Dagbladet.no is the first Norwegian website to use Twingly to link back to blogposts that is linking to their articles. They have used our widget at some articles for a while now but since yesterday it’s used at the whole site, to our and the bloggers delight.
This means that we’ve got Twingly Partners in the whole Scandinavia! Yeey!
More:
Dagbladet.no – Vi linker till alla som blogger om oss (in Norwegian)
What is the status of the partnership with Dagbladet, really? For a while they did link to blogs referring to their articles, in all their articles. But now they seem to have returned to an older policy of only using Twingly in some few, and selected articles.
So, could you please inform bloggers using this service about the current and, if possible, future status of this partnership? Dagbladet’s current practice is annoying. My feeling is they are trying to get links from bloggers “for free”. I, for one, don’t like it, and am not going to give it.
OutOfTheBox
And, have you seen where Dagbladet now place the links to blogs? Down, at the very end of the page – actually so far down it is under the page. What are these guys doing – what is it they want?
Hi OutOfTheBox. What I’ve heard is that Dagbladet have some technical problems and that they in the future will have Twingly on every article as before. But for now, when they still have som technical issues, will be a little greedy with which articles they use the widget on.
I haven’t heard something on the placement of the widget but many of our customers have it under the article which actually have given more traffic from the newspaper because mainly of the readers are more likely to click on a blog link when they already have read the article. I don’t know if this is the case for Dagbladet, but it’s not allways a bad thing.
Well – I have looked at the source code of some of their pages. Seem to me (1) they simply link to Twingly without including the widget itself at the spot where they want it so be, (2) they link to a twingly javascript that isn’t intended to show links, and (3) they have (on some pages) used css that places it all the way at the bottom. Seems really strange to me.
Under the article – as many of your customers have it – is fine with me. That’s a good placement. Like f.ex. Poltiken. No prob with that.
The placement in some pages on Dagbladet – for a while – now it’s correct but doesn’t show the links to the blogs – was not at the end of the article, but under the page itself – i.e. under all the stuff at the very en of the page. I got no hits from that- I doubth if anybody else did get much either. So I am not linking them for the moment.
It’s really weird – as far as I can see it works ok in Opera, but that’s the only browser it works with.
But that’s a browser hardly anybody uses, so from a blogger’s point of view there’s not much of a point in linking.
We’re sorry for the problems and hope that Dagbladet have a solution for them soon. And of course that Dagbladet still have some articles worth to link to even the widget don’t work well.
But we will continue talk to them and keep you updated here.
I have followed this. I don’t think it’s a technical problem at all. It works for some browsers, not for others. I think it’s Dagbladet that is trying to fool bloggers by pretending to link to them.
There is nothing that is so complicated about the technology. It works fine everywhere else. And it worked fine at Dagbladet too.
Pretty foolish by Dagbladet, if you ask me. If the want to catch up with VG, trying to scam Norwegian bloggers that could driver traffic to them is probably not the smartest move.
Pretty cheap scam or con deal, if you ask me. Not worthy of a serious newspaper.
Peter
@Peter, there are actually more complexity involved than one might think. A newspaper website is a very complex environment with code from dozens of different products trying to cope with each other. The Twingly widget has to work not only on one newspaper but on all our customer’s websites. This is actually not an easy task. We are working very hard together with Dagbladet to solve the collisions that have occurred.
Dagbladet’s intention is to keep linking to blogs. Please have patience while they sort this out. If I’m wrong and you’re right, time will tell.
Best regards,
Martin Källström
Yeah, time will certainly tell! Personally, I hope you are right.
However, given that you, Dagbladet, I, and a thousand bloggers know that Dagbladets Twingly links is just a bait for bloggers, and doesn’t do what it is supposed to do (that is, it is only visible when browsing with Opera and maybe IE earlier than 6), the correct thing would probably be for Dagbladet to remove the Twingly bait til they’ve fixed it?
I mean, this is like taking payment for a dinner and serving a glass of water only. Strange way to do business.
@Peter but in my point of view is it better if they give a little traffic instead of nothing?
I don’t think they see it as only a bait. They want to give something back to the bloggers but can’t do it correct right know because some technical issues.
Hope they find a solution soon.
/Anton
I have said may thing about the technical issue. It worked before, and it works elsewhere, and they still put the link out as bait. That’s it.
As far as a little traffic better than none? It doesn’t work like that. Most of my traffic is search engines and regular viewers. I don’t want to bleed them to Dagbladet for hardly any traffic in return.
Also, as I am sure you understand, there is much more search activity and traffic on VG’s articles – they have 3 mill views a week.
I’d love to work with Dagbladet, but not as long as they are determined to run their little scam. There’s other fish, actually bigger fish – Reddit, digg, stumbleupon, etc. I don’t think Dagbladet is going to get anywhere with their experiment. And, yeah, I happen to think it’s an experiment. But I don’t really think small scale thinking will make them able to compete with VG.
I haven’t actually removed my links from old posts to Dagbladet, but as those posts get old I’ll bleed less to them. And if they don’t come straight soon, I will consider removing my links to them as well, or just make them less visible. We’ll see.
@Peter we could just wait and see. But there’s not so much comparabable things between for example Digg and the Twinglywidget. That’s two very different things.
VG is not our partner today, even they of course are welcome to start a partnership with us.
Regards,
Anton Johansson
Tuesday we’ll starting blogging and discussing internationally about Dagbladet.
What do you mean?
One question – isn’t Twingly worried about its reputation when it participates in this?
You can’t really believe that you can build Twingly into something big if people can’t trust you, can you? You know, business ethics and all of that?
And yeah, I see what you’re doing. It’s as expected. That’s recorded too. The story gets better and better.
Good luck guys!
Peter, I’d like to encourage you to blog about this in any way you like. If there are any further information you need my email is martin@twingly.com and my cell is +46 733 628 654. I’ll put you in touch with Dagbladet as well. They will be happy to answer any questions and I’ll make sure you get hold of someone who can give you full insight.
Cheers!
Martin
Nå må Dagbladet slutte! Det er bare vås med disse linkene. Det er mange av oss som mener at Dagbladet bare driver og lurer oss.
Mener de at leserne skal stole på dem? Kan vi stole på dem, vi som blogger? Nei, det kan vi ikke og det gjør vi i mindre og mindre grad. Så er det noen grunn til at leserne skal det da?
Og – bør vi stole på Twingly, egentlig? Det lurer jeg også på. Jeg er slett ikke sikker!
Nok er nok.
Whats the latest on this case? Anyone?
What I can see (and what I was told lately) is that the widget is working on dagbladet.no since a couple of weeks ago.
Regards,
Anton Johansson
I can’t find twingly implemented on any of Dagladets articles anymore :/ Has anything happened with your partnership?
Did Dagbladet remove its twingly usage?