Tynt: Put a Tracer on Your Content
If your site is all about content and you suspect others are “borrowing” it from you, or at least copying it without proper attribution (or link-backs), then Tynt might be your answer. The site is free to use in beta and so far, no mention of future plans to charge for the service have been given.
When you sign up, you’re given a simple, one-line script to paste into your site’s code (anywhere will do). I tried it on a Blogger blog and inserted the code into the template’s widgets list. It worked without trouble.
Once the code is in place, you’re site is now enabled with Tynt’s Tracer. When someone copies your site content into their clipboard for pasting into another window, an automatic site attribution link is added to the bottom (the URL includes a short identifier). This is pasted into the paste operation.
Of course, the person doing the pasting doesn’t have to leave the link-back, but most who are legitimate and not thieves will probably leave it. It’s actually convenient for those who make a lot of cross-posts and such. It also works with images, which is another bonus.
The link provides Tynt with a unique identifier for each copy-paste that allows Tynt to track what’s being copied, how often, and so forth. That’s the other half of the system that’s a boon to the user. The statistics it gathers can be extremely useful, especially if you’re used to your content going viral and hope to track how quickly it’s doing so (and what is and what isn’t doing so).
Tynt is a Canadian company and just received $5 million in first-round funding earlier this year. Tynt is now integrating apps like Twitter and building extensions for both IE and Firefox.
This could be a great marketing boon for some site owners and a great way to track content proliferation. Since it’s free to use, you have nothing to lose by giving it a try.
