When you were a kid, you might have had an imaginary friend, or you might have known someone who did. It's the kind of thing that is a natural part of child development.
Perhaps the social media industry is still in its childlike phase, because more and more of our friends on social media sites are imaginary.
What do I mean? Well, the truth is that many of your new friends on social media are actually robots, rather than real people. Search spammers have moved on to their next technique, imaginary friends.
You might wonder why anyone would go to the trouble of faking an actual person, but it all comes down to tricking Google and the other search engines. Search spammers have always been motivated by a new trick that helps their search results. At bottom in this fantastical technique is a steady stream of links to the spammer’s Website, leading to improved search results.
Perhaps this social media spamming got its start with fake blog comments. If you recall, back in the old days, any blog comment was immediately posted to a site. That was all the spammers needed, because each spam comment contains a link to a Website -- the spammer’s Website. And each of those links gives a little boost to that site’s search results.
It started out with actual human beings creating the links, but robotic software programs are a lot cheaper. So, the blog owners needed to fight back. They’ve implemented all sorts of techniques to thwart the robots, but the most effective one has always been to moderate comments. It’s a lot of work for the blog author, but carefully reading each comment can spot the difference between a human being adding to the conversation and a piece of software with some kind of random comment along the lines of, “Great blog. I will recommend it to my friends.”
But some of the spammers have gotten better at automatic text generation -- extracting text from the post and wrapping some short commentary around it -- and are now fooling the blog authors at least some of the time.
And search engines got smarter, too. Some speculate that pure links aren’t the only way search engines decide which content is important -- some believe that search engines are now paying attention to social media comments and votes as part of the ranking algorithm.
So it didn’t take spammers long to figure out what the next step for search engines might be: to weigh different comments and votes differently, based on the importance of the person making them.
Some search spammers have started to create fake personas, sometimes called spam profiles. This practice has become so widespread that some of the dumber spammers talk publicly about hiring workers to do so.
But the smart ones don’t hire people to create fake personas -- they just redeploy their robots in a new direction. They use text-generation software and a few computer rules to generate thousands of variations of bios with fake pictures, birth dates, locations, and email addresses, and then start using that “person” as the source of their social media activity. I’ve heard of some cases where they simulate dialogue in blogs and on Twitter between several fake personas; because they control the conversation, it seems particularly realistic. Not only enough to fool the search engines, but likely to fool human beings, too.
So, the next time you congratulate yourself about how many comments your blog gets, or the number of Twitter followers that you have, just understand that it’s likely that at least some of them are imaginary friends.
— Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly, is a speaker and consultant on Internet marketing.
I see Facebook As a place where you can see who you want your friends to be. Its a good place to start class reunions. There can be no imaginary freinds unless you choose to allow someone you dont know. But isnt the idea of A Social Media designed to meet new people? or attract someone that youve never meet before?
That rule can work for Facebook, depending on what you're trying to get out of Facebook. For me, who is happy to attract friends who have done nothing more than seen me speak or read my books, that wouldn't work.
And I am not sure it works for Twitter at all. You'd need to override the defaults to lock your tweets, or you'd need to individually block people that follow you that you don't know.
I'm glad that rule works for you, but I don't think it's for everyone.
The Beatles had it right with this song and it has long been a "classic" for generations following. The real issue now is that, as Mike points out, technology is approaching or even surpassing human ability to create something imaginary.
I have been commenting in IE, somewhat repetitiously, on the broad issues posed by legal entities that humans have created (corporations) and their impact on human and culture evolution. These entities have existence, own things, buy and sell things, create capital and fortunes, get broke, etc. These paper creations exist as real counterparts of "real" human organizations such as family businesses and cooperatives.
Now Mike Moran points out that an even stranger entity is beginning to act by itself, an imaginary someone that can write (post) opinions, interact with real or imaginary entities such as itself, etc. all within the boundaries of the web without being detected. But the problem these new entities pose is that they are STEALTH. Where a corporation is registered somewhere and somewhat accountable, the new breed of imaginary entities described by Mike are authentic phantoms, in fact, almost paranormal entities. And this is indeed a big problem because "real" persons don't know that they are dealing with them.
Now I come back with the Turing Test, the legendary exercise developed to detect if a created entity such as a computer could enter into a "conversation of sorts" with a real person and a third observer could not detect which one was a real person and which one a computer or sorts. As Mike tells us now, we are already being fooled by imaginary persons which are already interacting with "real" persons and nobody can really detect which one in the exchange is a real person. Now then, mix these unreal entities and we get... voilá! An UNREALITY SHOW!
Recently, the US government opened the door for corporations to make legal contributions to politics. Are we really far from seeing something like that movie where Al Pacino masked to the public that the spokeperson for an ad campaign was a non existent female beauty? Then I ask, will a sufficiently funded corporation (an unreal but legal entity) be able to "create" an imaginary person such as the ones Mike says, (also unreal but stealth and dubiously legal entities) register it as if it were a real existing person ( almost an Avatar of itself), make it run for office through the web and affect an election, all with their own money which is now legal, just to alter the real voting tendencies of real people? This is not actually a figment of my imagination, is a logical extension of known facts.
Well Mike, thanks, and as I said in an earlier post, I can use a drink really fast! Cheers!
your PC is as private as your billfold. I have got no business snooping in your billfold -- any way shape or form
none of us will get respect though when we connect to the 'Net, that much is clear. as a result we must provide for defense
it's a different game though: the enemy is invisible, silent, and operates at say 2 GHZ or faster
the defense must be able to operate in that venue. we are getting better at this but it is time to pull it up tight: establish control over software updates. novel concept, if you think about it.
Mike! I know it sounds funny (and it is funny) but may be some programs of help for spammers should be created:))))Some groups of Anonymous Spammers- Hi, my name is Bill and I am a Spammer- Hi Bill:))) I mean, there are some programs that help people who came out the prison to adapt.So there should be some programs that help spammers ( who are basically criminals) to find some socially approved jobs:) They definitely have skills.
That makes sense, Michael. I also think that as social media becomes more commonplace, that most of us won't be stars at all. We'll just get some attention from folks using this media just as we get some attention for speaking or writing a magazine article.
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My granny always told me to stop and smell the roses before you are pushing them up. But we Internet marketing pundits don’t like to stop for anything. We throw opinions out the minute something happens, when sometimes it’s best to look at the bigger picture. Now that we are a few weeks removed from the announcement of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Buzz, can we put all these opinions in perspective and learn the bigger lesson?
You might have heard about the concept of augmented reality -- a way of adding a technological overlay to real life. Even if the name is new to you, you've probably seen it in action, perhaps when you saw the superimposed first-down lines during the Super Bowl telecast. I first noticed augmented reality used in marketing when I saw different messages at different times on the same billboard behind home plate during a baseball game, only realizing later that the billboard messages were generated only for the TV audience by a computer, which made it appear that the ads were located on a fence at the stadium.
Recently, I wrote about the need to identify our Internet marketing personalities to help adapt to the fact that we’re always stuck trying something new in this business.
If we’ve learned nothing else about Internet marketing, it’s that the easiest way to make a splash is with something free. Business after business on the Web has come out with something free to build mindshare in the hopes that it will lead to market share.
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McAfee has figured out how to prevent virus problems: Stop your system from running altogether. We could take this logic into taxes, email, and more, or we can start to demand vendors do online updates with a bit more care. The credibility of the whole online service concept is at stake.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
It is 20 years since the invention of the World Wide Web, and the Internet has changed beyond recognition since then. Steve Saunders peers into the future to predict what the Web will look like in another 20 years time – and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Marketers want to sell you stuff, and they need your help. It's crazy, it's crass, it's fun for the whole family! It's the art form of the new millenium!
High on the list of desired improvements from the mobile industry are: shared digital storage for the Internet; phone capability across borders; reduced electro-magnetic radiation; and rewards-based service plans.
Because 25% to 45% of broadband cost is due to sales and marketing, we could reduce our broadband prices by eliminating advertising and promotional spending by providers.
The next edition of one of the greatest English language reference books, the "Oxford English Dictionary," might not be published in paper. Bibliophiles might mourn, but should they?
RIM is giving in to demands by India to snoop on encrypted BlackBerry data. It's time to develop cheap or free encryption software for BlackBerrys and other cellular phones.
Nielsen’s recent numbers on the increasing use of texting bode well for enterprise networks. Shunning the phone in favor of text messaging could mean reducing bandwidth.
Two studios have filed suit against an ad broker for placing ads to help monetize P2P sites suspected of copyright infringement. That's taking a dangerous step toward what might be a worthy goal.
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