A letter from Deb

I was trying to reword this in such a way that the anonymity of contributors was still protected but Deb has already published this on the Blog Advance Forum so I'll post this as is.

Hiya Had, how's tricks?

I don't care if you attach my name to this or not, I'm past caring and Jeff will know it's from me anywho and I don't give a flying fuck what he thinks either.

I read with interest your last post about Jeff stealing the idea of Rent A Blog from some other site but really I wasn't surprised as it's not the first time he's done it.

See, he's been stealing other people's ideas for months and he sticks a pretty name on it and all his little sheep gather around him bleating their congratulations when really he's done fuck all.

For instance, his shitty forum. He stole that idea from BA and then tried to tell us that he had coders working on it for months before we came along but there are a couple of interesting points that he left out. First of all, it doesn't take even a mediocre coder more than a couple of weeks to work shit out and I should know because I'm learning it myself and I've achieved a fair bit in a few short weeks, so it's not like it's hard. Secondly, Jeff is so keen to blow his own idea-stealing trumpet all the time that had this really been in the works, he would have said something BEFORE the BlogAdvance forum came about.

Let's move on to Image Hosting. Another thing we did first, and he tagged along behind with his stories of coding and taking so long and integration into the rest of BE etc. It's not fucking rocket science, it's pages that you add to your site and you link to it. Customise things with your header and footer and you're good to go. It's not hard.

BlogAdvance also started a blog for its members. Jeff had been running a BLOG TRAFFIC EXCHANGE for years and NEVER thought to provide a blog with the service, till BlogAdvance did it. Once again, he copied us and all his little sheep gathered around and patted him on the back for doing... nothing.

Now we come up to Blog Hosting. This actually cracks me up, because on Thursday the 19th of January, Jeff said that none of the BE team had slept for some time because they were busy coding and how their blog hosting product was 99% done. He then went on about how he could "barely see the computer screen anymore" and how he was going to wait until his "team" were rested before it went into production.

What's really odd about this is the fact that Jeff is using the same blog hosting script that BlogAdvance is using and none of us stayed up for hours because all it was was basically a 15 minute install and that was it. One design later and we were hot to trot and BlogLegion was off and running.

Jeff can tell everyone that it was the whole blogging for cash side of it that took the longest, but the fact of the matter is what he is implementing is, in fact, part of the package, we just chose to disable it.

See, Jeff is making a big deal out of this blogging for cash business but what the average blogger doesn't realise is that not only will Jeff be pulling in cash from advertisers that are going to see his 22,000 plus member base and fall over themselves giving him money to have their ads on other people's blogs, but he's also going to keep half of what other people's blogs make and he's going to charge people for upgrades on their blogs. People are going to pay Jeff to have ads on their sites that they don't even get a choice in picking. Nice.

Probably another thing that people don't realise is that with that particular platform and with all other platforms out there, Jeff and his staff can log into anyone's journals at a whim, change things, delete things or even just stop your blog altogether, if he doesn't agree with the content and if anyone out there still thinks that Jeff would leave their shit alone if they were blogging something that he didn't agree with then they have rocks in their head.

Jeff is well known for deleting comments and posts from the shout box and his forum if he doesn't agree with what is said and he's also well known for trying to bully people into either posting his messages on their blogs as their own entry or threatening to sue people if they don't close down a site or delete comments that are derogatory to his little "business".

Jeff, you are a free service and you are not even a registered business and you have two chances of having your demands met and those chances are fat and slim.

You are a charlatan, a liar and a poseur and while you might have had one of the first blogging traffic sites out there, the fact that you have to copy other people's ideas and hard work tells the people who are capable of thinking for themselves just how much trouble you're in when it comes to creativity.

While it's lovely that you can brag that you can do things bigger and better than everyone else, the fact of the matter is you're a Johnny-come-lately and a copycat and you alienate you and your "business" because more and more people are getting dissatisfied with your service, or lack thereof.

If you're so gung ho on honesty and doing the right thing, at least give credit where credit is due and have the humility to thank the people that gave you the ideas to keep your "business" fresh because lets face it, no matter what anyone thinks of BlogAdvance, we've ridden your ass so that you provide better for your bloggers.

If it hadn't been for us, you'd still be relying on shit rules for BotB, you wouldn't have stolen the rent my blog idea, you wouldn't have started your forum, you wouldn't have a blog, you wouldn't have your blog hosting, you wouldn't have done your image hosting and I'll bet stat counters are coming up pretty soon too.

If BlogAdvance hadn't offered it's members new and diverse ways of attaining readers then you'd still be running nothing but a traffic site and people would be getting hits but not much else.

Here's a newsflash Jeff, and it's one that we realised early on in the game and that is that Traffic Exchange sites aren't meant to last forever. Down to basics, we're nothing but a big ass commercial for all the different bloggers out there and they sample blogs in 30-second (or less) increments looking for blogs that they want to read and comment on. That is why there is such a thing as a blogroll; so that when you find blogs you like, you link to them and it gets to a stage where a little network is forged and the traffic exchange sort of becomes superfluous except new bloggers keep coming in and the cycle is continued. It's all a big cycle Jeff; it's not the be all and end all of blogging like you seem to think it is.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough, but I would like to thank Jeff for the stealing all our ideas, as mimicry is the greatest form of flattery and we've been mimicked so much I wouldn't be surprised if Jeff looked in the mirror and he saw me.

Kind regards,



Deb
BlogAdvance

Thank you Deb for your submission.