According to a recent study by Nielsen Online, Twitter’s audience-retention rate is currently about 40 percent. Which means that about 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users end up abandoning the service after a month. Why is Twitter struggling with low retention rates? Perhaps, because so many tweets are utter nonsense.
Tagged.com claims it is the third-largest social network in the U.S., in terms of total monthly visits. And now, perhaps, we know why: Tagged lured new members to its site by tricking users into providing it with access to their personal email contacts. The company then spammed those contacts with promotional emails disguised as invitations to view personal photos. And when they registered with Tagged to view those photos, the company spammed their contacts as well. An interesting variation on the “membership drive” and one that’s gotten Tagged in hot water with New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who intends to sue the company.
Google’s objective evaluation and ranking of Web sites is to some extent defined by subjective reasoning of a collective human intelligence. And so it must be if Google is to continue returning search results that we perceive to be the “best” answers to our search queries. In the second of three interviews, Google software engineer Matt Cutts talks about the role of human evaluators in counteracting spam.
Wow. Global spam volumes plummeted today after two ISPs disconnected a Web hosting firm outed by the Washington Post as harboring some truly unsavory clients. Denied Internet access by Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric, bot hosting network McColo is clearly having trouble spewing out spam and malware. There has been a 41 percent drop in spam volume since the Washington Post story broke.
According to security experts, Web-hosting outfit McColo is responsible for enabling the broadcast of more than 75 percent of all spam globally. Its client list is a rogues gallery of bad-guy syndicates involved in everything from botnets to counterfeit pharmaceuticals and kiddie porn. So how is it that MoColo’s ISPs, Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing, were unaware of that until notified by a Washington Post reporter?
Not that there’s any reason to think otherwise, but the spam network business is not one that’s dependent on sales conversion rates. You’ve got to send a hell of a lot of spam to make a living at it.
Amazon racked up its second acquisition of the month today, announcing the purchase of Shelfari, a social-networking site for bibliophiles. This just three weeks after the retailer acquired AbeBooks, an online marketplace for rare books that happens to hold an equity stake in Shelfari’s chief rival, LibraryThing. Which makes for an awkward situation, given the bad blood between the two.
Carl Icahn’s a busy guy–busier than usual lately penning broadsides against Yahoo. So he can be forgiven the 138-day delay in lauching “Icahn Report,” the blog he announced back in February. Earlier today the blog offered nothing more than a placeholder page, but a few moments ago it went live with Icahn’s promised anecdotes on “the desultory state of corporate governance in America.” And, specifically, Yahoo.
The hammer has fallen once again on Stanford “Spamford” Wallace. A federal judge in Los Angeles yesterday awarded MySpace a $230 million judgment against Wallace who, with partner Walter Rines, broadcast some 730,000 junk messages to MySpace members in October of 2006. The judgment is believed to be the largest anti-spam award to date, not that it really matters, since MySpace is unlikely to collect it.
Spam litigation is not the stuff of which cottage industries are made. Just ask James Gordon, who’s been ordered to pay attorneys fees and costs in the amount of $111,440 to Virtumundo, the email marketer he sued under the CAN-SPAM Act.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
