that type. Data mining.
PPP will likely learn more in a few hours, than they likely have since inception. They also have a ready made solution to track how their payment-for-comment’s are performing.
It’s a very smart move for PPP – I’m just surprised Nick and team chose to sell to such a negatively viewed business. I’m sure the cash injection will be highly valued – not so sure they realise (yet) the potential impact it might have on their remaining products.
From what I have seen, a PayPerPost “postie” isn’t writing a review in most cases trying to influence a purchase decision, thus the FTC / WOMMA letter doesn’t affect them anywhere near as much as it affects, Google, Amazon, Ebay etc.
Even WordPress.org has affiliate links and those are disclosed, but maybe that could be made clearer in the content.
No one is dragging affiliate programs over the coals yet for not making disclosure compulsory, so why do it for PPP?
I have just made a post celebrating 5 years of paid links from Yahoo, which are highly regarded by search engines.