In 2005 webmasters began to embrace the concept there’s money to be made in blogging. Text rich, and updated frequently, blogs are incredibly powerful search engine magnets. However, webmasters quickly discovered there’s a lot of work involved in reaping the SEO benefits of blogging.

The effort required maintaining a content (text) rich blog is counter culture to the fast paced atmosphere most seekers of traffic work in. Consequently, most would be adult bloggers have tried turning their blogs into TGPs, a strategy that has delivered disappointing returns. Those refusing to discard this untapped resource, yet unwilling to actually do any work, will turn to an age-old adult business practice - content theft.

Using special software, the content thieves will harvest original content from blog RSS feeds and publish it on their fake blogs. The practice of harvesting RSS feeds to populate blogs is not new. In fact, it’s already a huge problem, referred to as splogs, in mainstream blog space. As adult blogging becomes more prolific in 2006, this menace will follow like a pack of hungry wolves.

I see the dilution of search engine performance, caused by these tens of thousands of splobs, a real threat. While Umbria Communications, a consumer-generated media monitor, expresses the concern that splogs, “could become a detractor to people using, enjoying and finding value in the blogosphere.”

Although steps can be taken by bloggers to block the harvesting of their content, its unlikely most will take any preventative action. More important, one has to question how many of these free adult blog hosting services, just starting to emerge, are actually fronts for the harvesters. Most often fingered as the primary mainstream culprit is Google, which has fed the splog problem through its free hosting Blogger tool, and made it profitable through AdSense. While I’m not accusing any of these adult services of foul play, there should be some scrutiny of any company that displays no visible means of monetizing from their free offering.

On a brighter note, 2006 is the year RSS will mature as a means of monetizing. That said, I have no earthly idea what this will look like. But I expect it to become apparent by the end of second quarter.