You are here: Home / Archives for Spam

Link Post for April 16th through April 18th

April 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 16th through April 18th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • 12 Chatroulette Clones You Should Try – Chatroulette has been giving journalists reporting fodder for slow news days for a few months now — enough time, apparently, to spawn a number of clones.
  • 5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic – No matter how much quality information or witty repartee we send out into our social networks, first impressions are almost always visual. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the first thing we see when checking out a new Twitter (Twitter) follower, Facebook (Facebook) friend, or LinkedIn (LinkedIn) connection is a profile photo. And in a world of quick clicks and divergent attention, if the photo you present isn’t eye-catching, or illustrative of your personal brand, you may miss your shot at making a positive first impression.
  • HOW TO: Maximize Your Content’s Reach on the Social Web – We have all heard that “content is king” — Sumner Redstone deemed it so, then Rupert Murdoch upped the ante, calling it “emperor.” But how do we make sure content is delivered to the right places, at the right times? How can we measure the effectiveness of this content and its distribution?
  • Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy | Threat Level | Wired.com – FBI agents targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a trove of incriminating documents from a suspect’s Google Docs account, in what appears to be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing.
  • Study: Young adults do care about online privacy – Yahoo! News – But it's not quite true, a new study finds. Despite mounds of anecdotes about college students sharing booze-chugging party photos, posting raunchy messages and badmouthing potential employers online, young adults generally care as much about privacy as older Americans.
  • DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail | Politics and Law – CNET News – The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first. (via Matt Cutts)
  • Good Enough For A Pulitzer, But Not Good Enough For Apple | Techdirt – Just as online content only begins to get some recognition as being Pulitzer worthy, it looks like those content creators still have a major hurdle to overcome: namely, Apple's incredibly screwed up application approval process. Cartoonist Mark Fiore made Internet and journalism history this week as the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer prize for his work over at the San Francisco Chronicle. Much more difficult? Getting his iPhone cartoon application past Apple's application store guardians. Fiore says his application was rejected last December because, as an Apple letter phrased it, his satirical cartoons "ridicule public figures," a violation of Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.
Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Link Post for February 8th

February 8, 2010 By 2 Comments

This is the A2SM Link Post for February 8th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • StopTweet: A Customizable Spam Blocker for Twitter – We've just found a new, completely free app that will zap those bots and bad users in just one click. It's fully customizable, so you can tell the blocker what you personally consider to be a spam account. And you can choose to simply unfollow those users, block them or report the accounts to Twitter, as well – again all with just one click. StopTweet is definitely one of the more useful apps we've seen lately, and it also helps us all do our part to clean up the Twitter universe.
  • 5 Insightful TED Talks on Social Media – As social media has become a game changer for industries across the board, you can bet the experts at this year’s TED conference will have their sights set on peeling back the hype and getting at the core of what social technology has in store for this year and beyond.
  • Multitouch Update Coming to the Droid Soon – There’s some good news and some bad news. First, the good news: sources tell Engadget that multitouch browsing will be added to the Motorola Droid in its next software update.
    Multitouch was one of the most requested features on Android (Android), at least until the Nexus One gained multitouch browsing last week.
  • 5 Levels of Effective Communication in the Social Media Age – In the era of social media, our networks are much larger than they have ever been, and we have more ways to communicate with those in them. Even if you are not very active on Facebook or Twitter, my guess is that your sphere of communication has expanded significantly in recent years. Who you communicate with and how you communicate has changed radically. This new connected era brings both opportunities and challenges.
  • HUGE: Google Set to Make Gmail Social With Status Update Features – Gmail is set to become Google’s next major push into social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popular webmail service will soon launch a new feature for sharing content and status updates with friends.
  • Super Bowl Ads 2010 [VIDEOS] – YouTube delivered on its promise to upload all the Super Bowl Ads as soon as they aired today, with users voting to choose which one will adorn the YouTube front page on Thursday.
  • Don’t Have Money for a Real iPad? Cut One Out of Paper –
Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Link Post for January 31st

January 31, 2010 By 2 Comments

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 31st. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • How To Get Free Bagels On Facebook – Einstein Bros Bagels just introduced an interesting marketing scheme: Give Bagels away to every person who signs up as a Fan on Facebook! I encourage you to become a fan today and get yourself a free breakfast. Since January 24th, the fan page has grown from 41,278 Fans to 343,169 fans: That is 301,000 new fans, and 301,000 Bagels.
  • Baby Boomers Renew Their Connections With Facebook – Almost half of the online Baby Boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) update their Facebook or other social networks regularly. According to eMarketer Online senior Analyst Lisa E. Philips, “About 47% of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network, according to several sources. Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages.” The report goes on to discuss Boomers’ favorite networks and methods of buying online. Of the networks included as “social networks” in the study, 73% of the group maintained a Facebook profile.
  • Scam Facebook Groups Continue To Proliferate –
  • Stephen Colbert Shows Off iPad at The Grammys [VIDEO] – Just when you thought the iPad hype may be winding down, Stephen Colbert opened up The Grammys by pulling out the new Apple device instead of an envelope to present the show’s award for “Song of the Year.”
  • Facebook for Business? Most Workers Use Social Networking for Jobs – Messaging and Collaboration news from Channel Insider – Sure, Facebook and Twitter may be popular as a way for friends to keep in touch, but is social networking technology also a business tool? Increasingly so, says IDC, pointing to a new survey that says most workers use Web 2.0 technology for their jobs. And that trend leads to new opportunities for technology solution providers.
  • Google Labs Adds Search Icon To ‘Compose Mail’ Window In Gmail – Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations.
  • On eBay, Twitter Followers Are Worth Less Than A Penny Each –
Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Link Post for December 30th through December 31st

December 31, 2009 By 2 Comments

This is the A2SM Link Post for December 30th through December 31st:

  • Digg Takes a Dip In Traffic, Half The Size Of Twitter – But its latest growth spurt stopped in September, 2009 when it peaked at 32 million unique visitors worldwide, according to comScore. In November, its worldwide visitors were down 15 percent to 27 million, which is about half the number of people who visit Twitter.com. Digg was passed by Twitter back in March (see chart below).
  • In 2009, Social Media Overtook Web 2.0 [GRAPHS] – While its definition is not yet etched in stone, most believe it describes a new type of media and communication that creates a world conversation and dialogue. Instead of being fed news (a one-to-many dissemination approach), everyone is welcomed to be a content creator and to generate a debate around that content. While its focus is the web, it goes beyond it as well.
  • Digg to aggregate what’s trending on Twitter and Facebook – Holy Kaw! – Looks like Kevin Rose may have found a way to steer the Digg ship back on course with a site overhaul that rumors say will include an aggregation of what’s hot on Twitter and Facebook.
  • FCC Chairman’s Facebook Account Compromised – The New York Times’ Bits blog is reporting that FCC head honcho Julius Genachowsi — the man in the middle of the net neutrality initiatives and the Google-Apple disputes — has fallen victim to the fraudulent activity of scammers on Facebook.
  • Facebook: 5 Predictions for 2010 – Facebook has been around for more than five years, but it hit critical mass and exploded in 2009. As the new decade begins, the fallout is blowing over the entire web. Facebook Connect is everywhere, in case you hadn’t heard. We’re talking 60 million users on 80,000 web sites
  • Facebook App’s Password Data Breach Turns into Lawsuit – Facebook and MySpace app maker and advertising network RockYou isn’t having a great December. Earlier this month, 32 million passwords were compromised by a hacker going by the alias of “igigi.” That’s more than half of RockYou’s monthly active users.
  • The Androidification of Everything – GigaOM – A few days ago, Antonio Rodriguez, a Boston-based entrepreneur and founder of Tabblo, emailed to let me know that he was leaving Hewlett-Packard to go do something new. Rodriguez sold Tabblo to HP in 2007 and had been working on some cool stuff at HP, but now he’s decided that it’s time for him to head back to the startup ecosystem. We met when he was trying to get traction for Tabblo, but we have stayed in touch since, musing over the future of devices and user experiences. (Antonio chronicles many of his thoughts over on his blog.)
Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

@Replies Are Spam Too!

October 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

As Twitter usage grows and companies attempt to harness its power there are bound to be those that take advantage of it.

At first there were accounts set up that shouted out how they made over $1,000 today and you could to. People caught onto this quickly and unfollowed the culprit fast.

Next came the account with a hot girl as their avatar asking you to click a link to see their newest set of sexy pictures… tempting but… alas… it was spam.

Soon to follow was the auto DM. For those of you who practice the “You follow me, I follow you” mentality you are aware of this perpetrator. Your DM feed would soon be filled with DMs asking you to check out their newest blog post or telling you to check out how they got 2,000 followers in 24 hrs.

All of these were easy to deal with, a simple unfollowing of the offender and your problems were gone. But now these spammers have gotten a little smarter. By utilizing @replies, marketers (if you can call them that) are able to fill your mentions feed on clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop with their links and spam.

I follow over 300 hundred people so it is hard to keep track of everything. I utilize my mentions feed as a way of having conversations with others on Twitter. But with a constant flow of spammers @replying me, it clouds up my feed. I cannot simply unfollow the user since I was not following them in the first place and marking every piece as read is pain staking.

Though I despise them, I have to give credit to the mutations these spammers have done to get their links and products out to the public on Twitter.

For now the method of attack on these spammers is simply to report them as spam to Twitter, you can find directions on how to do so here: Report Twitter Spam.

Justin Freid is an internet marketer who specializes in social media marketing and search engine optimization. Currently pursuing an MBA in marketing from Philadelphia University, Justin is amazed how social media puts so much power in the user and enables someone to create a personal brand and build a strong network. You can find Justin’s thoughts on the world of social media and SEO on his blog, JustinFreid.com and follow him on Twitter under the handle @Justin_Freid

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: , , , , ,