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Last Time About Ben Behrouzi, LeapFish or Dotnext… Promise!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:23:31 +0000

Ben (Behnam) Behrouzi, the CEO of Dotnext Inc., and his startups (namely ePerks and LeapFish) had been often at the center of my attention in the past three years. I had good intentions to abandon the topic in the past. But there was always something in the back of my mind that prevented me from staying away from Mr. Behrouzi and his schemes. Just little over two years ago, the CEO of LeapFish and Dotnext Inc., being dissatisfied with the outcome of the lawsuit he brought against me, he purchased two domain names (vladzablotskyy.net and vladzablotskyy.org) with a clear intent to damage my reputation – a threat that Mr. Behrouzi has never carried out. As of today it appears that Mr. Behrouzi will not be renewing the above mentioned domain names. This of course leaves me with no reason to continue my coverage of Mr. Behrouzi and his “startups”. Should the above mentioned domains be renewed, I will make sure to post an update.

Happy, healthy and prosperous 2011 everyone!Similar Posts:

LeapFish.com Pays $85,000 in settlement and flees to Los Angeles.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:21:43 +0000

Against all odds, against predictions of tech industry insiders and against my own speculations, LeapFish.com, a company I have covered extensively over the last two years, is still around. This Internet startup and a self-proclaimed “fastest search engine on the planet” avoided filing for bankruptcy and, according to most recent court documents, have payed $85,000.00 in the settlement of the lawsuit between Christie Cortellessa and Dotnext Inc, the parent company of LeapFish.com. Even thought the case is not officially over yet, all things indicate that LeapFish will put this one behind them soon.

Meanwhile the company has announce both on their official blog as well as via Twitter their intention to open new office in Los Angeles:

LeapFish.com announces opening of a new office in Los Ageles on Twitter

According to a blog post at http://blog.leapfish.com/ that announces the move, the company is hiring Inside Sales Professionals, Client Services Professionals and Search Marketing (SEM) Professionals.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that an Internet company would move away from Silicon Valley? Evidently I am not the only one. Even former LeapFish.com telemarketers appear to be surprised:

Back in San Francisco area the trouble for LeapFish is far from over. There is one more ongoing lawsuit in California Northern District Court- Ellis v. DotNext Inc. Can that be a reason why LeapFish.com is moving to Los Angeles?

Of course there might be some benefits from being near Hollywood celebrities. A tweet by Ashton Kutcher or Ellen DeGeneres can send millions of visitors to LeapFish. Easier said than done? Perhaps. Some Hollywood celebrities have already been heavily criticized for promoting companies that engage in questionable practices, which may make other celebrities more cautious.

No matter how you look at it, the future (if there is any) of LeapFish.com is still clouded in question.

Disclosure, everything written above is exclusively my personal opinion.Similar Posts:

The End Of Dotnext and LeapFish???

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:47:05 +0000

Shortly after publishing the previous post, an anonymous comment was submitted via contact form of the website.

Here is what it said:

just so you know, Ms. Slader is the only employee left at Dotnext. Everyone was let go yesterday

Note to new readers: Dotnext Inc is a parent company of LeapFish.

The Contra Costa Time in fact confirms that Dotnext has been “downsizing” while quoting the CEO of the company:

….”The company has downsized,” said Ben Behrouzi, a Danville resident who is founder and principal executive at DotNext….
…At its peak a few months ago, DotNext had about 100 workers. Now it has about 15, Behrouzi estimated. Numerous employees were let go this week…

The real reason for downsizing and possible bankruptcy maybe directly related to a lawsuit…

Cortellessa vs Dotnext Inc

For the sake of brevity(you can find all the documents of this case on Alameda County Superior Court’s Website), I will only provide copies some documents. Bellow is the copy of the original complaint:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext

According to court’s documents Ms. Cortellessa and the class action members in the above lawsuit were awarded a settlement of $85,000:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Judgement
However recently filed “Notice of Defendants’ Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment with Settlement Administrator Filed” says it all – Dotnext/LeapFish failed to pay:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment

A “Civil Order of Examination (Order) Issued” suggest that Dotnext Inc may have some explaining to do about inability to pay the settlement:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Civil Order of Examination

The above document which was filed on August 3, 2010 states that the Defendant Dotnext/LeapFish is considering “bankruptcy or other form of liquidation of assets”(to see the full size of the image bellow just click on it):

In the August 12, 2010 article by George Avalos of Contra Costa Times, CEO of Dotnext/Leapfish continues to deny any rumors about possible bankruptcy:

“We’re not filing for bankruptcy,” Behrouzi said. “We haven’t even considered filing for it.”

No matter what the end result of this ongoing lawsuit may be, those familiar with the story of LeapFish may ask what happened to the $10M LeapFish allegedly raised in the pre-launch phase? Of course the bigger question is whether or not LeapFish will be able to bounce back and recover from this “unpleasant setback”?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion and does not represent official position on the issue of any of my clients or my business partners. Comments (if any) bellow do not represent my opinion nor do they represent position on this topic of my clients and business partners.

Related Posts Elsewhere:
Cuil No Longer – Leapfish To Deadpool Next? – Andy Beard predicts LeapFish heading straight into the deadpool.
Leapfish To Deadpool Next? – the one and only Lord Matt agrees with Andy’s prediction on his fantastic website.Similar Posts:

Bloggers Are Disgusting & Twisted… According to LeapFish Employee.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:54:12 +0000

LeapFish has been given a cold shoulder on many occasions by the leading technology blogs. However, today the things you say on the internet tend to stick around, something LeapFish management and employees fail to understand over and over again.

Ms. Slader, who according to her several online profiles is an executive assistant of Dontnext, Inc. as well as company called LeapFish.com wrote the following Tweet:

I rarely challenge people about what they say on twitter, unless their profile clearly states association with a particular company or institution.

Here is what Ms. Slader’s profile says as of the writing of this article:

Therefore my challenge to Ms. Slader was purely based on her representing a particular company, otherwise Ms. Slader would have never learned of my existence:

Ms. Slader took my comment as a threat:

While overlooking the vicious and very personal attack on my hair style (see my twitter profile picture to see what I am talking about) I would like to clarify one thing, should Ms. Slader cared enough to read this post. My tweet was not to threaten or scare anyone. What I really hoped for, in fact, was that Ms. Slader would get the hint and delete that hasty tweet, before it added more embarrassment to LeapFish’s already struggling reputation.

I also believe that Ms. Slader did not come to a conclusion that “bloggers are disgusting & twisted” on her own, but rather was influenced by her boss(es) or coworkers. Perhaps while taking notes during one of company executives meetings? Therefore it makes more difficult to explain her vicious and personal attack based on disliking my “fictional haircut”, a courtesy of YearBookYourself.com. I only wish I had such a beautiful set of hair!!!

The moral of the story??? Do you know if your secretary is active on Twitter or Facebook? Do you know what is she/he saying? Does it make your company look bad? Should you ask her/him to make their tweets private and hidden from the outside world???

In my opinion, Ms. Slader would be better off calling out, Matt Brown, Robin Wauters, Jolie O’Dell, Trace Richardson, Marshall Kirkpatrick and few others rather than making a “blanket” statements directed towards bloggers in general. Could it be that Ms. Slader is not aware of the fact that LeapFish.com awarded numbers of bloggers with Wiis, personal computers, iPads and plans to award $50,000 in cash in exchange for “good” publicity?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion. No one paid or offered me any gifts to write the above posts.I believe Ms. Slader is good and hardworking individual. I believe Ms. Slader’s opinion of bloggers may have been influenced by others, perhaps even her boss(es). It is possible Ms. Slader made the above statements against her own will.Similar Posts:

More Spam From LeapFish???

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:00:45 +0000

UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010: It appears LeapFish is no longer showing the link in the footer of their website to their “directory” I wrote about bellow:

This change must have been implemented today as Bing.com’s cached page of LeapFish from yesterday February 4, 2010 still has the link:

LeapFish has also implemented robots.txt file on their website disallowing web crawlers from indexing the directory:

Few days ago I tried to to get attention of Google’s Anti-Spam Czar – Matt Cutts via his FriendFeed account. I wanted Matt to comment about LeapFish’s latest directory- but I realize, it may not be Google’s practice to comment on these sort of things publicly. That or you need to be Michael Gray, Aaron Wall or Andy Beard to get some one like Matt Cutts to listen to you.

So what is my latest beef with LeapFish? Their spammy directory located at http://www.leapfish.com/dr/ – my apologies for not providing a live link, I consider LeapFish to be an unsafe website. It also appears by my estimates that Google is indexing this new directory at the rate of about 50 pages a day- there are about 200 pages in Google’s index from this “directory” as of this writing.

So I invite those who are still with me to explore some of the pages from the above mentioned directory. One of the first pages from the directory that jump at me was “Shopping”:

Clicking through to the page on LeapFish.com you are given opportunity to “narrow” your search- so I decide to narrow mine to “Death Care”:

What do you know?!!! Now you can narrow your search geographically- naturally I selected New Jersey the state I live in:

How about that?!! LeapFish knows all the counties in the state of New Jersey- naturally my next selection would be the county I live in:

How about that?!!! Turns out LeapFish is so intuitive it knows about every city in my state- so just for the heck of it I decided to check and see what kind of death care shopping I can do in Jackson, NJ:

And the relevancy of my final destination in LeapFish directory? Google search results associated with the death of Michael Jackson?

What can I say? I am extremely disappointed. I am sure few results of local funeral directors or even a local WalMart with the line of their latest caskets would not be as disappointing. Since LeapFish is using some APIs from Google, they could have really impress me by showing me a few relevant products using Google Base API.

So yeah, I am desperate for the attention from Matt Cutts. Matt could you please explain to me how this sort of “directories” improve the State of The Index? In my opinion the LeapFish Directory does just the opposite- LeapFish pollute the Internet.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts:

CEO Of LeapFish Removes Rebuttal To Click Fraud Bombshell

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:04:26 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

About a year ago TechCrunch, world’s leading technology blog, wrote about threats of click fraud LeapFish employee used to intimidate potential clients into advertising on a newly launched meta search aggregator. The CEO of LeapFish, Ben Behrouzi, fired back with an emotional response, in which he seems to be “calling out” TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters for being “irresponsible and distasteful”. The original post appeared on February 4, 2009 at www.benbehrouzi.org – what seams to be personal blog of the CEO of LeapFish.

The rebuttal was taken down some time at the beginning of this year, 2010. The link http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/02/04/leapfish-gets-second-lashing-from-techcrunc/ seams to point to a page that no longer exists. The rebuttal was referenced by “online authorities” like Wikipedia.

It is possible that the post containing the rebuttal was taken by mistake. But in case it was taken on purpose, bellow is the copy of the original post minus the updates:

LeapFish Gets Second Lashing, Beginning to Think TechCrunch Just Doesn’t Like Us
Today TechCrunch covered LeapFish for the second time, but unfortunately they again did not focus on the engine itself or its future. Instead of discussing our new click free search technology or our recent increase in traffic, or the sheer number of advertisers/investors that have joined the program, Techcrunch made news out of an irresponsible act committed by 1 out of 80 sales representatives that we employ and set us up for ridcule instead. I was very disappointed at the way they handled this to say the least.
I’m beginning to think they just don’t like us. I hope I’m wrong. I did offer the following response, which I haven’t seen posted as of yet.
Robin,
We have completed an investigation and have dealt with the matter appropriately. However frankly put, I am disappointed at this post by you and by TechCrunch. You never contacted us to verify the information you posted or even checked to see what our position was as a company around such behavior before you published. You apparently called in but didn’t make the effort of speaking with someone about this. Frankly put, I find your post’s title and content irresponsible and distasteful. Nevertheless, I apologize for the poor choice in judgment by one of our sales representatives and we want your readers to know that we took swift and immediate action to correct the matter.
Additionally, we have called, spoken to and offered a sincere apology to the prospect that was mistreated. We have expressed our regret and embarrassment over the situation. We have also offered to pay restitution for any fees the prospect incurred and will cover any damages. Additionally, we will be offering a gift of a keyword of the prospect’s choice as a further sign of our apologetic stance.
Let me clearly state, that LeapFish has a 0 tolerance policy for the behavior described and in no way, shape or form endorses the behavior whatsoever. Our sales staff is not coached nor encouraged to engage in such tactics and this is a regrettable act by a single individual who exercised poor judgment using personal email accounts. Our entire sales staff has been met with and spoken to and been firmly reminded that we do not engage in such tactics nor will we tolerate it whatsoever.
Robin, I find your post unfair and damaging, but I harbor no ill will towards you and I hope that one day one of your posts will actually give fair attention to our true offering and features, as provided by Silicon Valley’s MercuryNews and the thousands of visitors, supporters, investors and advertisers of LeapFish.
I would be more than happy to discuss with you why LeapFish has a bright future, the real business model, its time horizon for delivering ROI and the expectations communicated to our thousands of advertisers/investors.
Thanks again.
Best,
Ben Behrouzi
CEO
DotNext Inc.

I personally have no interest in Wikipedia, but if you are a fan, you should make an attempt to correct the reference #8 on the following page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeapFish

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts:

New and Sexy LeapFish: But Framesets Can Present Issues.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:37:11 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Update Nov. 9, 2009: It appears that LeapFish is no longer using framesets on their website.

A mention by US Today, stream of hundreds of Tweets , mentioned by hundreds of blogs, a “cutting edge” video on youtube- LeapFish.com relaunch can certainly be seen as enormous success, except…

The leading technology blogs continue to give LeapFish.com nothing short of a “cold shoulder”.

All the buzz surrounding the relaunch is focused on how sexy and nice looking the new website is, no one seems to be trying to “flip beyond the cover page”.

I would like to write about LeapFish’s implementation of framesets on their pages that may actually spook an unseasoned Internet user into believing that they are visiting unsecured websites.

If you search LeapFish for “Read Write Web” for example, the website returns nice clean results with the most relevant link in number one position:

Considering the average user expectation, most of us would expect to land on http://www.readwriteweb.com/ – it is however not the case with LeapFish. After clicking the the link you end up on a nice lookng LeapFish page which embeds (via frameset) the content from The Read Write Web and the LeapFish bar at the bottom of the page:

Click on the above image to view it in full size

While visitors to The Read Write Web may not care at all. Visitors to websites like Amazon can get confused and and may be led to believe that shopping on Amazon and other websites are no longer secure. Let me show you an example of what I mean. The following shot is of my Amazon account page while accessing the website directly (typing http://www.amazon.com into my browser):

Click on the above image to view it in full size

The HTTPS as well as the lock icon are the basic signs by which an average internet can identify whether or not website is secure.

Now the screenshot of the same page but via frameset on LeapFish.com:

Click on the above image to view it in full size

Both HTTPS and lock icons are missing. And the URL clearly says you are still on LeapFish.com. Even though I consider myself an above average Internet user, before I logged into my Amazon account via the frameset on LeapFish I had to check the code of the page first:

I wanted to know if my Amazon login info is safe with LeapFish. How many users do you think will do that?

Potential Issues With Google?

AdSense users can tell you how tough Google is when it comes to enforcing terms and condition and how easy it is to get banned. Google Search API TOS do not address the use framesets- so if you know if use of framesets allowed please enlighten me:

Click on the above image to view it in full size

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts:

Trolls Are Not Allowed!

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:16:43 +0000

Within minutes of publishing last post I had a visitor- a very pissed off visitor. Who managed to spew his venom on Bill Hartzer‘s blog as well (Bill my apologies for the “nofollow” attribute, I do trust your website- I hate to give LeapFish any juice):

While I can speculate who this “Anonymous” may have been- the only certain fact I know is that he came to read the post via Twitter after an entry was posted in my account that announcing that I have written the post.

There is no point to communicate with anonymous trolls like that. Most of the time they have no interest to hear what you have to say. They can’t contain their anger and spew their venom using bogus names along with bogus e-mails. I find it difficult to describe what do I feel about trolls like that- fortunately there are people out there who have their way with words (HT: Lord Matt) and I can’t agree more!

As sad as it is their behavior cast more shadow of suspicion and does more damage to themselves and the interests they try to defend and the companies they work for. Sad really but from now on……..

NO TROLLS ALLOWED!

Similar Posts:

LeapFish 2.0 Claims To Solve The Real Time Search. But Will They Survive Beyond 2009?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:31:39 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Update: The new LeapFish has finally launched. You can read my analysis on LeapFish implementation of framesets and how confusing it can be for users.

After rather a painful year LeapFish.com- a meta search aggregator site just like Dogpile.com or Mamma.com, is ready to launch what they call it “LeapFish 2.0″- claiming that it will solve the real-time search.

Believe it or not I, of all people, was on of the “few privileged” to view their “test” products. However I could not keep quiet about my discovery:

And of course LeapFish killed that subdomain few minutes after my “Twitter broadcast”. Did they find my viewing of their new product not welcomed? Or is it also possible I “tuned in” at the end of the exhibit of their product to their supporters? I will never find out.

The new design has many flaws and way too many Ajax widgets- it felt as I was looking at the dashboard of WordPress. It will cause a huge load time issues if released as it was seen by me yesterday. Sometimes less means more. The notion that LeapFish will solve the real-time search is a myth to say the least. It is no briner that search engine gurus like Danny Sullivan would never consider LeapFish as contender to solve the real-time search problems.

If you have never heard of LeapFish.com before here is a short history rundown…..

LeapFish launched about a year ago and was given a somewhat cold shoulder by TechChrunch. Instead of trying to appeal to the hearts and minds of the technology and online marketing crowd they were focused on their business more and got caught with their “pants down” by the same TechChrunch. After firing the employee who engage in the alleged click fraud described by TechChrunch, the leapfish CEO still tried to blame TechChurnch for disliking LeapFish:

I am disappointed at this post by you and by TechCrunch. You never contacted us to verify the information you posted or even checked to see what our position was as a company around such behavior before you published. You apparently called in but didn’t make the effort of speaking with someone about this. Frankly put, I find your post’s title and content irresponsible and distasteful. – Ben Behrouzi, CEO of LeapFish (you can find the full text of his rebuttal at http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/02/04/leapfish-gets-second-lashing-from-techcrunc/ - apologies to my readers for not providing a click-able link).

Dealing with criticism in an adult matter is not a virtue of LeapFish, instead CEO of LeapFish decided to go on a domain shopping spree – threatening to expose the “real’ Vlad Zablotskyy. I have to say that I am surprised they never threatened to sue TechChrunch- or Michael Arrington just laughed at the threat if they did in fact receive one. However is I was Robin Wauters I would make sure I own forever the .org .net and other variations of his name.

But the past is just that- the past. The true test for the company will be the future and in particular next few weeks and months. The first advertisers and investors are about to reach their first anniversary and their credit cards will be charged the renewal fee- it will trigger many to reexamine their “investement” in LeapFish. It would be in LeapFish best interest to have as few disappointed “investors” and “advertisers” as possible, and the only way to do so is to send your advertiser top quality traffic. While they may have been successful in selling their inventory (keywords)- the increase in traffic was and is disproportionately slow. Even the most favorable statistics from Compete.com (showing LeapFish as having almost 500,000 visitors in September)- do not justify an investment of $1,000+. Especially if LeapFish.com indeed has “hundreds” of advertisers in their system. I will do some math about LeapFish statistics in the upcoming posts. I doubt however the launch of their new product will stop the upcoming wave of dissatisfied clients- for LeapFish’s own sake and their future I hope I am wrong. Nor do I think this upcoming launch will bring the necessary volume of traffic to justify the price of advertising. Again I hope LeapFish proves me and other critics wrong for their own good.

If they don’t take drastic measures to purchase or otherwise increase traffic to their site- LeapFish, or at least their business model, will not survive beyond 2009.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.

Disclosure: Everything written above is my personal opinion and my interpretation of events as I see them. You are free to form your own opinion which may or may not agree with the above post. You are however asked to show some manners (aka “being polite”) if you decide to leave comment below. The comments from LeapFish management will be moderated and may be removed if I find them inappropriate.Similar Posts:

New Accusations by LeapFish CEO Ben Behrouzi

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:27:03 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Leap Fish CEO Ben Behrouzi has sent several threats to my attorney, accusing me to stalking his employees sending him personal threats, phishing and finally today accusing me to have authored negative reviews on Alexa. Here is the copy of his e-mail:

Karl,
Fake negative reviews on Alexa.com by a fellow that sounds awfully like our friend J
Below you will find a screenshot of 2 reviews starting from the top. The next screen shot you will see the author details of one of the reviews. The authors name is Mark Mark, which obviously is not real, but probably is pointed at Mark Kithcart our Director of Marketing… Lastly, you will find a 3rd screen shot where our friend mentions on twitter that an Alexa negative review was successfully made online. With pride mind you. Coincidentally his twitter remark and the recent Alexa negative review took place within 1 hour of each other according to Alexa. And he was the first to report it on twitter? Talk about real time news J Added to the list, clearly he is digging a bigger hole for himself with these back alley mob activities.

The following two images Behrouzi is referring to in his e-mail:

image001
image002
image003

Ben, I have always put my name to everything I ever said about your companies. And in my opinion they are crap. I do not need Alexa to tell you that, Ben. So go ahead sue me, but for goodness sake stop harassing me and my attorney!

Update: If my memory serves me well, there were few other bloggers who, after being encouraged by me left reviews with Alexa. Alexa have since removed those reviews as well.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.Similar Posts:

LeapFish In The Words of Other Bloggers

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:47:09 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Links

A Brief Tale Of Sleaze- LeapFish should take Rob Shore’s advise and never lie to their potential clients.

Three Scams and Rip-Offs to Report – Kit Eliot describes his “encounter” with LeapFish.

Leapfish Review – Is LeapFish.com an opportunity, scam, or just another meta search site?- short but to the point rundown about advertising on LeapFish- needless to say the author passes on the opportunity to advertise or invest in LeapFIsh.

LeapFish Affiliate Program. Can Giveaways Keep It Afloat?- a post by yours truly. I thought it was a mistake to link their affiliate program to the basic function of their website- the search function. Their widgets also contain SEO friendly links back to their website- my conclusion their affiliate program is really a linking scheme to gain rankings in search engines.

LeapFish.com advertisers beware – yet another account of dealing with LeapFish sale people.

Leapfish.com is it worth it? A rip off? Let the numbers do the talking.- the numbers indeed can do the talking, something LeapFish is terribly afraid of.Similar Posts:

CEO of LeapFish And Rumour Control

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:24:03 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

In my opinion, certain rumours are better left unchallenged. And certain facts better not be construed as rumours.

On his personal blog, Ben Behrouzi, the CEO of LeapFish, made an attempt to shed light on some rumours that, supposedly, are circulating around internet about him and his companies.

One particular rumour concerns me exclusively, unless of course Mr. Behrouzi attempted to sue other bloggers, of which I have no knowledge.

Mr. Behrouzi claims he never sued a blogger:

Rumor # 4 : Ben Behrouzi Sued a Blogger to Stop His Free Speech
False. We sued not a blogger, but a single individual, who was seriously defaming our company to get attention for himself. Godfather himself would be proud. The case was reviewed by both lawyers, the individual’s response was heard and without getting into the details of the settlement, the individual posted a letter of retraction.
Take a look at a different case and the reality of this problem facing the legal system : http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-10-internet-defamation-case_x.htm

Part of Mr. Behrouzi explanation is right on the money. His attorney assured me that they did not sue me to hinder my right to free speech, which I clearly stated in the retraction letter:

Regarding the subject of free speech, ePERKS has expressed to me that it is a strong advocate of free speech and it was never its intent or desire to impede on healthy debate and feedback from the public. Until I have reason to believe differently, I have decided to take ePERKS word on this.

I still take their word on this, since I have no reason to believe differently yet.

The individual they sued, which happens to be me, has several blogs where he publishes posts on a rather regular basis, is a member of many online groups for bloggers and even regarded by leading bloggers as a blogger. So yes I see it as a failed attempt of rumour control Mr. Behrouzi. I am a blogger, and your opinion will not changed that fact. So the fact is that you did sue a blogger. The irony is that I consider you a blogger as well, albeit, to borrow your own word, a rogue one…

Godfather himself would be proud?!! Ben, are you referring to the well known movie? If so, shall I remind my readers who really sounds like one of the characters in that movie? Here it is, the message you left for an employee who worked for you at one of your companies – Reply.com:

Quiet an opposite from the likeable personality we have seen in the interview with Robert Scoble and even some TV networks.

As for the rest of Mr. Behrouzi explanation regarding the lawsuit I would rather refer my readers to read the retraction letter itself.

UPDATE: On March 13, a comment was posted by the Marketing Director of LeapFish. The comment was clearly written to provoke an angry reaction and, in my opinion, is a part of their strategy to build another lawsuit against me. This comment perhaps was written by their attorney as it shows lack of understanding what is Twitter and that every one is free to post as they wish including CEO of ePerks and LeapFish.

As for ongoing effort by Mr. Behrouzi to interpret and disclose the terms of the settlement between me and ePerks, I am starting to believe they have never intended to live up to the terms of the settlement.

Below is the comment that was left by Marketing Director:

Vlad, This has nothing to do with LeapFish. It doesn’t take much to do a search and see the sheer number of attacks you have brought upon Ben, from consecutive blogs posts that attack Ben for the last several months, the consistent badgering of LeapFish prospects on Twitter, the immense number of hateful comments all over the Internet on other blogs working to destroy Ben.
Also, the mountain of erroneous information that you post but do not correct once informed, the rumor mongering and comments to as many high level journalists/bloggers, and the several emails you have personally sent to me about removing comments that actually point out your intention and agenda. Vlad, if that is blogging and if that is a blogger, then the web is in need of an overhaul. But I can tell you that intelligent people can see right through what you are doing. I highly suggest you read about Yellow Journalism and the immense problems facing the web and hard working business people online. The hard workers that are continuing to dig, create value and get better even in this economy. Regarding the Reply.com voicemail, we all know Ben was all but 23 at the time and people make mistakes when under the kinds of pressure created by the situation such as the one in that voicemail. It’s that simple. If you ever actually met Ben, you would understand the work ethic and integrity of this individual, regardless of what a “blogger” or “others” might want to force onto you. You are continuing to badger, incite, bring up old information and even post about things that happened many years ago. People have moved on Vlad, why haven’t you? The past is done; we learn and then move on. Instead of working to tear people down, I suggest you find a way to create value and help people out during this tough economic period. This is my one and only response to this post. You can read about the rumors by visiting benbehrouzi.org Mark Kithcart

I did block several IP addresses to prevent any one from LeapFish to comment on my blog until the time they will begin to show some manners.Similar Posts:

LeapFish Sells Keyword “Viagra” For $7,104?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:03:51 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

During the past few months LeapFish.com, a meta search engine, suffered from an unfortunate streak of “being caught doing naughty things” incidents. The LeapFish employees were caught astroturfing on TechChruch and one of their employees was caught committing a click fraud. The official respond from LeapFish was always consistent- company disapproves of such behaviour.

Unfortunately the streak of unfortunate incidents continues…

If you are an unsuspecting target of cold calls from LeapFish, you might be presented with an array of arguments aimed to impress you. Lets take the list of recently sold keywords for example:

Quiet an impressive list! There is however one problem with it, it is deceiving. It tells us that keyword “viagra” was recently sold for $7,104:

When you search “viagra” on LeapFish.com, there is indeed a sponsored ad is triggered by the search. However the ad is irrelevant to the keyword and links to the official blog of LeapFish.com:

This also is true about keyword “Refinance”:

And the keywords “Billings Real Estate” and “Billings Homes” trigger no ads at all:

While astroturfing and click fraud was blamed on sales representatives, it is unclear who might be responsible for this, in my opinion, deceptive strategy. I am afraid a web designer’s job might be on the line this time around, as the management of LeapFish, in my sole opinion, has proven incapable of taking responsibility for the company’s mistakes.Similar Posts:

LeapFish CEO Uses Twitter To Assail Bloggers

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:48:15 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

I was trying hard not to add more embarrassment to the situation surrounding company called LeapFsih.com.

In fact I made several attempts to avoid writing this this post my. I have e-mailed LeapFish’s legal council as well as their marketing director in hopes that they can convince Mr. Behrouzi to remove two posts he made about me. The first tweet Mr. Behrouzi made shortly after TechCrunch exposed LeapFish eployee for committing click fraud:

The above tweet alleges that I am the author of a comment on TechCrunch. The second tweet (see below) was published on Twitter on the day I e-mail to Mr. Cook, the attorney of DontNexInc, the parent company of LeapFish.

I am not sure what CEO of LeapFish is trying to accomplish besides adding more embarrassment to already an embarrassing situation.

UPDATE, March 5, 2009 10:50 AM: I have received following e-mail from Mark Kithcart, the Marketing Direcotr of LeapFish:

Saw your post Vlad you failed to mention the part about you refusing to speak to me. I’ve been here for about 3 months and all of the history is what it is – history.
I don’t typically go back and dwell on things – that’s what will keep us in the economic state we are experienceing in the U.S.
So saying that and stepping into something that has been created by you and Ben I do find it interesting that you would ask me to tell Ben to remove something but then not want to speak with me as if I’m trying to negotiate with you (your words – not mine).
I try to maintain an objective view as I approach each situation as people are not perfect and mistakes can be made by all sides. But I’m starting to wonder about the validity of what is happening here. Especially you going about it the way you did and talking about tweets that are a month old, making an ultimatum and then saying “I won’t negotiate” when that wasn’t even on the table.
No, Ben is not aware of this email to you from me. And I am NOT going to copy him on it. You involved me now and I have questions as I stated before in my last email to you.
If you want to move forward, not waste your time and move on to more productive activities that can help youself and others as we, as a country, naviagte the terrain – then great. I would like to ask you some questions to see if that is indeed what you desire to do. If it is not and you have an agenda (which I don’t think you do) then we will remain in activities that aren’t going to benefit anyone.
Hope you’re having a great day & I look forward to speaking with you at some level.
Mark Kithcart
Director of Marketing

Mark is absolutely correct. I did refuse to answer any of his questions, and frankly do not think I owe him any answers. I involved you because you are Director of Marketing at DotnextInc, whatever your employees do reflects on your company and it also true about your boss.

UPDATE: March 5, 2009 1:23 PM The CEO of LeapFish continues accuse me of stalking him, in-spite the fact he purchased domain names aimed at “exposing me” although in my opinion the purchase of the domains was truly aimed at damaging my Interpreting and Translating Business.

Similar Posts:

CEO of ePerks and LeapFish Ben Behrouzi Purchases VladZablotskyy.org

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:25:50 +0000

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Ben Behrouzi, the CEO of dying ePerks and LeapFish has registered VladZablotskyy.org domain:

UPDATE: Thanks to a tip from the regular reader I have learned that ePerks and LeapFish CEO Ben Behrouzi has also registered VladZablotskyy.net:

So what does Behrouzi plans to do with these domains? Probably nothing befitting a CEO of a company. I am curious nevertheless.

In the comments below Behrouzi indicated that he purchased domains to document the “real Vlad Zablotskyy”- smells like cybersquatting to me.

This is not the first time Mr. Behrouzi threatened to ruin some one’s reputation. Back when he worked at at Reply.com, Mr Behrouzi left this message on the phone of his employee:

Update: Bellow are the links to more LeapFish reviews.

A Brief Tale Of Sleaze- LeapFish should take Rob Shore’s advise and never lie to their potential clients.

Three Scams and Rip-Offs to Report – Kit Eliot describes his “encounter” with LeapFish.

LeapFish.com advertisers beware – yet another account of dealing with LeapFish sale people.Similar Posts: