We are all familiar with spam as unwanted email. A cursory viewing of the most recent messages to hit my spam folder shows me that spam is alive and well. For example, Google apparently is hiring (see above).

However, spam takes more forms than just just flagrantly false messages like that. Facebook spam is on the rise because of newbie users thinking that if I send this important message to all my friends, I will be able to influence the masses to join my cause! Or perhaps they just want you to join mafia or Jedis vs. Sith or some other current iteration of a poorly conceived, viral online game.

In the end, the proliferation of mediums to communicate means a proliferation of mediums to spam. Since email, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are almost completely ubiquitous, thanks to the iPhone and other mobile platforms, we can all have spam delivered right to us in the comfort of the office, my ‘95 Camry, and even camping in the mountains!  Finally, I’ll eat real spam from a can and get the digital version delivered to my Twitter feed by a user who has suddenly decided that this week’s soap opera needs a play-by-play!

As if permeating all the communication mediums wasn’t enough, spam also has been introduced to websites as useless or next-to-useless link farms! Amazingly, spam has recently reached new lows (or highs depending on how you look at it). The image below was grabbed from a marketing website intended to provide extensive links regarding all its products and services. This screen shot of the footer illustrates  how spam has an even newer flavor: internal-linking spam. By the way, the unreadable yellow block is the navigational links list for this company’s graphic design capabilities.

cartoon captions added by Doug

As the internet has matured, apparently spam now receives a decent graphic design package because it is part of the “footer” and carries the title of “navigational links.” The navigational links include everything from CMS training to dating website scripts. The main categories are too numerous to be useful, but hey, it’s spam. When is it supposed to be useful? In fact, this site’s idea of “eMarketing” apparently includes spamming Wordpress comment forms because we found the link to this page twice on the comments from one of our recent blog posts. By the way, what’s with the butterflies?

In the end,  spam is still spam. It’s annoying and will generally be ignored. No matter the medium. However, just like annoying infomercials at 10pm on TNT, spam must be slightly effective otherwise marketers wouldn’t keep using it.  I hope as the internet continues to age spammers will realize that no one is listening. At least, not seriously.

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

The Many Flavors of Spam

If you’re not a Twitter user, you should be. Increasingly the popular Twitter service has been the target of spam. Profiles with just a single post to an affiliate link etc. For some reason Twitter hasn’t added an easy way to report spam accounts despite an increasing number of attacks. This script is only a stop gap measure until Twitter gets with it and makes it easier.

In order to use this script you will need Firefox and Greasemonkey. (Also works great with PowerTwitter)

The first thing you will need to do is follow the Twitter @spam account. This account will quickly follow you back at which point you will be able to send direct messages to the account.

Once you can send direct messages to @spam you will need to download the Twitter Report Spam greasemonkey script.

Next you will see a dialog box that looks like this:

Once you click install, the script will be loaded into Greasemonkey and that’s it. Now as you browse user profiles you’ll get a handy link at the very bottom right like this:

Now when you click the report spam link you’ll be taken to a direct message page with the users @id already filled it. If you want to provide Twitter with additional details feel free to include them.

Please note that this script is provided without warranty or support but simply as a service to the community. If the script breaks your computer we’re sorry, we’ve tested it and by downloading it you’re agreeing that we’re not responsible for anything that happens because of it. The script has been tested and appears to work on the latest version of Firefox and Greasemonkey as of 01/06/09

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

Twitter Report Spam Script