Splog Reporter - Superhero of the Blogosphere?

Heard it from the RSS Blog:

Spam blogs (or Splogs) are a growing problem in the blogosphere -- and well-intentioned bloggers, AdSense participants, SEO experts and Web marketers are paying the price.

Enter the "Splog Reporter" - a new reporting system for spam and fake blogs. The main page is a form by which the good guys can report the bad guys. From their launch press release:

The call to clean up the blogosphere was answered today. Splog Reporter is a new Web site that encourages good-willed bloggers to take the front line in the flight against spam blogs, or splogs.

Splog Reporter allows users to submit splogs they encounter to its database. The data is complied, confirmed and made available for purchase to search engines that wish to optimize search results for their users. Ultimately, the users who submit splog to Splog Reporter benefit from the accumulation of this data through search engine improvements.

“The idea behind Splog Reporter is simple, but there is a great need for a monitoring process in the blogosphere,” said Frank Gruber, creator of Splog Reporter. “Splog Reporter functions like the a blog-community’s trash can, where good-willed bloggers can come together to combat the existence of splog. The response has been encouraging.”

Within its first 24 hours of existence, Splog Reporter received an estimated 1000 hits.

According to the RSS Blog, Doc Searles believes the site is an Ice Rocket project. Could also be Technorati, if you look at Sifry's recent call to clean up the blogosphere. But hey, Doc Searles is a lot smarter than I am.

So, The Splog Reporter. While it's interesting that they're creating a database of splogs that they'll sell to the likes of Google and Yahoo, who's to say they'll buy it? And who's policing it? Couldn't I very easily put one of our competitor's blogs into that database? (If I wasn't so petrified of the bad marketing karma, I just might!) Do they do enough fact-checking to know that I've done that? And - hey! - couldn't our competitors do that to us??

Remains to be seen. The site's about two weeks old, so...proof is in the pudding and we've barely boiled the milk at this point. (Is that a good metaphor?)

Comments

[seo]

I quite agree with Suyog. All our heroes and superstars are superheros. So I would say he is just another hero - maybe with a lot extra of every other hero.