To my dismay I plugged my blog name into Feedly's search engine and my blog came up. Every post that I have was magically available as a feed for readers. This was news to me because I had never added my blog to Feedly's user base. So why is my blog on Feedly?
Not only that, but I could see no discerning characteristics that the content on Feedly was from my blog besides my name. There was no sidebar, no blog design, nothing. This to me screams content stealing! Also, I noticed that there was no place to link back to my blog to leave a comment. And I had subscribers I didn't even know about because they weren't mine, they were Feedly's.
Go ahead, plug in your blog name and see if Feedly has also hijacked your content. I bet you they did. I found this article that explains what is happening. I use bloglovin and I know at least they take you directly to the owners original blogpost. This is not however, how Feedly works.
So my question to you is... Is Feedly hijacking your content too? What do you think about this? Are you upset? Any suggestions on what to do in this case? Also, if you are one my the subscribers on Feedly, please follow me a different way (i.e. bloglovin, GFC, Twitter, Google+) that actually attributes my blog instead of stealing my content.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments :)
I just looked on feedly after reading this and found the same for my blog! Hopefully somebody has some insight into this.
ReplyDeleteMy blog is on there too. I was going to click on "subscribe" to see what happens but I didn't want to do anything. This is the first I have heard of this and do not like it at all!!!!
ReplyDelete-Shelley
Thank you for sharing this! I really hope they listen to comments and stop hijacking our content!
ReplyDeleteMine is on there, too, but I had to click on the title to see the post, and it redirected back to my bloglovin site. Did it not do that for you?
ReplyDeleteNot sure why your Feedly would link to your bloglovin site instead of your blogger site?
DeleteI checked it out, and my blog isn't on there. I will definitely be checking back to this post to see what others have/ have not experienced!
ReplyDeleteI'm on there and I did not know about this! How can this be legal? I did a search to see if it's been talked about and over the past few months it has but looks that little has been done about it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked my blog up on Feedly, I found it. I clicked on my link, and it took me to my homepage. Maybe my blog was not affected?
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I do hate about having all my blogs available on all of these different feeds- Blogger, Google+, BlogLovin, Feedly, etc., is that I have no idea how many followers I actually have! It is frustrating. Yes, blogger will show traffic, but it only shows the number of followers that follow you through blogger.com (I have found most people to use BlogLovin and Google+)
When I put my name into feedly it found my blog. When I click one of my posts it opens up into Feedly with my blog post. Yes once I click again, the title of my blog within Feedly's version of my post it takes me to my blog but that defeats the purpose. They are still hosting my entire content on their site rather than showing only a small clip on bloglovin that takes you then to your own site. You see what I mean? And I had to register my blog with bloglovin for them to show my feeds. I never registered or gave Feedly approval to use my content or feeds.
Deletehuh, so i'm on there. when you click the post, it opens it in feedly completely. the only reason i would imagine someone would actually click through to my blog is to leave a comment. but it would be nice to count those followers, for sure! thanks for bringing this to our attention. i actually also get emails from feedspot to say my blog's on there, but i don't really get it.
ReplyDeleteThey show mine but only a summary and when I click on it, it takes me to my site. You don't have to register on Bloglovin for it to be there. I use it as a reader and if a blog I follow isn't on there, I can put in the web address and add it.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I used bloglovin I had to register my blog and confirm it was mine. Not sure if it changed or if that is different than what you are talking about?
DeleteI use Feedly and have done since Wordpress.com changed their reader. I always open new blog posts into new windows so I always get the original site. If you just click on the post then you'll get the little reader without going to the site.
ReplyDeleteHi Brittany, there was a lot of discussion around this in December when Feedly was trying out new things (worse things if you can imagine!) and at one point, it was very difficult to link back to the original content. Now you can if you click on the post title or author. But I agree, I think Feedly should just use an abstract or something and it does not seem right they can read an entire article without every visiting the blog. I assume it is legal (or at least has not clearly illegal) as CNN and other top website blogs are also on there. I also find that some of my graphics, icons, etc. look off in the Feedly read which is frustrating and hope those who find my blog there come to my site.
ReplyDeleteYes even the article I linked to was from back in December it looks like that's when a lot of the issues were happening with them being shady. They supposedly changed some things around since then but I don't see how it's better. Everything on the internet isn't legal i'm sure they get angry letter all the time. I know that the aim for Feedly is to make it easier to read blogs on mobile readers by cutting out all the sidebars and headers but that's not why people work so hard making their blogs and design.
DeleteFortunately my blog wasn't affected but thanks for pointing this out. Instead of creepy feedly, I have a lot of Russian (.ru) sites that are my top 'sources'. I haven't researched this a lot but I'm quite sure it's just a web crawler that's targeted me and will continue to do so if I click on the source links, which I never do. Ehh, I wish Blogger-world were a bit cleaner.
ReplyDeleteYea that sounds like web crawlers. I get a bunch of those now and then and have realized that once you click on them it makes them multiply and its just fake traffic! So annoyingl
DeleteI found my blog on feedly after you brought this up. What I decided to do at the end of every post was to include who wrote the post and provide a link back to my blog. Feedly may steal my content, but they can't change my links. I thought if anyone's using feedly then they may click on my link back to my website! That's the best solution I have for now!
ReplyDeleteSounds good. If they click your blog name at the top of the post it will take you to your post as well, but it's always good to add it at the end too.
DeleteHave just discovered my 'readers' and all my content available on Feedly. Not happy. Has anyone discovered a way to stop this?
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing! They are just giving your users and easier way to read your blog through an rss reader.
DeleteI am just reading about this. Only came across it as I had some other site 'bloglovin' that I HADN'T signed up to, that also is doing exactly the same. ALL of my blog content can be read at both of those sites. I am reliant on traffic which pays the only income I have :( Am not working at the moment. All of my content is my own and is copyrighted, is there anything that we can do about this? Surely its theft.
ReplyDeleteWell bloglovin' is different. It's a blog reader and if you pay your bills by traffic you're going to want to keep this one because it doesn't steal your entire content and post it on their site without your design like Feedly does. With bloglovin' it just posts a few sentences of your content with a picture. People have to click the link to read the full content and it takes them to your website, not theirs. Plus with bloglovin' you can claim your blog.
DeleteI was blown away by the realization that Feedly is copying our blog posts in their entirety, and serving them up as if they were Feedly's own content. To me this is clearly copyright infringement but until some party with the $$$ to bring a suit takes action I suppose they will continue. I've sent them a cease and desist letter from our company, but am not holding my breath for a reply.
ReplyDeleteHere's the only recourse I've found - they have published the identification of their crawler, and if your service allows this, you can block them. I have a WordPress site running WordFence security (which is awwwwesome), and it was a breeze for me to add in the rule to block any request coming from user-agent "Feedly/1.0".
Now this is good news/bad news. It means that Feedly users will no longer see any of our new posts in their readers, which is not exactly what I want. I'm happy if Feedly (or anyone else) wants to highlight new posts we've made, but I draw the line at serving up the content wholesale as if it were theirs, effectively stealing a visit from us. The ideal would be if Feedly allowed me to register my site, give them permission to re-publish a snippet (say the first 50 words) but no more. This would be ideal - it would help us, help Feedly, and help Feedly users. Their users would know when we've published a new article and could decide if it was of interest, but we wouldn't lose traffic as they'd be forced to come to our site to read it. And we wouldn't lose the ad-serve opportunity associated with that visit.
This is essentially what I've asked Feedly for in my cease & desist letter - if by some miracle they respond I'll come back and post an update...DW