Litigation

Be Careful Where You Dip Your Wiki!

By John Darer

A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified mark up language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites. Wikipedia is the perhaps the best known wiki.

Patrick Hindert has heavily promoted "the wiki" (or "wookie" to the irreverent) as a web 2.0 knowledge management tool to lawyers and to the structured settlement industry. While web 2.0 tools such as blogs and audio and video pod casts have generally been accepted wikis have essentially been a non starter.

Both blogs and wikis permit the hosts to participate in Google Adsense (pay per click) programs. There is a significant risk to many of these programs in that the pay per click ads will either be incompatible or even offensive to your audience. For instance this author could make alot of money monetizing Structured Settlements 4Real with Adsense ads. The problem in this author's opinion is that most of the ads would be from cash now pushers like JG Wentworth, Woodbridge, Peachtree etc. which would be offensive to this author. Those $30-$40 per clicks are juicy but not worth supporting the cash now fraud. Another example we've recently seen is The Settlement Channel and Speaking of Settlements web platform displaying banner ads of Peachtree's bogus cash now campaign. Mark Wahlstrom has stated to this author that they will have control of their white space April 1, 2009. It can't be soon enough.

This author has previously commented on the fact that Hindert sells pay per click advertising on his wikis, such as Structured Settlement Law Wiki. Now the decision to do so comes back home to haunt as the Structured Settlement Law Wiki supposedly  "relevant" displayed ads are for Peachtree Settlement Funding and:

1. Her Teeth Were Yellow
2. Sexy Skin Secret
3. Teen Vaginal Infections  www.mychronicyeastinfection.com
4. Meeting Really Wealthy People
5. Which Class Are You? from www.dumbspot.com

Hindert blogs have in the past been breeding grounds for comment spam and now this.

Full post as published by Structured Settlements 4Real on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).