One of my biggest gripes with the Internet in general is what I'm calling "content leeches".  These are companies that people use to create and publish content (TypePad for publishing my blog, for example), but that hook themselves into the content in such a way that extracting it from that company becomes a nightmare.  Some call this "job security", I call it extortion.  TypePad and MySpace are the two biggest offenders that I've noticed.

Let me share an example.  When I set up my blog, I told TypePad that I wanted my blog to be hosted at www.jasonkolb.com, a domain that I personally own.  One of the main reasons I signed up for TypePad is because they offer this capability, and it's very important to me to centralize my online identity around the jasonkolb.com domain.  (I believe that a person's online identity will eventually revolve around a URL, read this post to find out why).  However, when I publish a post, all the links that TypePad generates (permalinks, trackbacks, etc) don't stem from jasonkolb.com, they stem from jasonkolb.typepad.com, undoing that centralization that I'm shooting for.  For example, a recent post of SHOULD be located at http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2006/06/this_is_not_an__1.html, but TypePad conventiently ignores my domain name and publishes the post as http://jasonkolb.typepad.com/weblog/2006/06/this_is_not_an__1.html.  They both go to the same post, but one uses *MY* domain, the other uses *TypePad's* domain.  I can find no way to force TypePad to use jasonkolb.com instead of TypePad.com.

To me, this is a bigger problem then the built-for-AdSense RSS aggregation pages.  This concerns where my content is found on the Web, and where people will be pointed to by search engines.  When I change to a different blog engine down the road, it's going to be like wading thru mud to try to update my links.

Not only that, but I've heard from multiple companies such as Sphere and Technorati that they're having trouble stitching together multiple URL's that point to the same blogs.  I can't even imagine a way to do this efficiently, because URL stands for Uniform (thanks Jim ;) Resource Locator, and when two of them point to the same thing they don't end up being very Uniform.  Because of this, links pointing to jasonkolb.com and links pointing to jasonkolb.typepad.com are considered to point to two different places in the eyes of search engines.  This ends up reducing the effectiveness of the search engines themselves.

I really can't tell if this is a concious decision on TypePad's part or if it's some type of technical issue, but if it's a technical issue they need to hire some more competent programmers.  I'm paying for the service and they need to honor what they say they offer.  I'm really not happy about this situation.

There are so many more examples of this that I can't even list them all, but in keeping with my recent habit of badmouthing MySpace, I will say that they are the worst offender.  I don't personally use MySpace to publish content, my MySpace profile is just a collection of links to my blogs, LinkedIn profile, etc.  (See this post for more details on that.)  But I find it extremely offensive to users that not only does MySpace make you log into their site to read blogs, messages, updates, etc, but they won't even let third parties use the content to make the service more useful.  Because, of course, if you don't have to log into MySpace, they'll lose 50 cents in ad revenue.

These companies are tying their customers to metaphorical chairs.  They're taking the torch from AOL and carrying on that company's not-so-proud tradition of customer service--they make me emberrassed to say that I'm a customer.  I truly hope that companies with products that can stand up on their own merits (a la PeopleAggregator) will trounce these content leeches in the end.