Linkatopia.com News

Linkatopia is still going strong!

2009-05-31

We just wanted to let everyone know that Linkatopia is here to stay. Obviously the 15,000+ existing Linkatopia members love Linkatopia and we love the feedback we get for new features and so on. Unfortunately, we're not quite ready to open the floodgates and allow new members to sign up. We want to keep the signup process simple and at the same time, protect everyone from "spammy" members who only care about themselves. Thanks to everyone who has sent us suggestions. We've heard some great ideas. If you have an idea to help our community, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Linkatopia under attack

2009-01-23

We apologize for the inconvenience but our database server has been under attack for the past few days by hackers, spammers, or a mix of the two. At first we thought Linkatopia had become extremely busy, perhaps from someone on Digg talking about us. Unfortunately, the logs show an overwhelming stream of connections originating from a block of IP addresses in India. IPs can be spoofed of course so we're still checking into it. It really doesn't matter what precautions you take. If someone works hard enough, they will take you down no matter who you are. Things like this have happened to companies much larger than us.

Why did this happen? Who knows. We piss off spammers all the time when we delete their accounts and the hundreds of spam links they add to our database. There's a lot of money to be made on the internet, both honestly and dishonestly. Everyone wants to be at the top of a Google search. Many people will hire Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies based in India that promise to dramatically improve the ranking of their site. How does a company in India improve the search engine ranking of a car dealership in Nebraska? They pay dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, pennies a day to sit in a room and create backlinks. These people sit at a computer all day, signing up on sites like Linkatopia, creating multiple accounts, and adding links to that car dealership's web site. Multiply this by a thousand and we are swamped with accounts from people who aren't real and links that they are simply copying and pasting from a list.

Now what? We highly value all of our members and we assure you that all of your data is backed up. In 2008, we saw many "social bookmarking" sites vanish but Linkatopia is NOT GOING AWAY. What we may do is keep our current members and move to a private, "invitation only" service. Let us know what you think. We value your opinions. Please contact us.

Thanks,

Robert Giordano
President, Design215 Inc.

OnlyWire Under New Management

2008-11-09

Linkatopia recently spoke to Ryan Rouland and Craig Lurey, the new owners of OnlyWire.com and they assured us that their multi-bookmarking service will no longer be used as a spamming tool. We learned that several important features have been added to prevent abuse by spammers. OnlyWire was acquired by Snipitron LLC in July 2008.

In the past, we had warned against using OnlyWire's multi-bookmarking service because of the volume of spam coming from their service, and because no one at OnlyWire would answer our emails. Since our last conversation with the new owners, we are removing the warnings against using OnlyWire.

We still caution against using multi-bookmarking services to manipulate search engine rankings. We feel this is unethical and that search engines should remain a level playing field. If you have a business or a product to sell, you should pay for advertising like everyone else. If you have good content, and a properly constructed web site, your search engine rank will rise as more people seek out your content and link to it.

As we've said before:
1) Do NOT create multiple accounts on Linkatopia with the same links.
2) Do NOT post a bunch of links to the same web site.
3) Do NOT abuse multi-bookmarking sites to post SPAM.
4) Do NOT create a dozen identical web sites or blogs with the same spam content and list them on Linkatopia.

Edit Tags bug fixed

2008-06-05

Some members were not able to edit their tags due to a query bug associated with various accounts. This bug only seemed to affect a small number of users but it has been fixed nonetheless. =)

Linkatopia featured in Boca Raton Magazine

2008-05-05

Linkatopia.com is featured in the May issue of Boca Raton Magazine. The popular Florida magazine interviewed Robert Giordano for an article about social bookmarking and compared Linkatopia with Del.icio.us and several other sites. Robert is the creator of Linkatopia and the founder of Design215 Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"Linkatopia is easy to use and customize"
- Boca Raton Magazine

Linkatopia and SEO

2008-05-02

Recently we've been reading a few blogs about social bookmarking, SEO, and link spam. At Linkatopia, we don't think SEO is evil and we've always encouraged people to make their own sites be the first ones they save in Linkatopia. At the same time, we won't put up with those who are simply abusing our free site.

Please Do NOT:
1) create multiple accounts with the same links. It won't help you and your accounts will be deleted.
2) post a bunch of links to the same site in your account if its just the same spam trying to sell us something.
3) sign up on 15 different social bookmarking sites and use some automated bot to spam all 15 sites with the same links.
4) create a dozen identical web sites or blogs with the same spam content and list them on Linkatopia.

Again, we encourage you to promote your original, quality content on Linkatopia. All we ask is that you respect the other members and play by the rules.

Linkatopia blocks Spam Tools

2008-04-29

UPDATE 11.09.08
We recently spoke to OnlyWire's new owners. See this post.

It has come to our attention that sites like OnlyWire.com have become the favorite tool of spammers. Using Onlywire and similar sites, spammers can quickly and easily submit links to all of the top social bookmarking sites at once. Even if you're not a spammer, Onlywire's Terms of Service even gives them the right to spam all of your accounts with their own links!

Bottom Line:
Do not give your username and password to other sites!

Linkatopia will be actively blocking all such automated logins as we continue our efforts to remove spam from our site. We have updated our Terms of Service to reflect this change.

New Signups Enabled!

2008-04-22

Linkatopia is once again accepting all new registrations! We will be monitoring the new signup system and we'll still delete spammer accounts on a regular basis. We hope that we've made Linkatopia annoying to spammers while keeping it friendly enough for legitimate users. As always, we welcome your suggestions!

In an effort to further discourage spammers, new accounts now have the rel="nofollow" attribute added to their links.

Note:
After 30 days, we review each account and if the content is meaningful and relevant, we remove the "nofollow" attributes.

Popular Tags are Back!

2008-02-15

Most Linkatopia functionality is back online, including search and "Popular Tags". We've made some big database improvements so the site should be faster. We're still cleaning out a bunch of spam so you might still see some when you browse a popular tag.

We pleased that some of the spamming services have dropped Linkatopia from their lists. Less spam for us!

We are only accepting new members by invitation at this time. When we finish the new registration system, you'll be able to sign up once again. In the meantime, you can ask an approved member to invite you by using the "Invite a Friend" link at the bottom of their page.

UPDATE
Linkatopia has resumed accepting all completed registrations.

Limited Functionality Restored

2007-09-15

Approved Linkatopia members should find all functions of their accounts restored. New and unapproved members can still view their accounts and use RSS feeds to their links and tags but cannot add new links. Linkatopia is temporarily not accepting any new members...

Linkatopia is Fighting Spam!!

We don't know what other sites are doing but we refuse to allow our database to fill up with link spam. Despite using Captcha and other precautions, a few selfish people found ways to create hundreds of fake or duplicate accounts and flood our database with thousands of spam links. If you're a new member, we realize you might go somewhere else, but we value quality more than quantity.