At this point, I strongly believe that social media spam prevention must occur at the social network software level. Social media sites can fight social spam by create algorithms that individualize user experience by interpreting relevancy through user relationships. Relationship data can come from what & how a user votes for, views, reads, recommends, bookmarks, or includes in his or her personal social network.

Utilizing OpenID Systems

Hopefullly, OpenID systems will allow social media sites to share user reputation, relevance, preference, and trust data with other social sites. More user data leads to the creation of more effective social media spam prevention tools, as well as increasingly relevant user experiences that give you exactly what you want.

Pigeon has cracked the MySpace MSPlinks code.

In his words:

The obfuscated part of an msplinks URL is simply the original URL preceded by two digits and encoded using base64. Thank the Lord that it’s not actually encrypted. This makes it simple to recover the original URL.

The good news is that you don’t need to know programming of any sort to remove the MSPlinks.com redirects. Pigeon has created a bookmarklet that solves the problem.

Posting free ads on Craigslist can be a great way to add to your affiliate income. But won’t the Craigslist community hate you for doing it?

Well… Maybe… Just remember these two guidelines:

Everyone hates a spammer.
Just because Craigslist users see your post doesn’t mean they care.

Craigslist promotions can supplement your existing affiliate marketing efforts. But don’t pitch to the Craigslist community as an anonymous outsider. Join the community and share great information with other community members.

The MSPlinks.com redirects are a backward step for online safety. MySpace has knowingly made users more vulnerable to online predators in its quest to increase profits.

If you haven’t already read how MySpace sacrificed user safety to boost revenue, you may want to.

You may also want to read about how MySpace used scare tactics to muscle users into viewing MySpace.com content in order to get big advertising deals. And their plan is working.

My last post discussed how MSPlinks.com redirects make MySpace. com more dangerous for users. Since then, I’ve stumbled upon a brilliant MySpace GreaseMonkey script by Jason at smert.net that reveals the true destination of MySpace outgoing links that have been dangerously hidden by these MSPlinks.com redirects.

MySpace is irresponsible to impose these MSPlinks.com redirects. It is yet another example of how MySpace treats its millions of loyal, dedicated users as enemies. However in this case, MySpace’s profit squeezing is actually jeopardizing their users’ safety as well.

Update: MySpace scores Coke money by blindfolding users

MySpace has openly displayed a blatant lack of concern for user safety by installing those msplinks.com redirects . In case you need a quick refresher, MySpace has installed software that forces every outbound link (links to other sites) on any MySpace.com pages to filter through the domain msplinks.com. Each link is then redirected to the original destination.

One very dangerous effect of these redirects is evident.
The msplinks.com redirects unquestionably make MySpace users even more susceptible to fraud, phishing, viruses, and other shady dealings.

Wordpress, like most other major blogging platforms, automatic add ‘no follow’ tags to the urls left in any visitor comments or trackbacks. This was initially done in an effort to combat blog comment spam. But there are now a growing number of people who believe ‘no follow’ tags create more blog spam - not less!

Why would I (or anybody) remove the ‘no follow’ tags from all visitor comments & trackbacks on their blog?

Community Fairness, Equity, &amp Available Technology

Community fairness, equity? People who legitimately comment on this blog (and all blogs) aren’t spammers. They are contributing to an ongoing, distributed conversation - their comments provide value to the sites they post on.

‘Friends First’ sound like a take-it-slow dating guide, but it’s really should be the MySpace marketer’s manta. Relationship building is the most effective way to reap results from your MySpace marketing. Kathy over at AttractionBiz.com seems to be giving her clients a fair representation of the strengths and limitations of MySpace marketing. Take a look at this snapshot of an actual MySpace user’s incoming friend requests (photo taken by tlianza). Every person pictured here is a spammer. This is an actual example of how SPAM is shaping the MySpace user experience. MySpace is a social site. It seems to be logical that a MySpace marketing plan should include strong social elements to be truly effective. Social elements seem to be a key element that these spammers don’t seem to understand… well that and respect. But I’ll lump respect & accountability in with all the other social skills that are required for sustainable interpersonal marketing.

Will MySpace last?

Could the overload of MySpace SPAM or their lack of an open API (like Facebook) increase the popularity of newer social networking sites?

Traditional MySpace Marketing will soon be dead. The MySpace communication channels are at a similar point that email was years ago, right as email spam was getting out of control. In fact, most current MySpace promotion is modeled after traditional email spamming tactics. This model is not sustainable and MySpace marketers must adopt a relationship-focused strategy to really extract the most value from MySpace marketing.

So many businesses & bands routinely send uninvited promotional messages to strangers (you know, those people on our “friends” list). The spam on MySpace that I’m referring to is message spam, comment spam, and bulletin spam. Most businesses/bands aren’t aware that their promotional tactics are essentially spam.