Largest Pligg Partner Defects After Announced Sale
Michael Arrington
35 comments »
Pligg, a popular open source content management system that lets developers quickly create Digg-like clones, put itself up for sale a week ago.
Today VideoSift, which has 1 million monthly unique visitors and claims to be the largest user of Pligg’s software, emailed to tell me they have developed their own software and will stop using Pligg. The new site goes live this Friday, August 25.
VideoSift says their new platform is built exclusively for video aggregation and will serve their needs better than the Pligg software. They were also hesitant, they say, to continue to contribute to the Pligg open source project. They cite a “serious security breach” that compromised part of their database and was based on a simple exploit that shouldn’t have existed. The Pligg community moved quickly to respond and patch the problem, they say, but it left them feeling vulnerable.
The sale of the company put them over the top, and the company says they have some misgivings about the Aferro GPL license, particularly about how code resales are handled.
VideoSift is a loss for Pligg at a crucial time during their sale process. Not only is the site generating more traffic than other Pligg sites, they were named the best video aggregator by PC World late last year. These are the kind of banner partners Pligg needs to get a good sale price.
A screenshot of the new site launching this Friday is below.
Update: After reaching out to us to write this story, the founder of VideoSift is now saying that we mischaracterized his position. Instead of trying to properly characterize his position, here’s his email to us. You decide if the story is inappropriate or not.
Pligg is a good general CMS, but there were a few considerations for moving off:
We started VideoSift shortly after Pligg was ported from the Spanish language Digg clone Meneame.net written by a talented Spanish coder, Ricardo Galli. ( http://meneame.net/) Pligg has gone through a lot of revisions and changes since then - and we haven’t moved with them.
About 2 months ago, there was a serious security breach at VideoSift (and other Pligg based sites) that compromised part of our DB. The breach was based on a simple hack that would have been found by analyzing the Pligg source. Although the Pligg community was quick to respond and patch the problem- This pushed us farther down the road to closed source.
And lastly, although we were well on our way to writing our new software, we have some misgivings about the pending sale of Pligg. Pligg is licensed under the Aferro GPL which is pretty strict about the re-sell of code.
The new VideoSift has been rebuilt from the ground up to work well around video aggregation. Our community loves it, and we can’t wait to launch it this Friday.
Thanks and cheers,
Brian Houston
VideoSift
Sydney, Australia
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The founder of Videosift posted a response of sorts on the Pligg forum because he felt that TechCrunch unfairly framed VideoSift as “anti-Pligg” and that the decision to write their own code is unrelated to the sale of Pligg.
http://forums.pligg.com/pligg-.....runch.html
When someone creates a product from a canned piece of software, you often find things that need to be changed or could be done more efficiently. The problem is during the startup phase it is cheaper to go with something off the shelf and see if the whole idea flies first. Then over time the idea did fly and the users at videosift wanted many features that were not in pligg and instead of continually patching the system they came up with their own solution.
Where there other factors? probably, but as a videosift user I can tell you this was one of the main ones.
Hey TechCrunch, get your facts right. The article is full of inconsistencies and and factually inaccurate.
Uh, hmmm in order for a videosift member to be able to post, vote, or comment, you have to be a charter member costing you $10 every 3 months, why in heaven’s name would I sign up there? Seriously who the hell does that nowadays? I have been on this new beta site, http://www.jiggyme.com, with free membership, so videosift can take a flying leap.
AnonTroll nice try ya liar. Anyone can become a member of VideoSift for FREE. You can post videos, comment on videos, and vote on videos all for FREE.
That’s what videosift registration page says, http://www.videosift.com/register.php
Quoting from the page,
VideoSift is a community of contributors. You are welcome to lurk and enjoy the videos and conversation, but if you would like be a part of the posting, voting and commenting, then it’s time to take the membership plunge. We used to have a completely open registration. Unfortunately as our site grew, so did instances of self-linking, astro-turfing and spam.
You can start posting and commenting immediately if you are a charter member costing you $10 for every 3 months. If that’s now what they meant, then they did a lousy job describing the benefits of membership.
Title seems to be incredibly inaccurate.
Anontroll, you are pretty clearly quoting just one side of the register page. We have a free membership that has community review of your first post. That helps us keep out spam. After you pass that first relatively small hurdle then you can post to your hearts content. The charter membership is more for our long term users that want to keep the site alive and kicking as maintaining a site as large as videosift is essentially a full time job.
Here is the text from the junior member box that you are conveniently leaving out of your attack on our membership policies.
“Become a Junior Member
* Junior members subject to display ads
* Subject to initial video screening
* Limited submission of queued videos
* Upgrade at any time
”
basically you have to see ads as a junior member and you get less submission space. Almost every site on the internet except for wikipedia is ad supported, and MOST don’t offer an ad free version for a subscription rate or not. Even slashdot won’t let you completely opt out of ads. That is what the charter membership is about, letting people avoid advertising if they throw us a couple of bones every month. The people that take advantage of it are long term users.
Anyway as you were promoting jiggyme.com I would say that you infactual attack is probably motivated from some sort of traffic envy. Good luck with your beta.
Opps Busted!
http://digg.com/tech_news/Tech.....ng_a_Story
see update.
Gasp! They just added comments over at Jiggyme! That’s so high tech!
It looks like Brian Houston from VideoSift is very confused. I’ve been following the pligg sale and nowhere have they ever stated about selling the pligg code. Try reading sometime.
I also think TechCrunch deliberately made the article misleading.
VideoSift admitted in the letter they were using an extremely outdated early beta copy of the open source project. Yet TechCrunch failed to mention that before this miraculous “Update”
TechCrunch and VidioSift also failed to see that if it wasn’t for Pligg there would be no VideoSift. No 1 million visitors a month. Nothing.
The way I see it, Pligg created their entire business. Yet you bash them.
So congratulations to VideoSift for their sucsess. You owe it all to Pligg.
And congratulations to TechCrunch. You just became the “Weekly World News” of tech news.
Why didnt Brian Houston just say Videosift was transferring to closed source software and relaunching Friday in his original communication instead of implying that his company were unhappy with Pligg and then getting pissed and paranoid when Techcrunch covered what he had implied within the context of the Pligg sale.
If Brian Houston couldnt see Techcrunch looking at the bigger picture that’s his problem, - good write up Mike ,reckless call on ‘mischaracterisation’ Brian.
update isn’t “miraculous.” I usually don’t post emails but the company has effectively called me a liar. They’re playing both sides of the fence - they want the attention for leaving (and asked for it), but they don’t want pligg users to be angry. Reap what you sow.
We had a similar experience after looking under the hood of the earlier versions of Pligg and decided to add a ton to the underlying code. Not a knock on the product it just needed customization like most off-the-shelf products.
I can say Pligg has really matured as a product and any major site customizing it shouldn’t effect the sale price.
Clay @ AgentB.com
only use youtube, no point in using any pligg site or any other CLONE
Michael, we aren’t calling you a liar, but you made this article into an attack piece on Pligg, which wasn’t really what I excpected.
You asked my why we are moving off Pligg, and I gave you honest answers in order of importance - it’s true, we do have some misgivings about Pligg’s sale but I didn’t think that would be the main thrust of your article.
KARaidl , this coming from a site that uses someone’s else code to begin with? Give me a break. Rex341 is right, without Pligg, there is no VideoSift.
Michael, I agree with you, Brian is playing both sides of the fence.
Brian, you should be putting out a press release instead. Michael is under no obligation to say what you want him to say.
As much as I love Pligg and the helpful Pligg community, I too have have been considering moving my Pligg site nextwebstar.com to a new platform. This move is not a result of the Pligg sale. We are moving to a platform that is more suitable for our future plans for our site.
Pligg provides some core components that we found very useful; although, I feel that due to Pligg’s reputation as being a “Digg Rip-off” has limited their growth as a versatile CMS. There are some great mechanisms in Pligg, such as: membership platform, voting system, user linking (friends), and much more - typical components found in social networking sites. Pligg is a great NCMS (Networking Content Management System).
Nextwebstar.com is a great example of how Pligg can be configured to NOT be another Digg rip-off.
Cheers!
If you don’t want to buy the whole Pligg open source project, you can just buy a pligg template here: http://www.pligg-templates.com
Friday is the 24th, not the 25th.
ur momma ftw! pwned.
http://techfunked.com/web20blo.....aughtered/
Fapp.com runs on pligg, and it works rather well.
I just started using Pligg - seems pretty nifty. Little unsettled by sale, but probably won’t be a big deal. It will fork if its bad.
If you use pligg you can get FREE templates from the number one pligg templating site http://pligg-template.com
Normally around two free templates per week are produced and contributed to by the community.
I am too unhappy with Pligg template. They are crappy template for sissies. I will like to try Moonrank (http://moonrank.com) or Digital Nature( http://www.digitalnature.org/) . Moonranks made coolest template for Pligg.com site.
Jeni
Loving the new videosift design and it continues to be my favorite video aggregator site on the web long live VideoSift. features rock, site rocks, overall great job keep it up guys.
On a side note the new template on pligg.com looks like a little baby boys room very nasty design overall, I much prefer a less overtried attempt at being all 2007 and web 2.0. VideoSift’s new design for example used a similar blue color but done more professionally, if i wanted a pligg template constructed i would goto http://www.rommelsantor.com/.