Jobberman denies allegation of scraping

In the first week of April the free Nigerian job platform HotNigerianJobs.com accused Nigerian job portal Jobberman.com of copying its ads and then “selling them on” to jobseekers (here). The accusation of taking something for free and then selling it has since made waves in Nigeria’s online media.
Jobberman charges jobseekers for full access to job ads and for the ability to apply from the platform. We asked Carey Eaton, co-founder of One Africa Media, his response to the allegation. One Africa Media is a Jobberman shareholder.
According to Eaton there is no truth to the allegation. “This is a total misrepresentation of the facts. Jobberman does not have a policy of scraping ads from anywhere. In fact our position on scraping is well known,” he said.
“Our attempts to reach out to HotNigerianJobs have proved fruitless. It is unfortunate that they are not able to just pick up the phone to resolve the issue, but rather use the media to get some mileage out of it,” he added.
He explained what might have happened. “Jobberman sales staff talk to every advertiser on Jobberman. Quite often advertisers ask us to make life easier for them by using existing copy of particular vacancies on their websites, their HR systems, or on other sources on the Internet,” he said.
Another practice which might have left the impression that Jobberman copies HotNigerianJobs ads:
“Like all sales organizations, members of the sales team are incentivized to find sales leads for new customers. I am sure the team looks at other local job websites, although we do not have any express policy around this. This is a common practice at all websites in our space and pretty much at any sales organization anywhere. I am sure HotNigerianJobs also looks at other sources in this way for new customers,” Eaton said.
“Furthermore, the Terms of Service on its website publicly invites everyone to use the site without restriction (here).
“They said they were OK with Jobberman reposting their ads, but don’t like us charging jobseekers for those jobs. This is also totally misleading. On Jobberman jobseekers can use the site for free up to a certain cap. And we are extending the free access over time, not reducing it,” Eaton said.
The last word in this battle has clearly not been spoken.

Reported by Lawrence Wambua from Nairobi, Kenya.
Story Source http://aimgroup.com/