grokmedia | mediablog » Spam

Facebook’s Fatal Mistake.

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:38:52 +0000

So I’m minding my own business, and I get a call from my daughter, who wants me to look at her Facebook page. I do, and what do I find, but some friend of hers has sent her a “Best Friend Quiz” (twice), asking the questions ‘Is she smart?’ and ‘do you think she takes drugs.’

Pause with me whilst I do a slow boil.

My kid on drugs? Nope. Never. This is a newly-12-year-old that is pure as the driven snow. She won’t take so much as a Tylenol without parental permission. So, naturally, I suspect it’s a ‘friend’ pranking her. Nope. Guess again. I went ahead and clicked on the supposed “quiz” to find out that it’s one of these Facebook games, that you must agree to install on your own home page before you can play.

Newsflash, people: This is SPAM. Opt-in SPAM, mind you. But it’s still SPAM.

From what I was able to gather, this thing attaches itself to your account like some sort of parasitical beast with tentacles that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud. It immediately begins with a question about the person who’s unfortunate enough to have this waste of electrons stuck on their wall, but then moves on to EVERY OTHER ENTRY IN YOUR OWN FRIENDS LIST.

Let’s recap…you try and take a quiz. You must opt-in and allow it to infect your own account, just to take the quiz on someone else’s page. It then starts asking you a question for each one of your friends in your directory. It then sends out the quiz to each of THEIR pages.

I’ve seen pandemics that were less effective and efficient in spreading their viruses than this thing.

So how do the fine folks that make this train wreck of an app make money? I don’t know. I suspect, it’s because they are building one big honkin’ database of suckers…er em…USERS…that have voluntarily put this thing on their home page. If not, perhaps they are the type that just wanna watch the e-world burn. I dunno. But I do know that Facebook is allowing these things to multiply like so much electronic Kudzu. Sooner or later, these apps will hit critical mass, and your Facebook page will be one impenetrable mass of SPAM, cleverly disguised as games, applications, quizzes and the like. At that point, Facebook will effectively jump the shark, and we’ll all move onto the Next Big Thing in social networking.

Facebook needs to change the way these things work, and they need to do it now. Forcing someone to opt in just to figure out they don’t want whatever the app is selling is bass-ackwards. Worse, apps like these are set up to annoy more so that entertain or educate. And most users will not differentiate between Facebook and the crap that ends up on Facebook, no matter how earnest the disclaimer.

Then again, if past actions are any indication, Facebook never met a boneheaded move they didn’t fall all over themselves to try.

SPAM vs. Spam.

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:46:22 +0000

When I was a kid, I was in the Boy Scouts. I came home one day, with a bag full of supplies for my first Boy Scout camping trip. Giddy with a new find, I proudly regaled my Dad with the wonders of SPAM, not realizing that there was a reason that he was busy turning green as I talked. Seems he’d been well-acquainted with the joys of SPAM in WWII. Poor guy couldn’t think about SPAM without getting seriously queasy. He literally turned a pale shade of green.

I feel that way about Spam. There’s few things I can think of that bother me more than unsolicited intrusions into my online activities. What’s worse, is I’m now dealing with some Spammer that thinks it’s acceptable to hack into this blog and insert code so he can pump Spam to my readers.

I hate Spam. But I hate Spammers – and hackers – even more.

I can tell you it’s not been a problem for any of you – because this clueless hack is such a moron, he apparently doesn’t know how to properly hack a blog – his code simply makes my blog disappear. No code. Just a blank page. Mind you, I still don’t know how the little bastard is getting in…I’ve taken all the precautions I know, and I’m still getting several pages changed without permission.

I can promise you, though, that my patience is wearing thin. And I have a buddy who has a buddy that does high-level contract work for the code spooks at the NSA. I may call in a favor. Or three. And then we’ll see how much this little twerp likes it when HIS computer gets hacked.

A little housekeeping…

admin — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:31:33 +0000

Well, campers, the readership of the grokmedia | mediablog is growing by leaps and bounds. That’s good. Unfortunately, along with that growth comes a bunch of associated problems – mostly of the spam variety. At first, it was enough to simply delete entries that were obviously spam. That worked for a while, but as you would expect, spammers have gotten increasingly more aggressive, not to mention crafty. Whereas before, I’d get a comment that was obviously spam (my favorite had to be the Viagra ad that was posted in reply to a piece I wrote about the Episcopal schism). But recently, the spammers have gotten sneaky – they’ll actually reply with some text that looks as if it’s a real comment…but then link back to a bogus website that either attempts to sell you the latest in sexual dysfunction products, or (even worse in my book) attempts to infect your computer with a variety of virus code. Not fun.

So with something of a deep breath and a great deal of trepidation, I’ve reconfigured the blog to require everyone to register before commenting. Furthermore, I’ve implemented a WordPress plugin that is designed to detect bots and gently discourage them from registering…or posting.

Frankly, I’m a bit fed up with idiots trying to spam this blog. I’m trying to share what I know with a larger audience. It’s a lot of work to post on a daily basis. While I enjoy all the “real” feedback I get, having to deal with a bunch of second-raters who parasitically glom onto creative work and then use it to spread their useless snake oil wares is a colossal waste of time. I’m in hopes that I can eliminate the spammers from the site, and get back to spending my time talking about marketing.

If you have any problems with the registration process, please let me know.

Email Marketing is Dead.

admin — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:46:56 +0000

When the ‘net hit critical mass, email was the biggest thing to hit marketing since third-class postage. Suddenly, you could reach millions of people for next-to-nothing. It was huge! Amazing! And then, the spammers killed the golden goose.

I remember when I received my first piece of spam.

I was incensed. Outraged. And I protested – to the sender, to my ISP, to the company that sent the mail – to everybody I could think of. And of course it dies absolutely no good. Because, believe it or not, spam actually works. Sort of. It’s a numbers game. Send out a million pieces of unsolicited crap, and some idiot, somewhere will respond. Since it cost you all of about a buck ninety-five to send it, get a couple of dozen people to respond, and you’re makin’ some real money. Who cares that you have essentially killed a valuable tool for communications and marketing.

Of course, spam begat spam filters. Which kinda sorta worked, in the same way that locking a door just made criminals more determined. Every time you buy a better lock, the crooks keep advancing their knowledge of lock picking, and the cycle starts anew.

Lately, I’ve discovered that my biggest problem in dealing with spam was…Microsoft Exchange Server. (Who would have thought that Microsoft would make a piece of software that would cause me problems?) It seems that Microsoft does little to help out on the spam problem – that’s an add-on. And nobody (apparently) makes one that can keep me from having to devote countless hours, resources, and money to keep the Exchange server running.

So I ditched it. I discovered that Google offers hosted email. You simply sign up, redirect your MX records to Google, and access your email through the Google server. Oh, and did I mention that the service is FREE, for up to 100 email accounts?

The big deal here is that Google has the best spam filters I’ve found. I get maybe – MAYBE – one or two messages per day that I have to delete myself. By comparison, I get close to 200 pieces of spam in the junk mail box each day. That saves me time – time that I don’t have to spend dealing with it. And the Google folks also do a bang-up job scanning attachments, and preventing email from becoming a superhighway for computer virus attacks. In fact, they screen messages and don’t even allow the ones with suspicious attachments into your mailbox.

So what’s the net-net for you? First of all, if you’re considering buying some mailing list and mounting a marketing campaign – forget it (Unless, of course, you’re a purveyor of little blue pills, mortgage refinancing, or work as an obscure administration official in Nigeria). Unless you’re using a list of people who actually signed up for and WANT to receive email from you, you’re wasting your time – and theirs. If you have a spam problem, get your IT guys to look into Google hosting your mail. And if you want to find a way to market successfully to your customers, stop trying the “easy way” (like bulk emails) and start thinking about treating them as a valuable asset that you respect, with a relationship you want to nurture.

What Irony Looks Like.

admin — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:08:42 +0000

We’re on a lot of lists. And we get some of the strangest things you’d ever expect – or not expect – to see in your mailbox. As a marketer, I’m always interested to see how others are using direct mail to market their products and/or services. As a pragmatic conservative, I like to look past the marketing, and look at what they’re trying to say with their promotion. Sometimes, there’s a logical disconnect between the product and the marketing. Think of it as a “cognitive dissonance,” where the message and the media contradict each other. This makes for some rich, visual irony in many situation. Case in point, The United States Postal Service, and their efforts to promote direct mail with their Deliver magazine.

I don’t fault ‘em for trying. In this age of instant gratification, 500 channels on satellite, and instant messaging, direct mail can seem…well…quaint. I don’t know how it is at your house, but about 90% of the direct mail solicitations I get are immediately consigned to my round file. (You know – the round thing under your desk that gets emptied when full.) The USPS has an image problem. In a world filled with “green” this and “eco-friendly” that, anything that requires using paper (from trees) and energy (from fossil fuels) is risking the wrath of the eco-Nazis and greenies. As a quasi-public entity, the Postal Service can only make money if people are mailing things, and apparently, people mailing things is experiencing a “negative growth posture,” to use marketing-speak.

With the double-bogeyman of paper and energy useage, the Postal Serivce is trying to market their way out of their problems. While I’m obviously a big believer in marketing, there’s such a radical disconnect between what they’re suggesting (direct mail is environmentally friendly and responsible) and the obvious facts (direct mail takes a lot of paper, uses a lot of energy to transport/deliver said paper, not to mention recycling and waste issues), I’m not sure anybody’s buying what they’re selling.

Just today, we receive the latest in their efforts to twist the majority’s perceptions in their favor. It was a truly existential experience. The promotion was shipped, Priority Mail, no less, in one of those boxes that are roughly the size of about three coffee table books, or one good-sized city phone book. Inside was a crumpled piece of brown craft paper (to keep the contents from rattling around), a cover letter/business reply card, and a spiro-bound booklet that must have cost a pretty penny to print – lots of custom die-cuts, folds, and hand-glued pockets. Oh, yeah – and a tshirt. The booklet and shirt displayed a kind of post-ironic, cheeky, “pay no attention to logic an reasoning…listen to us” logo. “en•vi•ron•mail•ism™” is the campain name, with “your handbook to greener Direct Mail” as their slogan.

The piece is positively lousy with logos that proudly proclaim their political correctness – 100% Wind Energy! Carbon Neutral! 30% Post-Consumer Waste! Chlorine-Free Paper! Acid-Free Paper! 100% Post-Consumer Waste! (They seem to be a little confused on that one.) The text helpfully points out How You Can Still Send Ridiculous Amounts Of Unwanted Junk Mail And Have A Clear Conscience If You Follow These Helpful Steps!

Let’s pause for a nanosecond and consider the obvious.

It takes a certain amount of energy to make paper. Any kind of paper. It takes a finite amount of energy to transport a piece of paper from one place to another. These are fixed costs – not variables. The obvious way to reduce pollution and to be more ‘green’ is to stop sending so much bloody unwanted mail. Since the USPS is constitutionally opposed to sending LESS mail, they’d like you to ignore this. While there are certainly ways to reduce the impact on the environment that printing and mailing cause, if you are really concerned with reducing your “carbon footprint” (um…yeah. Sure.), the best way is to NOT PRINT AND MAIL STUFF.

Their suggestions for how to lessen your guilt are helpful (especially if you’re a bleeding-heart liberal), but you’d be better off, green-wise, if you simply eliminated a mailing or two from your marketing plan. What gets me is the oh-so earnest tone of the text, as if they have wonderful news that will solve your problems, heal the sick, save the farm, and make your teeth whiter, all while Saving The Planet By Being More Responsible Through Making Symbolic Gestures Rather Than Using Logic And Reason.

Unfortunately, self-serving crap like this has become an epidemic throughout MarketingLand. They offer feel-good platitudes that provide drop-in-the-bucket ‘solutions’ to problems that can better be addressed by applying a little logic and reasoning to create more reasonable strategies that actually SOLVE things. For instance, moving away from buying mailing lists and towards permission-based lists, where people are actually asking for you to send them your information.

Here’s the deal. Saving little bits here and there eventually adds up to significant savings. But when you use that logic to continue sending out wasteful mailings, instead of mailing smarter, the only thing you’re really saving is your own conscience.