My wife and I went to the local “hicnic” last night to do some people watching and stumbled upon the best carnival game EVER!

It’s basically rat roulette where you place your bet ($0.50) on a color, they spin a giant roulette wheel with holes in it, and free a rat, which up until this point being held captive in the center of the wheel under a colander. If the rat runs into the hole that matches where you placed your bet, you win!

Like I said, it’s the best carnival game ever and I’m not sure how it took me so long to discover it. I took a quick video of it on my new iPhone 4 (video quality’s not too shabby) so everyone could enjoy although nothing quite beats the rush of being there. My favorite part of the video is the maniac screaming “Damn you RAT!” after losing.

You almost have to admire the audacity of HootSuite.

The company has released a new version of their “Twitter toolbox” and many of their members are naturally upgrading.

So where’s the problem with that? Well, unfortunately HootSuite requires you to allow them to auto-tweet to your twitter stream in order to upgrade.

Update: HootSuite claims that users aren’t required to auto-tweet. Users who do not tweet will be automatically upgraded in “a couple of weeks” while users who do tweet are rewarded with an immediate upgrade. But, if you want to upgrade to the newest version today, you are in fact required to post a tweet as you can see in the screen shots below.

HootSuite asking you to upgrade

HootSuite asking you to spam Twitter

The result, as you can see for yourself is a massive number of tweets spamming… er promoting a link to HootSuite as well as the #HootSuite hashtag.

Now, I don’t have a problem with a little bit of self promotion or even trying to game your way onto the trending topics list. However, I DO have a problem with Twitter services automatically tweeting to their users’ accounts.

HootSuite  Still Frame Jacking

Unfortunately our dear old HootSuite isn’t JUST spamming Twitter, They’re also still frame jacking other websites’ content via their URL”shortening” service, Owly.

Frame jacking, for those of you who haven’t heard the term before is when a site like Ow.ly places a frame around another website’s content. If you want to read why frame jacking is an all around sucky thing to do, you can do so here.

The point is, it’s still happening.

Invoke Media Lies

But why would I expect Owly to stop frame jacking and placing their ad/link on other people’s content? Well because Invoke Media (the company behind HootSuite & Owly) founder, Ryan Holmes promised to do exactly that in the comments on a TechCrunch post.

On April 15th Ryan stated:

“Great to see digg coming to this compromise. Ow.ly (hootsuite) will be implementing these same changes in an upcoming release.”

Which changes did Digg make that Ryan committed to? That only logged in users would see Ow.ly’s frame & other users would be redirected (via an SEO friendly 301 redirect) to the content’s source.

And, when I pressed them on this issue weeks later, I was told that:

“We’re close w/new release. Need to dot some i’s & test until it’s rock solid. Will be a bit still, but it’s on the way!”

Those must have been some REALLY big i’s to dot if it has taken them 3 months and counting to do it.

Update: As @redwall_hp points out, Ow.ly url’s do serve 301 redirects which solves the SEO issue. However, they still display the frame to users who are not logged in, which is precisely what Ryan stated they would change.

In that time though, HootSuite was able to upgrade their fittingly named “toolbox” to version 2.0 and require their users to spam Twitter in order to use it.

Now I’d fully expect Invoke Media to provide some sort of excuse if and when this post gains enough traction to elicit a response from them. But no matter what their excuse is, do you really want to be using a service that takes advantage of their users in this fashion?

More importantly, would you really want to do business with a company like Invoke Media that engages in these kinds of behavior?

One of the greatest heists of all time occurred over the weekend and if you weren’t paying attention, you might have missed it.

In one big “F*** You!” to the rest of the web, Digg instantly stole millions of links from across the web.

Instead of acting like a responsible URL shortener, Digg decided to redirect all the shortened links they control, to the corresponding Digg story instead of the target site, even if you aren’t logged in to Digg!

Now before you go calling this an honest mistake, remember that Digg has already been through a similar controversy in regards to their Diggbar & URL shortener. They already learned their lesson about stealing other people’s content through the use of frames, and they CERTAINLY learned the value of a link.

In fact, so many SEOs educated Digg that they served an SEO friendly 301 redirect for all of their shortened links to anyone not logged in to their website. Most notably, that list included search engine spiders which meant that even if someone used a Digg shortened URL to link to your site, you would still get the benefit of that link.

Digg Isn’t Just Stealing Traffic!

Unfortunately, over the weekend Digg decided that they just couldn’t live without all that extra traffic. I’m not sure whether their business is failing that spectacularly that they need to steal from just about anyone with a website, or Kevin Rose just made a spectacularly stupid decision, but the net result was that Digg not only stole traffic, but millions of links from millions of sites.

If for instance, someone linked to your site using a Digg shortened URL (http://digg.com/d1sa56) all the benefits of that link now flow directly to Digg.

And, before you think this doesn’t affect you consider that several Twitter sites allow Digg to be used as a default URL shortener. If someone is unaware of Digg’s theft, and tweets what they think is a link to your site, you’re out of luck. Also keep in mind that the move doesn’t just apply to links that are created from here on out. It was applied retroactively across the board!

Fool Me Once, Shame On You…

While some Digg loyalists will no doubt point out Kevin Rose’s tweet stating he’d look into the issue and had been away on vacation as a legitimate excuse, this type of behavior has recently become pattern with Digg.

Sure, Kevin Rose may have been away on vacation, but he had time to send out plenty of Tweets during that two-week time span. And, even if he didn’t know anything about it (which is highly doubtful for a decision with such obvious impact) the decision to steal from millions of webmasters perfectly illustrates the character of Digg as a company.

Whenever Digg gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar, it always seems to happen with Kevin is away or completely unaware of it. Thankfully, he swoops in, apologizes and makes it right. Time after time after time.

I’m sorry Kevin, but you need to either fire your entire staff and replace them with people who won’t flip the bird to the entire internet while you’re away, or you need to stop lying in hopes of saving your good guy image.

We know you need to make money, and we know your company is struggling. Desperate times call for desperate measures but at least be man enough to own up to the completely idiotic measures you take in desperation.

We’re Through

I for one will never return to your site. While once one of your biggest fans, your complete disregard for content producers and website owners has become blatantly apparent and I’ll not support your company because of it.

Yes those big boosts of traffic from a front page story are nice to see in my website stats. But in the last year you’ve stolen my content, my traffic, and my links (which in turn will negatively impact the amount of traffic I receive from the search engines).

As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Kevin and Digg, I’m simply not going to let you fool me a third time.

Let ‘em hear it!

If you agree with this post and would like to see Digg held accountable for their actions, please retweet this story and use the #DiggFAIL hashtag in your Tweets today. While Mashable’s story hit the trendy topics shortly, Digg still needs to have their feet publicly held to the fire for their reprehensible behavior.

Also, feel free to link to the Mashable story with Digg in the anchor text. The story currently ranks 5th in Google for the search “Digg” and with some help can move even higher!

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meltingmama/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/djfoobarmatt

With the recent release of the Diggbar I simply couldn’t stay quite on the SEO implications of it. My friends over at The Drill Down graciously gave me a platform to address some of the inaccuracies being put forward by members of Digg staff. Go check it out and let me know what you think!

Will the Diggbar Siphon Your Search Traffic?

Skitzzo.com is undergoing a bit of a transition. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with the content that is here currently but I guarantee I’ll keep it online somewhere. As you can see from the new tag line, the site is going to be dedicated to my social media activities. I’ll update everyone more as I go but I wanted to give everyone the heads up on what was going on with the site.