The New Spam Commenters

ME...LIKE...BLOG...

Welcome to the new world, one in which spam blog comments have evolved. No more do you get the nonsense blobs of letters and numbers. Spammers figured out that most of us use anti-spam plug-ins like Akismet. Now we get intelligent spam, like this one on a blog that hasn’t been active in a while. The post in question was from a year ago, and a spammer saw it and thought, “I’m going to comment on that and get a link back to my ED drug/luxury watch/miracle diet pill website! And the best part is, I don’t even have to read the post!”

Stop helping hackers

I WANT MY FACEBOOK!

Have you heard? Facebook plans to start charging the $3.99 starting July 9, 2010! Join the group on Facebook called NO, I WILL NOT PAY $3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010! That will stop them, because we all know that online petitions are both highly effective and not a huge waste of your time and bandwidth.

See that? I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s called sarcasm.

The Internet hoaxers have moved from email malware dissemination to Facebook hijacking. Groups like this commandeer your Facebook account and put out spam wall postings to everyone on your friend list with messages like ”Lisa, this is without doubt the hottest video ever! “

Facebook has repeatedly issued statements that they have no intention of charging members…their research tells them that no one would pay it, and they make a ton of cash from advertising. If no one’s on Facebook, no advertisers. No advertisers, no income. So don’t be suckered in.

Just the Facts: Statistics from Twitter Chirp

Just the Facts: Statistics from Twitter Chirp.

Hey, you! Writing in second person for medical websites

Have you ever noticed that about four out of five medical/therapeutic websites write around the patient instead of to and for the patient?

Doing research for a client, I noticed a disturbing trend in which website copy is written in the third person, as if the doctor/therapist is talking to the family of the patient, or the insurance company of the patient — everybody but the patient him/herself. It’s as if the writer assumes patients are in a catatonic state and can’t be reached by Internet, so there’s no point in speaking to them.

There, their, they’re

Few homophones cause as much confusion and chaos as there, their and they’re. The problem, of course, is that our brains are so stuffed with vital information — Olympic curling team stats, disco song lyrics, ways to get cranberry juice stains out of deep pile carpet — how are we supposed to keep such trivial garbage straight?

Well, I’ll tell you how. Let’s start with there. How to remember it? There‘s opposite, here, is inside the word. So when you want to get to there, you start here. And then slap a T on the beginning of it. Simple, right?

They’re is easy too. It’s a contraction of they and are. The apostrophe stands in for the a in are. So when you’re trying to decide which of the three to use, just take a moment to think about what you’re saying — and go all cave-man-speak (the apostrophe hadn’t been invented yet, so there were no contractions).

Think of their as the crazy aunt your grandma kept locked in the attic –or Boo Radley, if you like –and remember that it just doesn’t make any sense, like much of the English language. But once you know the first two, this third oddball is easy.

So do your part to clean up the blogosphere and commit these three to memory.

Don’t be a flamethrower

"Tastes great!" "Less filling!"

After the recent Massachusetts election, some of my Facebook friends were bold enough to either celebrate Brown’s win or decry it as a harbinger of doom. One of these friends sparked a multi-page comment-on-comment debate among his own friends, and let me tell you, it got ugly.

I was interested to see how far it would go. In the semi-anonymous world of blog commenting, folks can get as rancorous and cruel as they want — after all, they’re prowling blogs of perceived enemies for the sole purpose of arguing (although most of it involves misspelled name-calling and not constructive discourse).

Well, it didn’t go as far as blog comments normally go. Is it because photos of the writers are visible right next to their snotty, self-righteous comments? Or could it be that the commenters share a mutual friend? Maybe it was both, but it’s important to remember that Facebook is social media, not anti-social media. Folks are there to have fun, visit with friends, share information. I say let’s keep it friendly, and if you feel you absolutely must set a friend of a friend straight, do it kindly. Don’t name-call. Don’t call him or her stupid…or evil.

Let’s keep Facebook civilized.

Tweets: a journey through the past

It’s the beginning of a new year, which means it’s time to reflect on 2009 and assess your challenges, successes and activities. As crowded and busy as most of our schedules are, sometimes it’s hard to remember what we did last week, let alone twelve months ago.

If you’re a dedicated Twitter user, meaning you tweet at least a couple of times a week, you’re keeping a pretty good log of what’s going on in your business and life, 140 characters at a time. But who has time to go back through the gigantic log of tweets swimming in the ether?

Twitter as editing coach

Yeah, it's got a hemi.

Lifrepeatedly banging door closed) No! No! No! NO!

I love Twitter.

Not because I can sit on my couch with my touch phone and tweet things like “sitting on my couch tweeting on my touch phone.” I love it because it’s making me a more effective writer. No, really.  I noticed this by accident when I was trying to fit an anecdote into 140 characters. Below is the story I had to tell.

YouTube for entrepreneurs

Over the past decade, the Internet has become the fastest and easiest way to access or dispense information. One of the most popular Internet sites is YouTube, where videos with content of all kinds are posted. You can access videos for any and all topics of interest. Religion to politics. Cartoons to newscasts. Famous musicians to your next door neighbor singing karaoke. If you want your fifteen minutes of fame, post a video of yourself singing a song or performing a stunt and you can bet that, within a few days, hundreds to millions of people will have viewed it.

The social media revolution

If you’re an entrepreneur, chances are good to excellent that you’re knee-deep in the social media revolution. Right? What’s that? You don’t have to whisper…oh! You aren’t sure what I’m talking about, you say? You’re put off by the frivolous-sounding name? You’re embarrassed that you’ve read about it but haven’t had time to jump in? Don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody. I know you have a business to run, and the day-to-day fires you have to extinguish take up most of your time. But social networking (via FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, YouTube and others) can be one of the most effective new marketing techniques out there.