A couple of months back we made an appearance at leweb startup competition , the France conf in Paris (December 2008)  here is the Video  ….

Its a 7 minutes Pitch, spot at the end of the Video that they are trying to throe me off the stage ….

And like in all confs today ( tech crunch, Demo, etc …) everybody promises you Internet ( well … it is a web startup competition after all and you do need to D-E-M-O something )

Either way you can view more videos on the youtube channel here, it wasn’t a “good” conference as the sessions were reasonable, but the networking was …. mmmmm, let me say that its  not a really globally session ( 90% were French … and not from all Europe )

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Yep !! last year, there where a couple of sessions on security, nothing really major, this year they took it to another level.

The Web 2.0 Expo sessions were always an industry reflection of what is up and running, what is Hot and Not, and in a sense a seismograph of what to come.
Attended a couple of these before and i must say that they tend to nail the right discussions and the right interests ( while bringing in the right opinion leaders )

This year’s the san fran session holds a specific thread on security, just another strong indication that this industry is alive, kicking and highly profitable

( if not …why would the hackers go there … ) , more on this here: Web 2.0 Expo security session track

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For those of you that remember a fellow called Samy, yep that small code that introduced us with how Myspace was “relevant” , that it actually managed to attract an annoying kind of crowd ( HACKERS !!! )

It was just a matter of time, till these platforms (A.k.a - giant social networks) attract more and more bad, annoying and exploitative kind of hostile “users” (Not sure that they can even qualify as “User”s).
At the end of 07′ some security research companies jumped on the wagon and indicated that 08′ would probably be in the sign of social networks attacks, today we got hit by another one !

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management systems, has detected two variants of a new worm, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a. and Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, which attack MySpace and Facebook respectively. As part of their malicious payload, the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.

Even though the worms are currently only infecting MySpace and Facebook users, Kaspersky Lab analysts are warning users that the worms are designed to upload additional malicious modules with other functionality via the Internet. It is highly probable that victim machines will not only be used for spreading links via these social networking sites, but the botnets will also be used for other malicious purposes.

Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a spreads when a user accesses his/her MySpace account. The worm creates a range of commentaries to friends’ accounts. Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, which targets Facebook users, creates spam messages and sends them to the infected users’ friends via the Facebook site. The messages and comments include texts such as Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; Hello; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments and many others.

Messages and comments on MySpace and Facebook include links to http://youtube.[skip].pl. If the user clicks on this link, s/he is redirected to http://youtube.[skip].ru, a site which purportedly contains a video clip. If the user tries to watch it, a message appears saying that s/he needs the latest version of Flash Player in order to watch the clip. However, instead of the latest version of Flash Player, a file called codesetup.exe is downloaded to the victim machine; this file is also a network worm. The result is that users who have come to the site via Facebook will have the MySpace worm downloaded to their machines, and vice versa.

** taken from DarkNet, more here

With new companies out there Like Delver, sightix, and much more… there is a strong indication that our online presence, discussion and decision making would be strongly influenced by our friends, “closed” community and people we trust …. But times like these make us wonder do we really trust them ?
The Usage of Bots and malicious content for commercial exploitation (A.k.a Spam) is just an instance, this kind of tool in the hands of the wrong hands could drive trends and influence crowds

So what is the difference between a malicious wall-to-wall comment coming from a friend on your facebook profile to an annoying email you just got with a pharmaceutical offering from your peer at work, not much i guess, it just mean that both got abused by a hostile 3rd party of some kind.
But it is a strong validation that our messaging platforms would share the same challenges as we progress into this new evolving realm of web 2.0, social networks and collaboration.

Seems like that the icebergs we knew are about to melt as we embrace our new world, as we embrace global “Worming” ….

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IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Has just published a detailed report on what they refer as : “ User-Generated Content and Social Media Advertising Overview” which gives a good overview of how the money drivers of this industry sees the social media future ( after all, they are the fuel of this industry … ).
The paper deals with stats, promising  opportunities and challenges when it comes to interacting with the Social media … A must read !!!

One of many interesting discussions is the classic dilemma of the Uneasy relationship between the advertiser and the uncontrolled/”not premium” but highly lucrative content, contributed by end users ….
Here is a short snip:

Traditionally, marketers have been able to buy time or space on fixed media in a controlled context. They knew where their ad would appear, what it would look like, and perhaps most important, in what context it would be seen. In other words, they could be guaranteed their message wasn’t being delivered in a hostile or inappropriate environment.
Today, such guarantees are harder to make, and that lack of control can be a source of great anxiety for marketers. But it also represents an unrivaled opportunity …

A word about IAB (taken from their about page): IAB represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend

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Yep, the spaminess ( or should i say sploginess ) indicator is back in the game, i have written some stuff on this before, but the concept is clear, your popularity and success is measured by the amount of damage and noise that the dark side is willing to invest in you in order to make a relevant presence on your platform

Matt Mullenweg, the author of WordPress and Akismet ( very important to mention ) has undoubtedly acknowledged that ~30% of all WordPress blogs are nothing but Splogs (more on this here, as apposed to Google’s blogspot which is even less promising (75% !?!?!), check it out here
(What does it mean ? Is WordPress less popular or more protected …. think about it …  )

This putts Matt in an interesting spot, first and utmost, it says something about his Akismet (their Anti comment spam) technology, and why Splog posses a different challenge in detecting (Harder challenge ?!?!?!)

If Splog is one of the big problems we would be facing, how would it inflict on user generated content (sharing, user experience, authentication factors, etc … )

Something to ponder on ….

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If you haven’t heard ( or you might have heard ) Google has provided a while back ( ever since the end of 2005 ) a nice attribute called “rel=NoFollow”, in a nutshell, it allows you to ask the Googlebot not to spider specific hosted URL.

Now, the first things that comes to mind is UGC, you don’t want to be the one that provided the world with platform that can “Hurt” the famous page Rank algorithm by adding noise and garbage to the scene.

But what if the UGC is good, what if the content promotes a trend or a behavior that Google would like to know about and follow ( spider ) on it.
Don’t worry, and Don’t feel sorry for Google :-), “NoFollow” has and always will be an indication for Google that for some reason you think this link might be suspicious, i-relevant or simply bogus, from this point on Google uses your impression and throws it to his melting pot as another factor in the page rank algorithm1.

Today, more than ever the NoFollow flag is evidently a tool for the website to tell Google to do something about this link (but actually nothing to “really” do with it, as an action on the website behalf),And for Google ( as usual ) to know more about the internet and the origin of the URL, all provided by us ( the developers that implemented the NoFollow)

In other words, NoFollw is helpful .. if you are Google ….

This comes up now,  when Google launches their own “NoFollow Help Center” to make it easier for developers to add this kind of behavior, more on this here (Follwoed by their Anti-Spam advocate, Matt cutts)

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photo credit: Tanya Ryno

It is apparent that Social media has its challenges but we some time tend to cross the lines, especially were the virtual and real worlds tend to clash and provide real questions.
Back in October 06 there was a horrifying  event that ended with a suicide  of a young girl, the root cause was a virtual entity on myspace made up by Lori Drew.

Drew allegedly helped create a fake MySpace account to contact the young girl who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.

The online relationship between “Josh” and Megan bloomed for several weeks before the tone suddenly changed. On October 15, 2006, Josh sent Megan a message saying, ‘I don’t want to be friends with you anymore because you’re not nice to your friends’. That post triggered a flood of hate posts from other users.

The young girl hanged herself on the evening of October 16, 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including the last message sent from Josh which read: “the world would be a better place without you, and have a s**t rest of your life.”

This chapter re-surfesed yesterday, after a federal jury has indicted Lori for her alleged role in a MySpace online hoax played on a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide. Lori Drew was indicted on Thursday on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorisation to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.

This of course raises some serious questions, couple of them would be :

• How do you validate a profile ?
• How do you protect yourself from someone stealing your identity on the social network realm ?
• Stealing a users social network credentials and impersonating has never been easier, how do we tackle it ? and how do you protect the victim (real user) ?
• Will it stop the web 2.0 proliferation ?
• Will we see strong authentication and harsh validation on social network sites soon ?

Well, as you can see the list is long and distinguish, these are questions that would need to get answers sooner or later

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Well, it looks like the web sets the tone, again ….

Of all the SPAM allegedly lawsuits that we heard off, this one will top them all, it has just been disclosed that The popular online hangout MySpace has won a $234 million judgment over junk messages sent to its members in what is believed to be the largest anti spam award ever.

A federal judge ruled against two of the Internet’s most prominent spam defendants, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. Rines and Wallace worked in concert to create their own MySpace accounts or take over existing ones by stealing passwords, MySpace said the pair sent 735,925 messages to MySpace members. Under the 2003 federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM, each violation entitles MySpace to $100 in damages, tripled when conducted “willfully and knowingly.”

More on this one here

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Matt Cuts, which is a SPAM guru ( Anti-SPAM that is ) worked for Google for the past 8 years focusing on detecting Web SPAM (yes… there is such a topic ! ) ,
I saw this guy giving a great 10 minutes show on the Web2.0 Expo at san fran, thank god for blip.TV that propagated this video, its a notable worthy 10 minutes.

if you have a website, whether you have been approached by an SEO consultant (or think of hiring one) or if you provide some kind of user-generated-content on your website you gotta see this one … Enjoy !!!

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That’s what Jim Brady, the executive editor of The Washington Post’s online division thinks, when it comes to problematic content posted on his website by end users.

There was a very interesting discussion along a panel at the Digital Hollywood conference last week.
Brady position was clear. In an interview following the panel discussion, Brady said he doesn’t want people’s personal information for any other reason but to hold them accountable for what they post.

He said he’s not, as he has been accused by some - an enemy of free speech. He just wants to oversee a site where readers engage in civil discourse and debate without fear of it degenerating into a “back alley environment.”

Don’t get this guy wrong, he is all but “big brother”, brady would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards, and if need be, automatically kick them off for good.

What can i say … I totally agree ( but I’m a bit biased )

you can catch the full length post on this, ( including Brady’s past history relationship with user posts ) here

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