Posted 11/06/09 at 09:05:57 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Facebook is the king of social networking with more users than any other web 2.0 site. With all those users, it’s also an attractive place for scammers that want access to lots of eyeballs. After a few embarrassments, Facebook is promising to take a stronger stance against deceptive advertising.
 
Facebook has gotten a bit of a black eye in the press lately after some companies using the platform were accused of scamming users. These scams often come in the form of special offers and surveys within games. Facebook’s Nick Giano wrote in a blog post that the site was aware of the problem and was actively working on it.

Users of the site also encountered a rise in stimulus scam ads earlier in the year; Facebook notes that they were quickly removed from the site. Hopefully this new wave of scams can be dealt with in the same manner. Facebook claims that over 100 developer applications have already been removed or “brought into compliance" so far. Have you noticed any fishy behavior on Facebook?

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Posted 11/06/09 at 09:04:10 AM by Paul Lilly

Some changes are coming to Twitter that the microblogging site hopes will help curtail the amount of spam that flows through its Trending Topics area, the social networking site announced in a blog post.

"As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics," Twitter noted. "Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation."

Twitter's solution is to start experimenting with ways of ranking retweets, though the service didn't say how this would work. If we had to guess, we'd say it would be based on some kind of algorithm that gauges a user's popularity, among other factors, rather than a manual approach.

According to the blog post, any initial changes will be minor and "the improvement won't be very noticeable at first."

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Posted 11/05/09 at 11:29:38 AM by Paul Lilly

There was a time when computer geeks might have been viewed as social outcasts, but that's certainly not the case anymore. And according to research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, those who stay connected to the Internet and tote around a mobile phone tend to have more friends than those who don't.

It's not just about quantity, either. Researchers found that owning a mobile phone and participating in different Internet activities usually means a more diverse group of friends.

"Contrary to the argument that Internet use limits people's participation in the local community, local institutions, and local spaces, our findings show that most Internet activities are associated with higher levels of local activity," say the researchers. "However, we find some evidence that use of social networking services -- for example, Facebook, MySpaced, LinkedIn -- substitutes for some level of neighborhood involvement."

We blame the latter findings on Mafia Wars and Farmville.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 08:21:22 PM by Jason Barry

Google launched Friend Connect back in early 2008 as a means for website owners to turn their sites into homegrown mini social networks. The service allowed users to login and connect with the other people browsing the site through various widgets.

Fast forward to today, and Google has expanded Friend Connect to include an “Interests” section. Its primary purpose is to capture pertinent information about the users browsing a site using customizable questions.

Logged in users can answer questions posed by the website owner and “connect” to others by seeing their answers (i.e. music website asks what your favorite bands are). Web site owners can also send newsletters infused with content it collects in the site’s “Interests” section.

Further, the update allows website owners to collect information from its user base so it can serve up ads tailored to their interests using the “AdSense” widget—making this a huge selling point for owners to adopt the system on their sites.

Do you use Friend Connect? Would you use it knowing site owners are collecting information to serve you ads?

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Posted 11/02/09 at 12:35:03 PM by Paul Lilly

Phishing and worms go together like, well, fishing and worms. But unlike the latter, you're the prey, and it can be particularly dangerous swimming in social networking waters, suggests a new report by Microsoft and McAfee.

The two software makers noted a sizable spike in phishing attacks during the months of May and June, driven in large part by hackers concentrating their efforts on social networking sites. Other popular targets included gaming sites, banking portals, and e-commerce.

While Trojans still topped the charts, Microsoft noted that worms are becoming much more prevalent, rising from fifth place in the second half of last year to now being the second most prevalent category of threats. Much of the rise can attributed to Conficker, which still has most security experts puzzled.

For those still clinging to XP, Microsoft noted that infection rates for Vista were significantly lower than for XP.

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Posted 10/30/09 at 12:35:46 PM by Paul Lilly

If only spammers had the dough to pay their court-appointed fines, Facebook could make a full-time living in the courtroom. The social networking site slapped Internet marketer Sanford Wallace with a lawsuit alleging he was accessing Facebook accounts without permission and posting fake messages on users' Walls. The judge didn't take kindly to Wallace's actions and awarded Facebook with a little over $711 million in damages.

Not a bad day in court for the social networking site, but Facebook doesn't stand to receive anywhere close to that amount, and it knows that.

"While we dont' expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals," said Sam O'Rourke in a company blog post.

Maybe it will, maybe it wont.  Last November, Facebook won an $873 million judgment against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for a phishing scheme, but has yet (if ever) to collect on that. And therein lies the problems with these judgments.

Getting back to Wallace, the exorbitant fine may not be the only thing he has to worry about. The judge in the case referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's Office requesting that he be prosecuted for criminal contempt, so it's possible he could serve some jail time.

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Posted 10/26/09 at 07:43:08 PM by Ryan Whitwam

So, we’re all tired of hearing about Twitter, right? Well, strap yourself in because it isn’t going away anytime soon. It seems that ComScore showed a 6.7% worldwide rise in Twitter visitors in September. This amounts to 58.4 million visitors, and a 949% increase in the last twelve months. That’s a lot of tweets. Curiously, US visits have been flat since June.

None of this data includes applications that only access the API, so these figures may even be underreported. While these numbers seem staggering, they are nothing compared to Facebook, with its 411 million visitors in September.

Twitter’s best bet is the recent deal with Bing and Google to provide its “firehose” of tweets to the search engines. This should drive more hits to the social networking site. Even with the help of Google, can Twitter avoid being crushed by the behemoth that is Facebook?

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Posted 10/26/09 at 04:10:31 PM by Bart Salisbury

Hard times come quickly for social networking sites. One minute you’re on top, popping open bottles of vintage sparkling mineral water and picking up the tab for another round of tofu burgers. The next you are head-in-hands wonder how it all went so horribly wrong. Today’s patient on the couch is MySpace, with parent company News Corp. none to pleased with what’s going on.

Jonathan Miller, who keeps the watcher’s eye on News Corp.’s Internet services, put it pretty plainly: "The thing you see in this space more than anything else is that if you don't keep innovating and moving forward, you get in trouble. You can't stop. And MySpace stopped." MySpace’s stopped and, since being number one in 2006, has been outpaced by more popular alternatives: Facebook and Twitter.

Time, again, to reinvent the wheel, according to Miller, and return to what MySpace does best: music and gaming. MySpace recently purchased the online music provider iLike. And it has announced a new music video service which will allow labels and artists to see how well their music is doing on MySpace.

To expand gaming opportunities, Miller believes MySpace must open up its system to external developers. He also hinted that some paid premium services to be in the offing.

"Everybody in the company is upset that we didn't keep going when we had the real momentum. Regaining momentum is always much harder than keeping momentum going,” Miller stated. That, and keeping an eye on your rearview mirror to see who’s about to overtake you.

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