• TechCrunch, Friday, October 7, 2011 12:03 PM

Having gone from zero to 140 million page views -- and 26 million monthly uniques -- in less than a year, TechCrunch just had to get a closer look at Scribol. What's the London-based start-up's secret? Essentially, inserting an interstitial page into a users' viewing experience, oftentimes when they don't expect it. Publisher sites, like Break.com, feature widgets beneath videos or articles, which offer a series of thumbnails of related stories.

"But these related links have a catch: when you click on one, instead of being directed to the article you're expecting, you'll actually see a page hosted at Scribol.com," explains TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid. "Personally, this sort of thing bugs the hell out of me," Kincaid writes.

Founder Chris Ingham Brooke doesn't view Scribol's tactics as misleading. The point, he tells TechCrunch, is merely to provide users with content that they'll find interesting. "I still think it's annoying," writes Kincaid, while admitting that publishers have a big reason to like it: "It can drive a lot of traffic back to their sites."

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »