Click fraud increasing?

Click fraud is growing, according to a report quoted by PaidContent.org

Another report makes it harder for search portals to deny click fraud as a growing concern. According to the Click Forensics study, fraudulent clicks on search-related online ads rose to an average of 14.1 percent last quarter, up from 13.7 percent in the first quarter. Earlier this month, advisory firm Outsell interviewed advertisers and estimated the rate as closer to 14.6 percent, or $800 million lost in revenue a year.

Netscape woos Diggers

According to Wired News Netscape is offering to pay people to blog. The story goes on:

Jason Calacanis offered up to $1,000 a month to woo volunteer posters away from popular reader-generated link sites like Digg and Reddit. A post on Calacanis’ personal blog is offering potential contributors — which he’ll call “Netscape Navigators” after they jump ship — the $1,000 monthly stipend for a minimum of 150 posts on the recently redesigned Netscape site.

The posts would be similar in content to the highly popular submissions on Digg, which are generally sparse on original content but offer links to original stories elsewhere on the web.

Calacanis believes that “crowdsourcing”, where a large pool of users contribute content to a community with little or no monetary compensation, is an outmoded idea.

El Blog

El Tiempo, a major daily newspaper in Columbia, has just relaunched its website and incorporated a swath of Web 2.0 features, according to Jeff Jarvis, who was himself quoting Boz.

They have activated comments on articles. Comments can be voted up or down by readers. They have a most read and most active search section on the homepage. It looks like they may incorporate tags next.