Spammers May Have Another Trick in Twitter

By Chris Crum - Wed, 05/13/2009 - 01:48

A Cautionary Tale for Twitterers

There have been plenty of complaints about Twitter spam, but what about spam as a result of our own tweeting? We have come to expect our Twitter streams to contain plenty of marketing messages (and perhaps the occasional worm), but some users may be unknowingly contributing to the spam that they find in their email inboxes.

I was having a talk with Twellow's lead developer Matthew Daines, and he pointed out that a simple query on Twitter Search can return large numbers of email addresses that spammers could potentially exploit. Results for such a query might look something like this:

"You can sit and just watch the email addresses steadily trickle in," he noted. "I wouldn't doubt it if spammers are harvesting these."

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Twitter moving beyond tweets

Thursday, May 07, 2009 for WebPro News

Twitter to Search the Web in Real Time

Earlier this year, Twitter began integrating Twitter Search (formerly Summize) into its home page. Just about a week ago, it became available there for everybody.

But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is what lies ahead for Twitter search. From the sound of it, it's about to get taken a lot more seriously. According to CNET, Twitter's new VP of Operations Santosh Jayaram says that Twitter Search, which currently searches only the text of Twitter posts, will soon crawl links included in tweets, and index content from those pages. What do you think about that? Tell WPN readers.

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1) Add Yourself to the Twitter.
2) Gain new followers.
3) Join 3.5 million people.

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"Twitter Search will also get a reputation ranking system soon, Jayaram told me," reports CNET's Rafe Needleman. "When you do a search on a 'trending' topic (a topic that is so big it gets its own link in the Twitter.com sidebar), Twitter will take into account the reputation of the person who wrote each tweet and rank search results in part based on that."

Twitter search has been quite useful as it is. I've written about this in the past. For businesses, it has been a great tool for finding potential leads, and managing your online reputation, just to name a couple.

For the general public, it's provided insight into what people are talking about right now, it's often broken news stories, and it's provided a way for people to connect with others who may have something in common with them (although Twellow is more specifically designed for this).

But with changes coming to Twitter Search, it's going to be a whole new ball game. We're talking about Google territory. Twitter is adding algorithmic ranking, perhaps similar to Google's Pagerank. It sounds like Twitter will be bringing an altogether new ranking concept to Internet search by using the number of links in tweets as a value statement on the web page.

This is taking real-time search for web pages to a new level. And let's also not forget that Jayaram used to be the VP of Search Quality at Google.

What Twitter is doing could compete with Google News search, Google Blog Search, Google video search, and in terms of recent content even Google's main search engine.

Is it going to come out and immediately dethrone Google? That's probably not going to happen. For one Twitter users still have a hard time convincing people why they should be using Twitter at all. Everyone already uses Google, and even if another search engine were delivering better results, people would still be using Google. That seems to be the problem Microsoft is having (it is their claim that people found their results as good or better than Google).

"Strategically, a more advanced search engine could give Twitter more appeal as a takeover target - Steve Ballmer, for example, is making noise about how Microsoft has to get more disruptive in search," says Buckpost at Twitterrati. "Better search could also jump-start Twitter's business by providing more relevance and targeting for advertisers."

Interesting point. We are still waiting on that revenue machine Twitter's going to unload on us.

Either way, Twitter is clearly branching out beyond the simple social network/public IM/microblogging/etc. platform it has become known as. It has been in the search conversation for some time (even as a possible test for Google), but now you might start finding it there for greater reasons. 

Avatar - The last air bender in the world

I just finished "Avatar" - Book 3. Book 3 is the end of the story but with no end. Allthough the world regained its peace and balance, there are some misteries hidden, unsolved in the story.

As "Ang" whom is the last air bender in the world, (who is the present avatar) where the avatar cycle goes when it reaches the Air nation again? Who will be the next air nation avatar? (this is only a one, and there are more)

Is it, the producers and the writers want the viewers to make the future of avatar as their opinions? (like a short story with no end).

Anyway, it's a pretty, amazing and a fascinating story with a deep theme which talks bout the balance of te world. The end is a good one and a happy one which, is a considerable one.

But I know that most of the viewers are not satisfied with the end or the length of the story (as i too am one of them). They want more and, most people say "It's the only series which the viewer will be addicted to the story from the first chapter".

What Is Twitter About in One Word?

By Chris Crum - Fri, 05/01/2009 - 16:20 Read on for the answer…

The "what is Twitter about?" article is not a new concept. It's been discussed frequently pretty much since Twitter was launched. Yet people still have a hard time grasping the concept. In fact, Twitter has had a hard time with user retention most likely because so many people try it based on all of the hype, and then don't return because they don't "get it." What is Twitter about to you in one word? Tell us.

The truth is, it often takes a while using the service to "get it." The more you use it, the more you start to realize the benefits that are there. I (with a little help from Mike and Tiffany) asked a whole bunch of people what Twitter is "about" to them in one word. A handful of them responded, and here are some of the answers I got:

- Updates
- Egos
- Networking/Networks
- Relationships
- Represent
- Connection
- Possibilities
- Instant
- Marketing
- Speed
- Noise
- Inane
- Communication
- Contrived
- Aggrandizement
- Useful
- Spammy
- Conversation
- Open
- Freedom
- Useless
- Awareness
- Chat

Going into this thing, the word I was clinging to in my mind was microblogging. It has always been described with this word, but what does that mean? Small blogging. To me, Twitter is not a whole lot different than a collection of blogs, only all of the entries are really short (140 characters or less).

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Wikipedia Founder Slams Wikipedia Art

By Jason Lee Miller - Sun, 05/03/2009 - 07:39

Calls artists 'trolls'

Some controversy stirred up earlier this week after the

Some controversy stirred up earlier this week after the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in on behalf of the creators of Wikipediaart.org, a site dedicated to a Wikipedia-related art project. The EFF was responding to demands by a lawyer for the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia, that the artists turn over control of the domain.

Claims that the domain violated Wikimedia's trademark and the ensuing legal back and forth have renewed the debate over fair use and free speech, and to an extent, what constitutes art. There's even a bit of a debate over what constitutes "a threat."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales characterizes the project as "an alleged bit of performance art," and the project creators, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, as "trolls" "dedicated to vandalizing Wikipedia as a publicity stunt." [His full statement is available as an update to an earlier article, linked below.]

The project originally took place on the Wikipedia site itself, but was quickly deleted by Wikipedia editors. Though there was some debate over whether a collaborative art project had a place in an online encyclopedia, the final agreement was that the project—also thought to be critical of Wikipedia itself—was a form of vandalism.

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