Month: April 2007

April 16, 2007

April 14, 2007

  • BREAKING NEWS: Twitter Hacked

    Something VERY odd is going on at Twitter right now. A user called JehovahOne created an account about two hours ago. Nothing strange there, BUT in those two hours JehovahOne has added over 2,550 friends! That number appears to be increasing by about 20 per minute. If a two-hour old account with one tweet and no picture adding 20 friends a minute isn’t a hack, I don’t know what is! (Apparently, I don’t know what is — see updates below) Worse still, many people seem to be on auto-pilot and are following JehovahOne simply because they’re returning the favor — friending a new friend back. 200+ followers as I post this! I’ll do updates if/as I learn more. Add a comment letting me know if you received the friend message.

    Update 1: An hour later we have 3,242 friends and 242 followers.

    Update 2: A few people have commented here and at Digg that this is a ‘bot rather than a hack. I guess that’s correct but I meant it in a broader sense as in someone’s found a way to use Twitter that will be perceived as a hack by many. By this I mean 3200 people now have a friend message in their inbox. Not bad on it’s own but if this becomes rampant a big mess for Twitter.

    Update 3: Looks like this is being driven by a script that’s taking names from the Public Timeline at Twitter. I checked about a hundred of JehovahOne’s “Friends” and all of them have posted in the last five hours (i.e. one hour before the user account was created). The Timeline updates every four minutes with the 20 most recent posts. Looks like anyone whose posts get there will get an invite.

    Update 4: Now that it’s been four hours since the account was set up the number of friends went DOWN from where it was after 3 hours. Not sure how friends would go down other than the user starting to remove people. I don’t think you can shake someone who’s following you on Twitter — or can you? I’m about to call it quits. Interesting watching this happen in real time.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 14, 2007.

  • Thought

    Uploading family pics to Flickr. Debating how much to make private vs. keeping public.

    View on Twitter

April 13, 2007

April 12, 2007

April 11, 2007

April 10, 2007

  • Embedding Functionality = Viral Business Models

    Here is a simple but critically important thought for anyone thinking about building web-based services: Websites aren’t nearly as important as they used to be. Some of the most interesting services online these days have learned to move beyond the web by making easily embeddable code. This allows site functionality to spread well beyond the boundaries of the site itself and makes every user a potential distributor. For example, here’s a widget that tells you all about my Twittering:

    This one offers you the top artists I’ve played on my Mac as tracked by Last.fm:

    <app lost due to link decay>

    And maybe most interestingly, here is a 45 song set of stuff I used to play when I was a club DJ in the early 80s courtesy of Finetune:

    Widgets, feeds, embeddable code, badges — all of these trends make it far easier for sites to extend their reach. If you’re not thinking about this, how will you compete with sites that do?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on April 10, 2007.

April 7, 2007

April 6, 2007

April 5, 2007

April 4, 2007

  • Thought

    Considering a Media Fast this weekend. Not sure I can actually do it. It’s been a LONG time.

    View on Twitter

April 3, 2007

  • MarketingProfs Says Sorry

    James Carroll at “Ceridian” sent us a quick note today:

    Don’t know if you’ve seen the e-mail blast(s) from marketingprofs.com. I liked their apology, plus it makes me feel good that not everyone’s perfect! It appears that most (all?) of “MarketingProfs” subscribers received numerous messages, all with slightly different offers or messaging. Here’s what my inbox looked like earlier today:

    James is right, the apology they sent out as soon as they realized what had happened was a good one.

    It probably wasn’t the nicest message to have to write, but Sharon Hudson did the write thing and handled it professionally and in a warm, personal manner. I think Sharon might have to add a comment to our “Question of the Day — Your Biggest E-marketing doh?”

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on September 7, 2006.