People,
I am sure you’ve heard of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us.
You can now upload your bookmarks on a third party site to host your bookmarks so you can have access to your bookmarks from any part of the world when you are away from your home computer. No need to rush back to your computer to find your bookmarks saved by your web browser. Now, that is an honest service.
But look, how marketers and your competitions can take advantage of your traffic and visitors.
No doubt, a lot of your visitors would bookmark your pages on their browsers and not leave their contact details with you. They may forget your page that they bookmarked and buy from your competition. To remind them about your page which they bookmarked, you’d now have to keyword search for your links and get results presented by the SB which reveal to you:
- Which of your links got bookmarked; (This is market research for you as it tells which of your products are publicly popular).
- What keywords were used to bookmark your pages; (This is keywords research for you).
- Who bookmarked your links; (You can now see if that person has made you an order or not and if not then you can PM him/her through the SB).
As you can see, the SB help you find leads, get market research and keywords research. So far so good.
Infact, the SB would reveal likewise infos about your competitions. Now, you can snare your competitions visitors and bookmarkers with tempting offers so they buy from you and not your competitions who they bookmarked. So far, so GREAT!
But hey presto! Your competitions can do the same on you. They can learn who your visitors are and which of your products they’ve been bookmarking and they can contact these visitors of your’s with better offers than the ones your bookmarked pages were offering and snare them away from you. And all this, thanks to the SB!
Legally, can you not SUE the SB for revealing who your visitors are to the public (that includes your competitions) ?
I know, .exe and .php etc. bots exist to harvest leads in this manner from SBs. Their job is to find their users (your competitions) leads (your visitors and potential customers). So, in a sense, these SBs and bots sell out your visitors to your competitions. They reveal sensitive data about your website and business to the public. Thus damage your business. Can you not sue the SB and the bots for doing this ?
How come there have been no quarrels regarding this issue ? (Issue on selling one’s visitors and potential customers to their competitions). Strange!
What is your opinion on this ?
How can I stop the SBs from revealing my visitors to the public, like they do now ?
(Currently, I don’t have a website but when I do, I don’t want them revealing to the world who my bookmarkers are).
How would you put an end to them doing the same to you ?
Good topic. Right ? Take precaution in advance before you’ve even launched. 