Adult Friend Finder position statement

elasticatedman
Registered User


Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 1

so, ahhhhh, what are you trying to say??

That is a very disingenuous comment. There are solutions just as there are choices and while Smokey's intent is admirable, that type of "solution" is on a par with advising stagecoach travellers to wear bulletproof vests.

In situations like this, there are always three options. You can go along, making the problem worse and becoming part of it. You can sit back and do nothing. You can fight the problem.

Which may sound like crusading idealism, but you run one of the largest operations in this industry which therefore suffers more than most, the consequences of working in a "wild west" environment. Think about the resources you have to put into protecting your business: those are real costs which will increase year on year if you don't act.

That realisation takes a decade or two to dawn on every new industry. But they all get there and one reason is that scammers are people with very limited horizons who simply do not belong in big business. So long as you play their game instead of your own, you are limiting yourself to their petty ambitions.

I'm speaking from experience. I started my first business with less than $5,000, working out of a two-room basement. It was built largely on a scam, like every other business of that sort at the time. It made good money. Then after a couple of years I realized that was as good as it was going to get, but that if I ran the business legitimately, there was a potentially huge market for it. So I cleaned up my own act, hired new people and trained them. Three years later, sales were into 7 figures and it was one of the biggest companies in its field.

There is no way to describe just how trivial and stupid the games that I was playing in the early 1970's seem now. I sold out in 1980. In 2004, the last year the company operated as an independent division, sales were $450 million. Now it is part of Deutsche Post who have an annual turnover of more than $70 billion. I shake my head every time I think about the early days.

Your operation has the muscle and influence to change the face of this industry and it is in your own interest to do so. If you choose to offer only fluff in response to the current issue, you may well lose only a few affiliates, easily covered by writing some more checks to Zango or whoever. But wouldn't it make more sense to begin turning situations like this to your advantage? Take the high ground and condemn scumware. Use the obvious opposition to it to beat your less ethical competitors around the head. You will gain affiliates, they will lose affiliates and you will have moved the industry a small step closer to where you need it to be.

Our business should be selling to the public: not preying on each other. That's a practical consideration, not an ethical one. There are millions of surfers out there and only a few thousand webmasters. Which market has the most potential?

Affiliate does all the WORK?!?!?! holeeee shit i cant believe what i just read and had to comment on that.....

you must be new to this game...

It took balls to explain that you use it and why you use it, kudos for that.

If you ever consider litigation regarding other competitors using your trademarked terms to place contextual ads in adware systems, have your legal team look at the recent case: Tiffanys vs. Ebay, exact same issue for them but in this case via adwords/adsense.

Exactly - get your legal team onto it, there's no need to be supporting adware and fucking over affiliates.

"While it is perfectly legal for us to place ads with internet software providers like adware companies, specialized browser providers, and search engines that place our ads near our affiliates ads (for example this happens often with keyword buys on search engines) this notion of the adware ad ?collisions? that has recently been raised does make us feel somewhat uncomfortable ? in other words we find ourselves sympathetic with those who have not been happy with this bizarre result."

HAHAHAHAHA.......

Cant wait for the day you guys get sued for all the shit you are doing in this industry

milk it milk it....

So let's put it this way.

If shaving was the only way you could be conpetitive and offering theses high payouts would you do it ?

You follow Wall Street at lot it seems. Just look at what Warren Buffet said last week about "wrong" businsess practices over his empire ?

If you think you're gaining an edge on long term business by over writing your affiliate's cookies then good for you.

As far as I know, nothing personal but I wouldn't use a program that use such practices.

It's a business decision like you are saying, nothing personal.

I could force myself to be paid an $5 extra a signup to promote programs that have cross sales and signup... Wich with the low marging ad campaings we are running would tremendously improve our profit and our business plan...

This would be the easiest choice and the easy money.

I can understand your situation is much more complicated but your site is almost labeled as a virus in norton and such. This is gonna hurt your biz on long term.

But speaking about that, we are killing this business by offering so much free content, so I also am in one of theses situations where I don't have the choice...

So I guess bottom line what we need to do is have a bigger organisation (gov etc) telling us what to do...

great post by jayeff there

I think he meant "does all the work [generating the traffic] and in most cases provide 95%+ of the sales / revenue that the company makes."

without affiliates MANY companies would no long exist. So it is not wise to shit on them when they are needed.

Lars .. i realise you prob have some top notch lawyers , but i think their feeding you some lines here..

It most certainly is illegal it just hasnt been prosecuted much.

I dont think the excuse of " everyone else is doing it so if we didnt our competition would " is a valid excuse

Its time to say no to zango.. hang up the adware hat.. aff isnt successfull because of adware , they are succesfull because of YOUR AFFILIATES.. remeber that.... and rememeber that it aff fails wont be zango that causes aff to fail , it will be affiliates

Can we please stop using the word "adware" in relation to Zango and other operations like it!

ICQ is adware. Eudora is adware. Adware is a legitimate marketing model in which part of display is occupied by advertising no more pernicious than what we might place ourselves on one of our sites. No-one who has acceptable adware programs on his or her PC is going to attempt to visit a site, only to have another pop up on top of it.

You are playing right into Zango's hands by equating their product to legitimate adware and if you are doing it to spare Lars' feelings, the obvious question is why? It took him a week to respond at all and he did so with evasions and euphemisms. There is nothing reassuring in anything he wrote: quite the contrary. He hasn't been in this business 5 minutes, so if he has been surprized by anything at all, it is that he got caught and at least some webmasters have spoken up against him. His message is basically the same as it is about working with stolen content sites: if we didn't do it, someone else would. Oh and btw we are going to keep on doing it...

excellent post

Whether it's legal or not isn't really the point. AFF affiliates are not happy about this. Do the right thing and stop spending your money with Zango and any Zango-like software that comes along in the future. Also, make it clear that ANY affiliate sending traffic via Zango and similar software will be terminated immediately. That's the only way for you to come out of this smelling like a rose (in the eyes of your thousands of affiliates that know about this anyway).

Your traffic sources are really making you look bad. Between the adware, content thieves and illegal software (warez) sites that pimp AFF, you have a serious problem on your hands. I sent an email back on the 5th of Oct. about several warez sites promoting aff and the sites are still flying aff ads and their accounts are still active. I sent the email to abuse, legal and to sagi and nothing has been done about it.

This is exactly the point that a number of people have been furiously tap-dancing around..... LEGAL does not always mean ETHICAL or RIGHT. For some people, ethics are simply not part of their personal equation.

nevermind ...

Lots of hating in this thread still - but I still dont see anything constructive.

If this issue really is that important to you put your thinking caps on and try to answer the question I asked above....

So far we have -

1. Take the Smokey approach and try to code your way out of it - dosnt really solve Lar's problem though.

2. Take legal action.

Any more?

I know its alien to most on this board, but lets try to be constructive rather than destructive for once.

I think its good that you've come forward and admited what your doing, but the fact that you are still going to continue to do this is worrying to put it lightly.

No sir, it is not. Too much history, and Lars professes to be one of the most experienced people online. Doesn't leave much room for him being mislead.

AFF has been part of this scumware world for several years, and knows exactly what is going on. This is not the first time these issues have been brought to their attention.

AFF and their kind have been using this type of 'stealware'(branded by the New York Times) for a very long time. In fact they use to be much worse and advertising over the top of places like TheHun, Hoes.com, and many other high traffic spots on the web. I am talking about back in the Hotbar scumware days. Now it appears they are targeting their traffic a little more, and staying within their niche(s) now that Hotbar and 180solutions have merged to form Zango.

Let us not forget that the FTC even says these guys have paid big bucks for installs of trojans and other scummy software on page 9 of this $4,089,550.48 judgement.
http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/0423142/W...alJudgment.pdf
Your post says he shut it off. I assume this to be a mistake in your text as he basically says in his post that he is sympathetic and will attempt to look deeper into it, but will continue to use this scheme to steal competitors and affiliates traffic.

I guess you can bid on your pages to popup nothing. Sounds stupid, but would solve the problem.

Long read for some. You could just tell that AFF is stealing sales from its own affiliates, but doesn't feel bad about it, since you found a legal way.

Lars, while I am not usually one to tell someone more successful than me what to do, this is one of those rare occassions where I can see that between what Zango has fed you and what the lawyers are probably telling you, that you have been filled with grade A bullshit. I don't think you would intentionally spew such nonsense if someone hadn't convinced you that it is true.

Let's start with Zango: They don't have "willing customers", but rather people who have sold their souls so they could download a video or play a game. In many cases, people do not clearly understand what they are doing or the implications of that "click here to play" button. I looked at Zango's install, they are pretty detailed, but they are also doing it with the old "free ginzu steak knives" promotion. I can't think that anyone would willingly and directly install Zango without some other material benefit, and I personally don't think their material benefits are worth a lifetime of popup bullshit.

You also don't have to go far to find Zango listed as spyware, scumware,or malware. Searching google for "zango spyware" would get you a page like this: http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/p...x?id=453094136

Searching for Zango removal problems woudl get your this: http://www.411-spyware-remove.com/remove-zango/

Including:

[quote]# Zango is Adware more
# Zango monitors searches and websites visited more
# Zango displays ads while surfing more
# Zango may come bundled with other Malware more
# Zango may recreate, repair and update itself[quote]

You could have just consulted wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_Solutions

Now, I don't have to be a wizard to find these things, and I am sure that before you spent a "small part" of your advertising budget with these people, that you might have at least looked to see what they were about. Considering situations may have happened in the past, you would think that you wouldn't want to do business with a company that the subject of any number of FTC complaints.

Okay, well, let's say that you didn't take a minute before approving the check for Zango... but then you had to go through their system and bid, and no doubt you (or one of your minions) would have caught on that they were bidding FOR YOUR DOMAIN (.cams.com) to push out others. I would suspect that a little light might have come on in someone's head and realized that perhaps this is just paying a form of blackmail to keep people off your customers (and potential customers).

Okay, so now you have said "we ain't paying them no more"... now sexsearch is "borrowing" your customers.

The question is simple: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? It is clear to me that Zango is engaging in an activity (trigger by domain) that could be interfering with a business relations (affiliate to sponsor) by presenting other offers in popup windows that cover the original site. While this does not "replace a cookie" for surfers going to AFF/Cams, it puts a valid and viable alternative marketplace to these surfers. If they are going to make only one purchase today, there is a huge potential that they will buy what they see first, not from the now buried affiliate window.

Get your lawyers off their asses and start the process. There is enough past cases that you could very validly ask zango to stop targeting your domain(s). Further, I would contact Sexsearch and say "hey guys, nice try... but you may be interfering in a business relationship, so you might want to stop buying zango keywords".

You may also want to put javascript or other on your pages triggered every few seconds to move the window that your program opens in to being the top window.... which would push zango's stuff to the rear.

Finally, you may want to open up any number of other domains to allow affiliates to send their traffic through different domains so as to avoid this type of situation. A new domain every week or two might be a nice way to allow us all to avoid trigger off zango's domain filters.

Remember Lars, domain filters most specifically hurt your business for typeins and return customers. When any of the millions of people with zango "happily" installed comes to your site, the very first thing they see isn't hot cam girls, but a sex search page (and if you are unlucky, they might also see a competitive cams page). Your ability to deal with your repeat customers is being impeded.

I trust that you will have a sit down with the lawyers and take some action before this pretty much forces all of the smaller affiliates to move away from your program(s).

Alex

SOrry, I just want to add this:

A "position statement" would require you to take a position. Your post was an "excuse statement" or a "I didn't have sex with that woman" statement. Position statement would involve things like:

"We will not buy any more traffic from any toolbar companies"
"We will not accept affiliates buying traffic from toolbars and sending it to us"
"We do not support or encourage malware, installware, spyware, or other"
"We will not do business with companies that purchase traffic from toolbar companies"
"We will take all legal action possible to protect the interests of our company and our valued affiliates".

Now, THOSE would be position statements...

Knock yourself out

Alex

More about the quality of Zango installs:

Interesting, isn't it?

Alex

AFF needs to do more than just cease buying PPC keywords from Zango - no doubt someone else will, under an affiliate account... so we're back at square one.

One solution may be to change their ToS to say that they will not pay for sales or clicks from *.sexsearch.com. I'd go a step further and not even accept the traffic.

in the end, any type of adware is bad for affiliates. if it weren't for affiliate sites they would have no keywords to pop ads from. it piggy backs on legit traffic. why should these guys get their ads over top of mine just because the user installed something? over writting cookies or not, its all unethical and basically theft in my opinion.

This sucks either way ;-(

How much does AFF pay a month to zango ?

We're still waiting for a real answer.

I think this is the real answer

you have your answer man.

AFF does use these tactics to steal your traffic and will continue to use them to steal your traffic. Why? because if they dont another company will, so atleast you can be safe in the knowledge that its AFF stealing from you.

What else do you want to know?

Ahh man that made me laugh for a good 2 minutes!!

Btw very nice posts Jayeff

I had a long post thought up, but I decided not to post it since a lot of people have said it better already.

This is simply not acceptable. It's like the cliche about jumping off a cliff because everyone is doing it. And ofcouse it's not just AFF..

I'll be moving my traffic far far away from AFF until they publicly state that they won't under any circumstances accept spyware traffic. And hopefully that they are working on a way of making sure no one is targeting their sites.

Donate this "recovered" income to webmasters, in the form of a lottery maybe or random bonuses.

At the end of the day, it is the same story that I have seen regularly in the 11 years I have been in the adult industry:
Fuck the surfer - In this case with shitware
Fuck the affiliate by screwing him with cash
And lets get fucking richer today - Fuck tomorrow.



Bet a new thread will be started soon offering an even larger amount of cash per sign up for AFF affiliates -

Right on.

hahahaa..... i disagree completely.

he is not playing into thier hands. he is caught between a rock and a hard spot and in a move he will later regret, he posted a vague and ambiguous public statement drafted by attorneys after zango put the ball in their court by pointing the dirty end of the stick directly at them. the statement was not a "position statement" for the benefit of the industry. it was a position statement for future legal arguments and the first step in creating a defensible position should legal action ensue.

Send me all your dating traffic, no adware here.

Bingo !

Mate, i've been online for 10 years and i have grey hair.

I can't beleive you did this.
Big lack of judgement here my friend.

I mean, you're not broke
It's like shooting yourself in the foot mate.

AFF has been online for what ? 10 years or so ?
Anyways, whatever you do, keep the old links working as you'll piss off even more people.

I'm sure you'll loose some webmasters, also you might get a slowdown in webmaster signing in for your program.
Sad......
Just for a couple of bucks. Ain't worth it.


Now let me tell you this boys and girls.
Have you ever did something dumb in your life ?
I bet you did.
Don't play "Saint Mary"

Suck tho, sucks Lars......

You know what ?
Your voice sounds like shit (radioshow) hehehehehehehehe but you're damn right !

Oh come on
I hope you're not serious ?

I guess you'll get the Ferrari Lars huh ?

All we ask is that you don't fuck up
That's it !
I don't want a Playstation3, nor a Ferrari.
All i want is tracked signups and right on time payments.
You'll keep my respect if you do this for sure (but you probably don't give a fuck about it , joke mate)

I hope so!

Nah, it'll go towards more important things. Like expanding the world's largest collection of stupid hats.

zango sucks - jayeff rocks

I can't believe this thread isn't 20 pages long yet .

Lar's you're a fucking thief.

Anyone that runs a program as successful as yours would have to know what was happening.

You did this entirely to steal sales from your affiliates, so you wouldn't have to payout anything.

2 million paid out to zango to highjack your affiliates codes and tracking is alot easier on you than paying out god knows what in affiliate payouts.

You knew full well what you were doing.

Really? Lars paid TWO MILLION DOLLARS with this ad campgian...hard to believe...I guess fucking up 'average' surfer's computers is very profitable.

Since anything is possible, you could be right. But you can hardly blame those who draw conclusions from the similarity of his responses to every issue of this type. What exactly leads you to the conclusion that the situation here is any different from that regarding stolen content or warez sites? Even if you ignore the past, you can hardly accuse Lars of being a champion of business ethics.

This is not looking good....

too bad I dont know any dating sponsor that converts like AFF. And anyone who says different, is a liar.

I was just saying that if they were to pay zango a good amount of $$ for whatever amount of time , they could run thier $105 payout promo's etc without worry paying out affiliates.

The 2 million was just a number , but I imagine with the price of clicks and the coverage of zango's network that it adds up the $$ very fast.

this is shaving
They are knowingly stealing affiliates signups and there is no " we didn't know , and now that we do , We feel bad but we're not going to stop "
That's straight up bullshit.