Category: Technology Author : Steven Hodson Posted: March 3, 2009
Tags : friendfeed, social media, spam
Spam especially the sexually related stuff has to be the bane of our online existence. After all how many Viagra or Grow a Bigger Dick spam emails do you have to get before you literally want to start choking people. That was one of the nice things about Twitter and FriendFeed – other than the idiot carpet bombing marketers trying to play the Follower Game it has been pretty quiet for outright spam.
That is until today. If what I say on my FriendFeed page is any indication I have discovered the newest type of spam – Social Media Comment Spam. Interestingly enough while I was writing this my FriendFeed page refreshed in the background and that piece of spam was *poof* gone. I don’t know if it was something FriendFeed did or not but the fact that it happened is possibly an indication of what we have to look forward – Not!
Thank goodness for screen captures.
Mar 3, 2009
maybe she just thinks youre hot stuff, lol
Mar 3, 2009
This has been happening for awhile now on Disqus… people comment nonsensical things (or sometimes seemingly-related but very vague things), and drop a URL hoping to influence their Google PR.
They've been struggling with it for a long time now, since it is apparently being done by legitimate people (why?), and I would imagine finding it on FF is no different.
–Kyle
Mar 3, 2009
I actually ran across one the other that was a comment on a blog post that on the surface was a perfect comment without a ting of spam to it. It wasn't until you ran the mouse over the poster's name that you say it lead to a spam site .. the thing that got me was that rather than a bot this was an individual who had taken the time to obviously read the post … write an plausible comment and look on the whole like a legit commenter. I was almost impressed
Mar 3, 2009
it that is the case then she needs to get some glasses
Mar 3, 2009
Yeah, exactly. And you have to sit there and wonder if they thought that through.
Why couldn't they have taken the time to make it a REAL comment, and an innocuous linkback? I've done that before, long ago
But as long as you're legit, and not SPAMmy, it's ok.
But these people are just doing dumb shit and it's totally weird. Not to mention time consuming on both ends.
–Kyle
Mar 4, 2009
There's a difference between spam and marketing. The above is obviously spam; the grammar is wrong, the name Laura us not capitalized and it is clear this was done by a non-English speaker (markings of outsourced spam). These posts should not be allowed to stay as they are not relevant to any conversation. If the post is relevant or adds to the conversation I do not see why it should be deleted. Regards!