I have been exploring way in which publishers are thinking about controlling (or releasing control) of their content, and even how some are thinking about DRM’ing their content.

In searching I came across a new approach linked by HN, by Tynt Tracer, doing it in a new way on sites like SFGate and Esquire.

Take the following article found on SF Gate

If you cutpaste any amount text you get the following:

If consumers don’t step up spending, companies will find it hard to chalk up the revenue gains they need to truly recover.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/27/financial/f034546D98.DTL&type=business#ixzz0Mb6ooxRV

Notice: I did not put in the “read more…” text as it was automatically included once I had copypasted the text over. This action continues the natural behavior of people to take and interact with content and appends the source automagically.

You can see the link stays with the text. Tynt then surfaces exactly what parts of the article are becoming “hot” and which are not. This can be tied back to your analytics system and provide some much needed insight into the world of publishing and what is getting used.

The other reason I like this type of technology is that it jumps into the current behavior stream of users.

CutCopyPaste – three actions that have been around for awhile and will continue to be the way in which people move around content.

Tynt does not solve the problem of tracking passed links, as many of the URL shortners like Bit.ly do, but it at least provides some user interaction data and perhaps link back data where none previously existed.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tynt and Creative Commons: Tracking Content for Good (readwriteweb.com)
• Track Visitor Interaction on your Blog with Tynt (bloggingot.com)
• What’s being copied from your site? (archshrk.com)