Interesting: When you copy text from a New Yorker article and paste it somewhere else, it automatically includes a “Read more: URL” at end of paste.
Copied this:
Then pasted it into an email and it showed up like this (with “Read more” link):
NY Post (and others?) also doing this.
Update: Tynt is what these sites are using. “Measuring reader engagement by how often they copy and paste” talks more about how sites use the data generated by Tynt. [thx ZS]
Mike Baehr
on 07 Jan 10I can’t stand this. It makes pasting links into IRC particularly odious. Thankfully, you can just turn it off by putting this in your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 tcr.tynt.com
Cool Frood
on 07 Jan 10I can see the page doing some HTTP requests when you finish selecting. I’m no expert, but I think they might be tracking how much copy-paste is going on.
Dustin Anderson
on 07 Jan 10I think it’s a cute choice for a site to make, but I’ve found it to be more annoying than anything and I’m really bummed to see it posted on SVN in a positive/neutral light because now UX designers will start to think this is a good idea.
It’s not.
I think there may be a middle ground somewhere, a better solution, giving users an option to add that to what they’ve cut.
When I copy and paste something, I typically don’t want the url along with it, so I end up having to delete it.
Unassuming users will paste something they didn’t intend to.
Another case of too many features. Surprising that 37signals isn’t lambasting the New Yorker for doing this.
Nate
on 07 Jan 10Saw esquire doing this too. An example.
ML
on 07 Jan 10Dustin: Yeah, I can see how it’d be problematic too. Changed the title of post to “smart” (with quotes) so it’s not automatically viewed as an endorsement. Just found it noteworthy.
Dustin Anderson
on 07 Jan 10correction (I meant to say Uninformed users (not Unassuming users) in my previous comment):
Uninformed users will paste something they didn’t intend to.
Zach Seward
on 07 Jan 10Some background on the tech and backend advantages of the feature, which is by a company called Tynt: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/07/measuring-reader-engagement-by-how-often-they-copy-and-paste/
Tys von Gaza
on 07 Jan 10It is an analytics tools from the Calgary company http://www.tynt.com/
They do some fancy javascript/flash to track what users are copying from articles, but also add annotations, like the source url, to the bottom of copied text to help drive clicks back to the article. Interesting concept.
You can see a democamp presentation of it here that describes it better: http://barcampcalgary.com/2009/04/30/dcc14-video/ (minute 16).
ericnoel
on 07 Jan 10it’s a great idea. more than half the times that I copy and paste a piece of text from a content site like this, the next thing that I do is get the URL. So adding that URL to my paste is what I would call great usability design. You can delete it from your target paste if you don’t want it. Do you seriously think I’m going to put something in my hosts file just because of a feature on a site that I might not love?
Regine Lambrecht
on 07 Jan 10Tynt doing it too: http://bit.ly/4IUvBM
tori
on 07 Jan 10I think it is a very nice concept, haven’t seen anything like this before!
carlivar
on 07 Jan 10I like the text you are copying. :)
Bret
on 07 Jan 10I’d love to see this functionality as a GreaseMonkey script, and thence bundled up into a Firefox extension.
Danny Peck
on 07 Jan 10I agree that modifying a system resource like the clipboard is a dangerous tactic - an exploit - and should be patched by browsers such as Firefox. I also do not agree to sites sending usage data on what I am selecting on a page.
If they can push to our clipboards, can they also pull from them? How many times have you copied / pasted sensitive information?
I don’t like the idea of websites having access to my clipboard.
pistevo
on 07 Jan 10i caught sfgate.com doing this a few months back. my initial thought was “for a really cruddy newspaper i guess at least someone there knows a little something about code”.
thanks for letting me know how they do it.
Travis L
on 07 Jan 10I have a serious issue with it for some reason. It bugs me that they send what text I c/p back to the server for tracking info. Plus, when I read, I normally randomly select stuff, and find myself doing it more often on this site just to push some noise into their profile of me.
I dunno, it just seems… excessively invasive. Even adding the “read more” link seems invasive to me. Do not like.
Danny Peck
on 07 Jan 10I’ve seen sites firing of database stores “on blur” of input elements. You don’t even have to submit a web form for them to have saved everything you typed up to that point. I recall once, filling out a form to order something but deciding not to buy before I clicked submit. I got an email from the company that mentioned something like “We see you did not complete your order. We would like to know why. Blah de blah.”
It’s not just be careful what you SUBMIT, it’s be careful what you type. Period.
Any action can spawn an AJAX call.
Justin Watt
on 07 Jan 10Yeah, I was going to say too, more like “Annoying” copy/paste to me. Thank you Tynt. It really violates the principle of expected, consistent behavior.
If you want to copy the destination URL alongside the text from a webpage, consider using my simple Firefox extension Copy as HTML Link, or the über configurable CoLT...
Spencer Fry
on 07 Jan 10I actually find this more annoying than anything else.
Ryan Heath
on 07 Jan 10Ugh, I’ve seen this before, and it annoys me to no end. If I’m pasting over IM, I often remove the “Read More …” link before pressing enter.
If I want to send a link to someone, I’ll go ahead and send the link myself. There’s a fine line between being smart and being obtrusive. This crosses over into the obtrusive category.
Andrew Warner
on 07 Jan 10I wish the kindle had this. I want to save sections into my notebook.
Grover Saunders
on 07 Jan 10While I’m fairly ambivalent about the feature itself, I’m not sure I understand the privacy argument against it. Every website can easily track that you’ve been to the page, which would generally be extrapolated as “read every word on the page.” So why is the fact that they know you copied a particular paragraph an issue for your privacy?
I’m not sure I see this as any more duplicitous than something like Flickr hiding a giant invisible image over protected images so that you copy that instead of the image itself. It’s still subverting the expected behavior.
So, assuming they know you’ve been the the page as a whole, what harm does this do? I’m not defending, I’m genuinely asking.
@Dany Peck While I’m not a programmer, I doubt they touch your system clipboard in any way. I’d suspect that they’re intercepting the text on it’s way out before it gets to the clipboard. Once it’s there, it’s out of the browser’s hands.
Caleb
on 07 Jan 10Menupages.com uses the same thing
Derek
on 07 Jan 10Full disclosure, I work for Tynt. I appreciate the discussion here and want to make sure that everyone knows we want to be respectful of the opinions here. I thought I would address a few of the issues raised above:
1. Do we directly access the clipboard? No, we do not. The attribution link insertion does not directly insert information into the clipboard. This would be a clear security violation. We have a patent pending process that allows us to make this work.
2. Tracking and Attribution – the attribution feature is separate from the tracking features. The tracking features work very much like any other analytics tool. We do not store any personally identifiable information, but we do want to help publishers learn what content people are choosing to preserve and promote. In addition, publishers can turn the attribution feature on or off on their sites.
3. What if I don’t want this behavior? We are currently working on a global opt out for users who would rather not have Tynt monitor them. In the interim you can opt out on a site by site basis (i.e. the opt out for the SF Gate is here: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/faq.shtml#faq1.5#ixzz0bxLIAbL7). More info on how to not have Tynt monitor you is available in our FAQs here: http://www1.tynt.com/faq-technical-topics#ixzz0bxGzIgPZ
I hope that helps for a start!
rikin
on 07 Jan 10I think it’s a pretty neat idea especially because links are so important in the web economy.
I do think it would be better if browsers integrated a similar functionality in a more intuitive, helpful way. For example, once you select the text you want to copy you could right click and then click copy with hyperlink. Pasting would embed the text already hyperlinked back to the article in question.
Not sure if that’s possible or if that’s up to the browser, OS, or the site itself but I personally think that would be a better solution.
George
on 07 Jan 10This comes across as invasive GUI functionality. I noticed this “feature” a while ago, and was immediately annoyed by it. Even if I want to copy the link from where I am quoting, I want to be in control of how I’m doing the linking. Every time this has happened to me when pasting text from an article into an IM, I’ve just deleted the link anyways.
Stop messing with my paste!
Steve Pilon
on 07 Jan 10Actually, I have to say I think that’s really cool.
Joe Clark
on 07 Jan 10This is a bug, not a feature. Don’t interfere with the text I wish to copy. What next – deleting words?
Brought to you by the same people who use tables for layout, open links in new windows, use mile-long slugs, and top-post their mail.
Kira
on 07 Jan 10I’ve only found this “feature” annoying.
Worst was the time I tried to copy a hyperlink that was written out in the text to put into an anchor tag, and the extra text broke my link.
The most annoying part is that you can’t see until you paste that you’ve picked up extra gunk!
Most Popular Page
on 07 Jan 10And I just like it. Besides, you always have ability and right to remove link. Stop yelling at it – start using it. I’d say, every new thing (it’s not so new, though – I recon) needs to be tested and understood, then it can be abandoned or approved. It’s my personal point of view.
Read more @ http://twitter.com/mostpopularpage#take_it_easy_folks
Enigin
on 07 Jan 10I really like it.. I think it’s a clever idea and encouraged proper attribution. If you don’t like it, you can always just delete the link…
Anonymous Coward
on 08 Jan 10@Enigin “proper attribution” is something most people forget about these days. I agree with you that it if someone doesn’t like it, they can delete it.
Rafael Madeira
on 08 Jan 10I hate this.
1. Many times I copy and paste many excerpts from the text, and while the first time this happens might be “helpful” in that I might be interested to pass the URL at that exact moment and context, in the 9th time it certainly is not.
2. The choice of words preceding the URL is often awkward. At no point did I ever want to recommend an article to a friend saying “Read more:”, or “Read the full article at”, and I feel like a douche when I send the message without realizing that had been added. I always rant profusely when that happens, to the point that my interlocutor ends up hating the feature as well when I’m done.
3. When my connection is being shitty (which is again a frequent reality due to poor wireless coverage), the HTTP requests stop being “invisible” and become downright annoying.
4. “You can just edit it out if you don’t want it” is like saying “hey you can just remove your name from the Sex Offenders list if you feel your inclusion was in error.” It should not have been there in the first place. It’s an unnecessary annoyance, it was never the default behavior, and it’s not wanted by 100% of the people 100% of the time as it is implemented now.
5. @Derek: making it “opt-out” is also unethical. It should have always been opt-in.
For all of this, what I end up doing is just disabling the javascript permissions for that tab.
Cut the automatic link loose and make the selection-gathering part truly invisible (for the “Measuring reader engagement by how often they copy and paste” part) and I might not have a problem with it.
pell
on 08 Jan 10Reminds me of the old lyrics sites and their color hidden hints to their sites which you always got when copying the text. Hated it.
remiz
on 08 Jan 10I ‘ve been using this on my blog since last year. This is very best tool to understand which part your really want to use. This script not only add read more link to clip board, but let you track which content is being copied from your site. So you know what exactly is valuable for others on your site.
~R
Sigmund
on 08 Jan 10This is smart..
Pasting material from this site (since the material belongs to them) should have its url on default, but users rarely do this..
how can you be pissed off by this – if someone takes something that belongs to you and doesnt link it, are you happy with that?
plastic mould
on 08 Jan 10www.longxiang-ltd.com are a professional manufacturing company for precise plastic mould, plastic molding and rapid prototypes by CNC etc. in China. welcome to order.
rao
on 08 Jan 10It doesnt work when you are copying from “Right Click”—> “Copy”
Anonymous Coward 2
on 08 Jan 10Huh. Didn’t work for me when viewing the site using Opera. Or Firefox. Even when I allowed javascript from newyorker.com to run.
IE 8 at least tried – first attempt to copy just crashed my browser with a “stack overflow” error. Second attempt at copying locked the browser up solid.
Their technology doesn’t look particularly effective or stable from my perspective.
And it’s a great way to skew your statistics – the more technically-minded of your readers are just not going to show up in your measurements :-)
Jack Kinsella
on 09 Jan 10Wow, how weird, I wrote about this two weeks ago in a post on my blog .
My angle was that these appended links would traffic to the site and that they are the internet equivalent of good old academic footnotes.
I’m pretty chuffed to be on the same track as 37Signals.
Jay Fienberg
on 10 Jan 10Whenever people mess with copy & paste, it’s good to note that the OS clipboard idea is totally stuck in the 1980s. While there’s a lot of simple copying and pasting that people do, it’s also common to use an intermediary step, like repeated copy & pastes into a text editor to compose the intended copy.
With the ubiquity of the web & browser, at the very least, it’d be convenient to be able to use a clipboard in web mode, e.g., where one could select multiple passages of text, images, etc., from a web page, and have them pasted as a new block under the page title and page URL.
Nicole
on 12 Jan 10Coincidentally, just noticed this today on NYDailyNews.com then did some searching to figure out what was going on (and then happened to check 37signals who also mentioned it).
I have a very big problem with this – do not mess with my system functions. Copy/paste is a system function, not a website function. Furthermore, I find it disingenuous that they’re trying to market it as “helpful” to me the website user. Please. Have more respect for my intelligence as a web user. It’s another means of tracking me – another data set for those who just can’t seem to ever get enough data (sidenote: when will they finally have enough data to make a decision already?).
I don’t know if I’ve ever said this, but I’m with Joe Clark on this one.
jasper
on 12 Jan 10interesting? I’m with Sigmund on this and I’m surprised it is part of a user agreement – For the most part people are copying material which doesn’t belong to them, why shouldn’t the original author get at least recognition for their content. Are all the people who object to this, bloggers who claim that the content they copy and paste is their own?
jasper
on 12 Jan 10correction – I meant NOT part of a user agreement.
This discussion is closed.