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Web 2.0: The New Lurking Danger

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:29:32 -0500

The most defining feature of Web 2.0 is arguably its enhanced level of interactivity. But “the very aspects of Web 2.0 sites that have made them so revolutionary” have also made them highly vulnerable to abuse, according to web security firm Websense. The San Diego-based company published its biannual “State of the Internet” on Tuesday.

The report (PDF) reveals that 95% of comments that appear on blogs, chat rooms and online forums fall into two broad categories: spam and malicious content. Cyber scoundrels now seem more focused on targeting Web 2.0 websites with user-generated content than ever before. Many of the most frequented internet properties are sites that tolerate user-generated content. And 61% of the top 100 sites either host malicious content or link to it, according to the report.

Spam and malicious content seem to go hand in hand, for Websense Security Labs found that 85.6 of spam mails in circulation during the first half of 2009 contained links to malicious sites.

Image Credit: Websense

uSocial Now Offering Bogus Facebook Friends by the Thousands

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:04:50 -0500

After enraging social web luminaries Twitter and Digg, dissident marketing company uSocial has now set its sights on Facebook. It has launched a new service allowing Facebook friends and fans to be bought by the thousands. Facebook buddies are available in multiples of thousand, with the minimum being 1,000 friends and the maximum being 5,000. If it is fans that you are looking to buy, the company can provide up to 10,000 fans.

uSocial is currently offering all the friends/fans packages at introductory prices. While 1,000 Facebook friends or fans can be bought for $177.30, the price for 5,000 friends is $654.30. The current cost of adding 10,000 fans is $1167.30. Although many doubt the worth of buying friends, uSocial founder Leon Hill claims his company delivers targeted friends. "We are getting, basically, targeted friends and fans who are saying, 'Yes, I want information on this,” he told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

He said that friends are added manually by accessing the client’s Facebook profile and sending friendship requests. Facebook is not too pleased by the prospect of users sharing their login information with others.

"Buying and selling of actions that are supposed to be taken by a user are certainly, we would argue, not authentic," said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.

Image Credit: uSocial

MySpace Offers Email & Instantly Becomes the 4th Largest Provider in the World

Justin Kerr — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:54:57 -0500

The market for free email service providers has become a bit over saturated lately, but when a heavyweight like My Space enters the arena people take notice. The social networking site has been struggling in recent years to hold its ground against arch rival Facebook, but now finally has a unique feature that might help set it apart. Facebook allows users to send messages back and forth, but this is limited to friends on your contact list and lacks many of the features you would expect from a traditional email account.

What makes the My Space offering so unique is the sheer number of users that that is brings to the table. With over 130 million accounts world wide, it instantly becomes the 4th largest email provider in the world and is second in the U.S. only to Yahoo. Google’s Gmail by comparison ranks a distant 5th. My space users will automatically be assigned an email address based on the vanity URL they occupy and changing the email address will also shift the URL of the profile page.

Feature wise it holds up well against the traditional providers, but unfortunately it doesn’t offer any type of POP/IMAP support. For some this isn’t a problem, but I’m personally not a huge fan of closed email services that don’t allow me to export my data. Should My Space choose to shut down the service somewhere down the road, your emails will be trapped.

Anyone plan on switching over to @myspace.com?

Perpetual Also-ran Joost Reinventing Itself Again

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:37:16 -0500

The powers that be at Joost have once again pressed the reset button. The online video site is reportedly ready to start things anew with a revised business model and a new service. It will now license its online video technology to media companies and broadcasters, while still providing free movie and TV content through its own website.

Having remained in the shadows of the competing yoke of Youtube and Hulu for the entire span of its existence, and with revenues, or lack of it, rubbing salt into its yawning wounds, this fresh attempt to sneak out of those long shadows is understandable.

Its current senior VP of engineering, Matt Zelesko, will replace Mike Volpi, though Volpi will continue to be chairman. The impact of the shakeup will pervade through its ranks as it plans to prune its staff.

Facebook Movie in the Works

Paul Lilly — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:57:14 -0500

According to Variety, Columbia Pictures is putting the pieces in place to release "The Social Network," a film about the formation of Facebook. David Fincher appears to be the front runner to direct the new flick, who's previous works include The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Panic Room, Fight Club, and others.

As for the movie itself, Variety says the film will focus on the 2004 creation of Facebook by then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg and follow the social networking site's evolution to where it is today, over 200 million members strong.

This isn't the first time social networking has been linked to Hollywood. A Twitter-based reality show is also said to be under way, which will seek to "put ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."

"Web 2.0" to Become the Millionth U.S. Word

Paul Lilly — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:10:04 -0500

It's official - the Global Language Monitor, which analyzes and tracks trends in language, has dubbed "Web 2.0" as the one millionth word. To qualify, potential words must appear 25,000 times in searches and be widely accepted. Web 2.0 fit that criteria, beating out Jai Ho, Noob, Slumdog, and Cloud Computing (among others) as the millionth English word or phrase.

The list has some linguists up in arms, who dismissed the whole thing as nothing more than a publicity stunt.

"I think it's pure fraud. I'ts not bad science. It's nonsense," Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told reporters.

His and other similar opinions didn't seem to phase Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, who insisted that his method has merit.

"If you want to count the stars in the sky, you have to define what a star is first and then count," Payack said. "Our criteria is quite plain and if you follow those criteria you can count words. Most academics say what we are doing is very valuable."

Word up.

China Blocks Social Networks in Bid to Hide 1989 Tianamen Square Massacre Remembrance

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:09:10 -0500

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tianamen Square massacre in Beijing. Tianaman Square was home of the Chinese student freedom movement, the "Goddess of Democracy" statue, and the location for the iconic photo of the student staring down a row of Chinese People's Army tanks. However, if you use the Internet in China, you probably won't see anything about this event this week - unless you're clever.

Starting Tuesday, the Chinese government shut down access to virtually all search engines and social networking sites, including Twitter, Flickr, Bing (Microsoft's new search engine), Live.com, Hotmail.com, Blogger, and others. All YouTube videos are also being blocked, as are BBC World News reports on the anniversary. These actions should come as no surprise, because China has previously censored Skype and blocked access to iTunes when it offered a pro-Tibetan album last year during the Beijing Olympics.

The Techcrunch UK website reports that some users are bypassing China's restrictions by using VPNs, and third-party apps that use the Twitter API (TweetDeck, Twhilr, and Seesmic Desktop) are working.

Have you encountered the 'Great Firewall of China' or other country-specific restrictions on Internet access? How did you deal with it? Hit Comment and share your stories.

Simpsons image courtesy of TechCrunch UK.

Windows Live Gets More Social with Facebook, Digg, and Other Connections

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:34:13 -0500

Trying to describe Microsoft's Windows Live family of web-enabled tools for Windows has been a bit like the parable of the blind men describing the elephant.

Is Windows Live a photo sharing service? A file sharing service? An email service? An IM service? With the news that Windows Live is adding connections next week to many other popular Web 2.0 social networks, it's easier now to say, as ArsTechnica puts it, that Microsoft wants to:

[T]urn Windows Live into the average netcitizen's main hub for his or her social life, or at the very least to turn Windows Live into a social network.

Microsoft's teaming up with lots of social-networking partners around the world. US-based companies becoming BFFs with Windows Live include MSN, Digg, Facebook, SmugMug, and MySpace (see the full list of 31 current and new partners here).