# Problem with links



## eddyj

I was trying to click on a link on a thread, and it failed. It had worked before. So I looked at what was going on, and it looks like the forum is redirecting links though some kind of referral site. So the link to buy.com got turned into something like this:



Code:


http://outboundlink.net/out.php?cid=1147&tr=0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buy.com%2Fprod%2F2-pack-of-earphones-w-mic-for-iphone-3g-3gs-and-all-ipods%2Fq%2Floc%2F108%2F211468040.html&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Fp%3D7801042%23post7801042

which failed to resolve. The original link was this:



Code:


http://www.buy.com/prod/2-pack-of-earphones-w-mic-for-iphone-3g-3gs-and-all-ipods/q/loc/108/211468040.html

Looks like it is happening for Amazon links too:



Code:


http://outboundlink.net/out.php?cid=1147&tr=0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2FB001LHVOVK&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D371502%26page%3D134

I can understand trying to get some referral money, but doing this without telling people, and breaking working links in the process does not sound so good.


----------



## Fofer

We'd noticed it last week in the Xbox 360 thread, when Jonathan_S posted a link to a Xbox Live Points card on sale at dell.com:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7793562#post7793562

I normally wouldn't mind a site tracking outbound links, or even generating referral revenue based on those links -- but TCF seems to be doing it wrong, and _breaking links from working properly._ In the aforementioned thread, the discussion went off track, folks confused why clicking the link wouldn't work... the link would only work if we copy and pasted the same link into a new browser window. That's not how the web's supposed to work.


----------



## JustAllie

I'm not sure I understand what it's doing. For example, I tried it on the link in my signature, and the first time I clicked it, the link didn't work properly. But now it works. Is it just checking links to make sure that spammers can't post links to inappropriate sites?

Or maybe they turned off this new "feature" when people started having trouble with it?


----------



## eddyj

I think they just fixed what was wrong, the link that did not work before works now. But they are still redirecting it though another site first.


----------



## Fofer

Still not working here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7793562#post7793562

A simple link to a product for sale at Dell.com seems to redirect 4 times before failing.

Yet quoting the link in order to copy and paste it in a new browser window... works fine.

Ugh.


----------



## JustAllie

eddyj said:


> I think they just fixed what was wrong, the link that did not work before works now. But they are still redirecting it though another site first.


I see they've re-un-fixed it.

This is the sort of thing I would have expected to see announced rather than just implemented quietly.

I need a new sig anyway.


----------



## Turtleboy

It isn't _*all*_ outbound links. Just to certain e-commerce sites. The link to my blog doesn't go through a referral site.


----------



## Gai-jin

I believe it is against amazon's terms of use for the associates program to hijack a link and add your code to it. I know I've read several complaints of people who had their associates accounts closed for doing so. 

Also, IIRC you have to make it clear to the end user that they are clicking on an associate link.


----------



## Fofer

As far as I'm concerned, so long as the friggin' links WORK, the referral crap doesn't bother me. Just make sure that in the end, I get to where I'm supposed to go.

But please, don't make links anywhere start acting strange. All this will do is discourage folks from sharing helpful links, and will make this place just a little less friendly and a little less welcome.


----------



## sushikitten

So, am I reading this right? That TCF is taking our personal referral links (which, at least in my case, has been personally okayed) and spinning it so that it becomes TCF's referral link??


----------



## keirgrey

I have no problem with them doing this kind of thing to make money for TCF, but let us KNOW about it. Don't try to sneak it in like a thief in the night and then try to fix it when people complain, still saying nothing.


----------



## Adam1115

TC Club members should at least be able to opt out...


----------



## Fofer

1. Install affiliate plug-in that breaks regular hyperlinks from working properly
2. Allow TC Club members the "privilege" of avoiding the redirects, so clicking links works properly
3. ????
4. Profit!


----------



## Alfer

sushikitten said:


> So, am I reading this right? That TCF is taking our personal referral links (which, at least in my case, has been personally okayed) and spinning it so that it becomes TCF's referral link??


Seems that way...pretty underhanded indeed.


----------



## MikeMar

ok no one make directly links to e-commerce sites, just do what eddy did and put it in code brackets!


----------



## Gai-jin

MikeMar said:


> ok no one make directly links to e-commerce sites, just do what eddy did and put it in code brackets!


That would be one option. Though, when I tried a link earlier this morning, it didn't redirect me through that site. Is it off again?


----------



## Fofer

MikeMar said:


> ok no one make directly links to e-commerce sites, just do what eddy did and put it in code brackets!


Copy and pasting links into new browser windows? Seems like a mighty big pain. I like to click a link, and know that it'll work, as it does on every other site I spend 15+ hours, on every day of the week.


----------



## Ron Repking

Let me chime in here on behalf of Capable Networks to clear up the confusion regarding the redirection of links and hopefully answer some of your questions.

First of all, I wanted to thank you for your patronage of TCF. We really do value highly your continued participation and loyalty and are trying our best to keep things running smoothly on the site.

Starting a couple of weeks ago, we implemented a pilot on TCF with another company to help us monetize our outbound ecommerce links. As site owners we saw this as a way to unobtrusively monetize TCF traffic, allowing us to continue to grow our company and ultimately make the experience better for our visitors and members.

The way the technology works is that it redirects the affiliate link behind the scenes and basically attaches our affiliate ID to it. Their technology is running on thousands of sites, including many consumer electronics sites. Unfortunately, they had an 8 minute outage recently which caused the links to not redirect properly as some of you witnessed. However, other than that brief outage, everything should be working fine and the link redirects should be seamless to everyone. If this is not the case, I would certainly like to hear about it.

Now, on to your comments and questions:
1) It is true that we did not mention that we implemented this code to TCF. That is my fault. Even though I viewed it as a temporary pilot that I was testing, I should have posted something and I apologize for not being up front. This will be addressed via a posting by our administrator in the new eBay forum and obviously here in this thread.

2) The links in question are ONLY for links to certain eCommerce sites. Links to personal webpages or other non-eCommerce links are NOT changed by this technology.

3) To my knowledge, in reading Amazon's affiliate rules, since we own TCF, any traffic that we generate to Amazon or other affiliates that results in purchases qualifies for affiliate revenue for us. If I'm wrong about this, I certainly would like to know about it because not only I, but the thousands of other sites that are using this technology will be at fault.

4) It has come to my attention via this thread that a few members have been using personal affiliate links on the site. Per our terms of use, personal affiliate links are prohibited and remain as such. We were not aware that anyone had received special permission to use these links. However, before commenting further, we would like to better understand the couple of individual situations and how they came about. If you are in this group, please let Peter Redmer or myself know via PM and we can address that separately.

5) Regarding the opting out of TCF Club members - I would have to speak with our technical team to understand if that is even feasible or not. However, assuming that the links work (which they better or I WILL take them down), you shouldn't even notice that they are there which is very different than an ad showing up on every page. I will also look to address this issue separately with individual TCF members.

If I missed something or you have more questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them. Thank you and again I apologize for not letting everyone know about this up front.

Ron Repking, CEO, Capable Networks LLC


----------



## Fofer

Thank you for the detailed response, Ron. Certainly makes me feel better to know you're focused on making it work properly and as unobtrusively as possible.


----------



## Adam1115

Fofer said:


> Thank you for the detailed response, Ron. Certainly makes me feel better to know you're focused on making it work properly and as unobtrusively as possible.


+1


----------



## JustAllie

You know, for years I wondered why TCF didn't sell advertising for some of the products we chat about constantly here on the site. I guess you finally found a way to "monetize" some of our book/music/gadget discussions. If you could figure out a way to get money from Trader Joe's each time we talk about their peanut butter filled pretzels, you'd be golden.

But please, next time let us know. Lots of people enjoy this site and are happy to participate in ways to support it, but this type of unannounced change just confuses people. I think a "sticky" announcement about this would alleviate some concerns and answer some questions.

In the past, it seemed like the policing of the referral link rule was patchy at best, but certainly the rule is clear. I was led to understand that _unobtrusive_ affiliate links in signatures were allowed. There's obviously no point in having those now, so I have to find a witty saying to replace the link I put there when I was trying to save money for a Kindle. <--- look, I might have just made money for you had I made that a hotlink to the Amazon site instead of to Wikipedia. Maybe next time.


----------



## Mike Lang

Ron Repking said:


> Their technology is running on thousands of sites, including many consumer electronics sites.


Yes, with exponentially more links than TCF, we silently did this at AVS over a year ago without ever hearing a word.


----------



## Fofer

I guess TCF members are just that much smarter?


----------



## Chapper1

Sounds like a really crappy way to do business. I would bet that most people would have found it nice to be told up front this is what is going on. 

Now I know not to purchase items I see linked to here. I'll just do my own search from now on. Or use a referral site linked to someone I know that has been upfront about the fact they are using a referral code. And just because other sites have done it, it doesn't make it right...

:down: to Capable on this...


----------



## eddyj

JustAllie said:


> But please, next time let us know. Lots of people enjoy this site and are happy to participate in ways to support it, but this type of unannounced change just confuses people. I think a "sticky" announcement about this would alleviate some concerns and answer some questions.


This! If you had just told us, my reaction would have been "OK, makes sense for them to try to get some money". But without notice, it suddenly feels wrong, sneaky, and made me much more negative to the idea in the first place. Perception matters.

But thanks for the explanation.


----------



## Boston Fan

Ron Repking said:


> Starting a couple of weeks ago, we implemented a *pilot* on TCF with another company to help us monetize our outbound ecommerce links.
> Now, on to your comments and questions:
> 1) It is true that we did not mention that we implemented this code to TCF. That is my fault. Even though I viewed it as *a temporary pilot* that I was testing, I should have posted something and I apologize for not being up front.





Mike Lang said:


> Yes, with exponentially more links than TCF, *we silently did this* at AVS *over a year ago* without ever hearing a word.


These two statements appear to be contradictory.

Ron states that this was simply a temporary pilot, leading me to believe that we would have been told at such time as it was permanently implemented.

Mike states that this has been in existence for over a year at AVS with no notice given to members there, leading me to believe that this was also the intention here.


----------



## Gai-jin

As I recall, in the past we were told that unobtrusive self promotion in a signature was acceptable, but not dedicated posts or threads asking for people to buy/vote for/something. 

I'll go ahead and remove the affiliate link from my signature now.


----------



## sushikitten

Ron Repking said:


> 4) It has come to my attention via this thread that a few members have been using personal affiliate links on the site. Per our terms of use, personal affiliate links are prohibited and remain as such. We were not aware that anyone had received special permission to use these links. However, before commenting further, we would like to better understand the couple of individual situations and how they came about. If you are in this group, please let Peter Redmer or myself know via PM and we can address that separately.


As others have said, I was told that an unobtrusive link (i.e. no size 7 bright green font or starting a thread about it) was acceptable. PM sent.


----------



## TiVo'Brien

Fofer said:


> I guess TCF members are just that much smarter?


Actually, yes.


----------



## Fofer

Ron Repking said:


> The way the technology works is that it redirects the affiliate link behind the scenes and basically attaches our affiliate ID to it.


Again, thanks for your feedback here.

I think the issue many of us are having with this particular implementation is how "unobtrusive" it really is.

To compare, on AVS, where "Super Moderator" Mike Lang says this was "silently" implemented "over a year ago," it's done quite differently. When the user hovers over a link on AVS, s/he is show exactly where clicking that link will direct the browser, is the status bar. See this example:










The user sees the "go.avsforum.com" prepended, there's no sneakiness, it's all above board and clear. It's easy to understand what's gone on, easy to justify, easy to troubleshoot. It's normal hyperlink behavior for a reader on the web.

The system in place here now? Doesn't work that way at all. There's a silent hijacking going on, clicking a link doesn't take you where your browser tells you it will be going, and in more than a few cases over the last 2-3 weeks, it's actually _prevented_ me from getting easily to the site I was expecting to go. Either the middleman "outboundlink.net" site was down, or the implementation here is broken, I dunno -- but it certainly was broken for a lot longer than one single "8 minute outage."

In the end, it's just more than a little off-putting when you hover over a link, glance at the status and see where it'll take you, and then you click, and it takes you somewhere else, then redirects 2-3 more times, and then ultimately gives you a "page not found" error. It's even more off-putting when you hear this system was silently put in place to monetize our clicking. I'm quite active on more than a handful of discussion boards, and many of them are very much in the business of making money, but none of them have generated the same uneasiness and flakiness that this system seems to have generated, here on TCF.


----------



## Ron Repking

Thanks everyone for the further input and discussion. We are concerned that there may be issues with this code beyond the outage that we already know about, so we have decided to remove the code for the time being to give us more time to investigate. It is not our practice to implement something that doesn't work properly. After we have had time to understand the exact behavior and options available to us, we will post back with updates. 

Thanks again for patience as we work through this.


----------



## Fofer

Ron, as a very active contributor on this site for the last decade, I want to thank you for your care and candor here. It's obvious to me that you're quite concerned about our user experience and want to keep us comfortably participating. Thanks for your attention, it is sincerely appreciated.


----------



## JustAllie

:up:  

As I said, I'm happy to support the site, but I like to know what's happening when I click a link, or what will happen to others if I put a link in one of my posts. The "stealth" implementation is unnecessary and only makes this whole endeavor more complicated for you guys.


----------



## sushikitten

+1 to Fofer (although I haven't been here 10 years) and JustAllie. I'm more than happy to support the site... heck, if you can figure out how to make enough money off clicking links so that we can get rid of the sidebar ads, that would be great.


----------



## Boston Fan

Sidebar ads?


----------



## sushikitten

Boston Fan said:


> Sidebar ads?


On my phone, yes.


----------



## heySkippy

sushikitten said:


> On my phone, yes.


I don't see any sidebar ads on my phone.


----------



## JustAllie

heySkippy said:


> I don't see any sidebar ads on my phone.


Me neither!


----------



## keirgrey

Heck, I don't see them on my computer.


----------



## JustAllie

Did I miss an announcement that this feature had been re-enabled? When I click on someone's link that has a referral code in it, the page that opens up has a new (different) referral code in it. I haven't noticed any problem with broken links yet. 

Again, it's not that I have a problem with TCF re-directing e-commerce links, but I like to know what's happening when I click a link.


----------



## Peter Redmer

JustAllie - We have *not* re-enabled the feature as of yet. We are still investigating/testing to make sure that when it is re-enabled, it is transparent and non-intrusive as possible. I will post announcements to the forum when we enable it, so everybody will know for sure when it is in effect. We know how important it is for everyone to know and will immediately post when it is added back in 

Could you PM me with the location of this link that is redirecting so I can figure out what is happening? (I tested an Amazon and eBay link just now, and they did not redirect.)


----------



## Peter Redmer

Hey everyone,

As of today, the issues we were experiencing with the outbound links have been resolved, and the service has been re-implemented on the site. (This has also been announced across all forums.)

The system no longer utilizes a redirect as it did before, so clicking on links is fast and seamless.


----------



## eddyj

Thanks for letting us know.


----------



## Fofer

Testing:

http://www.amazon.com/Well-Story-Seminal-Online-Community/dp/0786708468

EDIT TO ADD: I'm not seeing this reimplemented "service" in action here. My URL stays the same, I connect straight through to Amazon without any referral code added. What sites is it supposed to be working with, and in what manner?


----------



## Peter Redmer

The code doesn't use a redirect like it did before, it uses an API. That means that if there is an issue with the service, the script dies "gracefully" without causing a browser hang, etc. This code works with literally thousands of sites.


----------

