Social Media Spam
Why is it that every social media site seems to turn into an inbox full of “spam” rather then useful messages from friends?
I know that most of my “friends” on these networks are not super close to me, but still it seems that all I ever get in my inbox on any service is a plug for something. Drives me nuts.
The latest has been iLike.com , which I’m still digging and gave some hopefully good marketing advice to, but after a little over a week I’m already getting messages that I’d classify as spam rather then useful. It’s not alone as the same thing happens on my MySpace and PodShow+ accounts as well.
I know, it serves me right for ever adding anyone that I don’t personally know as a ‘friend’, but even people I know personally do this as well. Different strokes for different folks.
Why am I posting this? I don’t know. It just came to mind as I checked several different inboxes and it was on top of my head so i thought I’d dump here. Isn’t that what a blog is for? *grin*
December 18th, 2006 at 2:58 pm |
Wallop is the same story dude… Doubly sucks because I get no value from that website. I’ve got enough aggregators these days.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:34 pm |
Hi, thanks for the blog mention.
We’re working on a solution for the concern you mentioned. If you don’t mind, please take a few minutes to help us by completing this survey about ’spam’
http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey.zgi?p=WEB225YFG2WUTV
Thanks!
Aydin
www.ilike.com/user/idean
December 18th, 2006 at 4:49 pm |
Because every social media network is subject to the exact same vulnerabilities. Take away all the glitz and glitter and you’ve got an HTTP POST form whose architecture hasn’t changed since 1993 and has no real additional security on it, either.
What has changed since then is that the return on investment for subverting a social network is MUCH greater than email spam, which is caught in filters and confined by and large. As email filters get better at knocking down the most obvious spam, said spam will migrate to other platforms.
The uncomfortable reality is that marketing has a dark side to it and filtering out the crap is essentially a technology war. You should see my Akismet portfolio on my podcast. Because my site has financial terms on it, scrapers and bots are hitting it constantly. Over the weekend, I gathered - no kidding - over 2,000 comments and trackbacks that were flagged as spam.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:32 pm |
There’s apparently an unwritten social media rule that says in order to have your voice heard you must announce and promote yourself in the most inappropriate places and at the most inappropriate times.
For the over-promoters, there are people out there right now who literally salivate all over themselves at the idea of having just 5% of the audience a C.C. Chapman or Christopher Penn has. In the end, all these people are really guilty of is wanting to be heard, which is no more or less what anyone else really wants.
For the pure spammers, it’s a sheer volume plot. Remember, if there wasn’t money in spam, there wouldn’t be spam. Assume one-thousandth of one percent of the spam on the Internet turned into a valid click-through (and I have nothing to back that up), then there’s still a lot of money to be made in it.
The first problem shows just how lonely many people feel in a world that is supposed to be more connected and smaller than ever before. Many people will eventually, sadly, give up in this sphere and go back to remaining anonymous over the frustration of not being heard at all. The second problem I’m not sure if we’ll ever be able to fix. That genie is probably already completely out of the bottle.
December 20th, 2006 at 2:20 am |
CC-I kind of feel like maybe you weer thinking of me as a potential spammer on ILike. You were wrong but as a penalty for your thought crime, “do you get tired of people looking below your belt and thinking hey little guy…?”
Seasons greetings to all-I’m enjoying the thing and love the garageband reccomendations and downloading directly into my ITunes.