One of my colloquial definitions for social software is "stuff that gets spammed", since there has to be some sort of valid participatory channel for spam to show up. We've seen spam extend from usenet to email to IM and now comment spam, but this, I think, is a new one: a spam weblog,
Jenn Theater.
The mail that shows up from Jenn, subject line Blog, reads
Hi,
I saw your email on your Blog..cool stuff. [She didn't -- the spam came to my outbound mailing list address. - ed.]
I'm just surfing around trying to meet new people, so hi!.
Check out more about me at my blog
http://jenntheater.blogspot.com/
Email me soon, and say hello!
Jenn
Garden variety spam, except that someone has gone to the trouble of simulating an actual weblog at
Jenn Theater, complete with backstory for "Jenn" (Impersonals and Friendster profiles, the latter perhaps intentionally mis-linked), and has cut and pasted complete wire service articles as blog entries.
The fake is pretty botched -- her blogroll is one link to Google news and two edit-me blanks -- but for spam, this took some effort, far more than simply buying ONE MILLION EMIAL ADDRESSES FOR $17.98!!!1!
So Jenn Theater seems based on the assumption that the pretense of "keepin' it real" is a useful enough strategy to merit the effort, and that simulating social engagement will raise the efficiency of some sort of advertising or PR. One possibility is that they are just using blogspot as a cheap tracking service (what percentage of email recipients will click on her link), but a more interesting possibility is that the blog itself is generating qualified sales leads for the sites "she" links to, like Impersonals.com, Chick Spirit, and the bands Mars Volta and Aalacho.
The poor execution makes the ruse unlikely to be worth the effort, but it also makes it easy to spot. One side-effect of the lowered effectiveness of garden variety spam will be more of this sort of thing. As both Sam Goldwyn and George Burns are said to have said, "The most important thing in acting is honesty. Once you've learned to fake that, you're in."
1. Matt Haughey on November 16, 2003 11:50 PM writes...
Adam Gessaman tracked down a whole bunch of fake blogs fronting for porn sites:
http://www.idly.org/2003/11/14/porn_sites_hiding_behind_blogs.php
Seems like people tweaking with blogs like this could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Permalink to Comment2. Jon Gales on November 17, 2003 4:17 PM writes...
I got the same email... She's a busy little blogger :P. I have a feeling that this kind of spam is more successful. It's a lot less in your face.
Permalink to Comment3. Sunir Shah on November 17, 2003 5:01 PM writes...
Spam is annoying, but not nearly as insidious as its darker cousin, phony flooding. cf. http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?PhonyFlood
Truly social software limits spam as people would be able to use social cues to mute salespeople. Only a well constructed pitch would be acceptable. How often are you with a group of friends and have some pushy street vendor bother you? What is your reaction? Those situations are controllable; at least the salesperson has to be fairly good to get any attention, rather than a gibbering idiot. Spam is like walking by a gibbering idiot with a megaphone.
Individual weblogs aren't very social, which is their vulnerability. Are they social software? Maybe only over the entire "blogosphere," but not per site. (i.e. Are individuals social? No.) Is e-mail very social? Not at the protocol level. But how do effective protocol-level spamblockers work? Socially (e.g. realtime blackhole list).
Wikis (for online communities) aren't very easy to spam because they are socially controlled at many levels, not just readership. Your colloquial definition of social software excludes them, which suggests either than your definition is wrong, or maybe that the reverse is true: social software is communications software that can't be spammed.
Permalink to Comment4. Seb on November 18, 2003 12:13 PM writes...
Sunir: OK then how about "stuff that gets trolls" for an alternate colloquial definition?
Permalink to Comment5. Sunir Shah on November 18, 2003 11:53 PM writes...
Seb: Yes! Nice one.
Permalink to Comment6. KerLeone on November 19, 2003 4:46 AM writes...
It even seems that they steal templates from other weblogs. Idly.org is collecting some links to that topic.
http://www.idly.org/2003/11/14/porn_sites_hiding_behind_blogs.php
For example:
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.betablog.com/
template was stolen by
www.jennifersblog.com/
7. Ed Adkins on November 20, 2003 9:00 PM writes...
I've been getting some weird blogs showing up in my referrals. They seem at first to be legit, but all their posts seem automated-like they're just set up to extract news articles and create posts from them on a regular basis. They all seem to share some common links in their links section too.
Permalink to Comment8. The Professor on December 2, 2003 8:13 AM writes...
God damn it. This just pisses me off. Here I thought someone actually read my blog and thought it was "cool stuff." What a waste.
Permalink to Comment9. Seb on April 8, 2004 9:50 AM writes...
Check out Steven Miller and his network of "friends". The first one you find just feels funny; after the second one you begin to get it. http://www.stevenmiller.0catch.com/friends.html
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