Angel Blog Reviews » knowledge

Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Los Angeles

cgseo — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:55:10 +0000

Best known for its movie stars, sun and surf, Los Angeles probably isn't the first place you'd think to breed technology. But when you consider the influence of investors like Jason Calacanis and Mark Suster, in addition to the fact that companies like

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Never Mind the Valley: Here's Los Angeles

How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest. Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! Works With Just About Anything We'll use the field of Education as our example, because there is a lot of activity there and we presume we've got more educators as readers here than butchers or candlestick makers. These methods can be applied to discovering the hottest people and topics in social media in any field, though. If you doubt that these kinds of steps could help in your line of work - check out this post , where we found the best work-related RSS feeds for Fire Inspectors and Physical Therapists, just to prove that we could. In the following 13 steps, we'll walk you through how we identify top blogs on any topic, how we quickly figure out what their most popular recent posts have been about, how we incorporate their blog archives into our knowledge about the field and how we find where else they are participating in conversation around the web. Going through the whole process takes us less time than it took us to write this post. No end of variations are possible, of course, on this method - but we expect a lot of readers will find this useful. People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to "join the conversation" - because they aren't sure where to find the conversation. Here's how we find and track the most popular conversations in niche fields. Popularity isn't a perfect judge of quality by any means, but it's a good place to start from. Is this post a cheat sheet? Maybe, but we think of it as a way for you to make your cheat sheet on whatever sector you follow. Find The Most Popular Blogs in Your Field There are many different ways to identify the top blogs in a given field, systematically, but some methods work better than others depending on the niche you're looking at. We compared six of our favorite methods in this post . Here, we found that visiting http://delicious.com/tag/blog+teaching gave us good results. By default the URLs are listed in reverse chronological order - the most recent items that anyone has bookmarked and have ever been called both "blog" and "teaching" will appear first. In the image above you can see that we're running two Greasemonkey scripts called Autopagerize and Sort By Popularity . Greasemonkey is really easy to use, see our post How to Learn to Use Greasemonkey in 5 Minutes. . These scripts let us open multiple pages of bookmarks all at once and then sort them in order of popularity. So we did that, then scanned down the top several pages of most popular items tagged both "blog" and "teaching." We tried words other words like "education" as well. Each time we found a good site, we copied the link to it and went to step two. Add The Feeds to a Reader We like to use Netvibes to build collections of feeds because it's easy. Click on "add items" then "add feed" and paste in the link to the top blog you found. Netvibes will auto-discover the RSS feed for the site, often multiple variations but it shouldn't matter which one you choose. We pick "RSS 2.0" just because it's the most standard. Add it to your page and then go back to Delicious to find more sources. We repeated the discovery step until we found about 10 good blogs to subscribe to. Then we visited those blogs and looked at their "blogrolls" or sidebar links to their favorite blogs. We found a number of good sources to include in our list that we had never heard of before. One was a good looking blog about education and technology that was written in Spanish, so we grabbed its feed and ran it through Mloovi.com to have it automatically translated into English, then put that translated feed into Netvibes. Once you've got a good collection of top blogs in that Netvibes "tab" it's time to get it out of there. You can read the blogs in Netvibes, but there's more that we're going to do with these blogs. When you're in the "add feed" screen, you'll see an "OPML Export" link. OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the format that reading lists are imported and exported from feed readers in. It's really simple. Export it to your dekstop and then move onto the next step below. We're now going to edit an OPML file - but don't be scared! It's easy, we promise. Anyone can do it. Pull Out Your New Tab's Feeds This step assumes you've using Netvibes, or some other start page, for other things in addition to this project. If that's not the case, skip to the next step. We use Netvibes for a number of different things, so when we put together a new collection of feeds in it and want to export them, we have to deal with the fact that our whole collection of feeds in all our tabs gets exported. Simply search for the title of your tab in the file, then delete everything outside of that section! Everything except the very beginning and end of the file, that is. You can see what it should look like below, in the next step. The Top of the OPML File. Don't delete the document type declaration of the body tags. Rename the title of the file and resave your document. Now don't you feel smart? That was really easy though! Now to Find the Hottest Posts from Those Top Blogs Now that you've got an OPML file of the most popular blogs in your field, you can take that file over to Postrank.com and import it. You'll need to create an account, and the service doesn't allow you to manage multiple OPML files, so you may need to create a new account for every time you do something like this. I just create a new account with a GMail alias. Did you know that as while other apps, like Postrank, think that emailmarshall@gmail.com, emailmarshall+1@gmail.com and emailmarshall+2@gmail.com are all different emails - Gmail considers them the same thing? It's true, that's an alias and all emails sent to any of those will end up in the same inbox. So I create a new account for each OPML file (silly, but that's how you've got to do some of these things) and then import my new OPML file. Rank the Blog Posts With Robots! Once you import that OPML file from your desktop, you'll probably notice that Postrank has seen some of the feeds and not seen others. You should probably come back in an hour once they've processed the remaining feeds. What are they doing? They are checking every item in every feed to see how many comments it has, how many inbound links, how man times it's been bookmarked in Delicious or Digg, how many times people Tweeted about it, etc. It's then ranking each item in each feed on a scale of 1 to 10, relative only to the other items in that same feed. What does this mean? It means you can have Postrank show you only the most popular posts in each of these top blogs, as determined by the blogs' own communities of readers. That's valuable information! It's a very fast way to get up to speed on the latest hot topics in your field and by subscribing to the feeds filtered for popular items, you can pay peripheral attention to this field but know that you'll never miss a really big story. Thanks Postrank! If you're interested in the Greatest Hits of Top Education Bloggers, here's the OPML file we built with the feeds we've found so far: Top Education Blogs - Greatest Hits . Just right click and save that link, then upload it to your feed reader. Banish Content Overload By selecting all the feeds in your collection, then setting their filter to "great" - you'll be shown just the hottest posts from each blog. Selecting "best" will show you almost nothing at all, though. Once you've set the filter to Great, export this filtered version of your OPML file and move on to the next step! Pretty Up Your Collection We would recommend opening this new OPML file in your text editor and renaming it something more useful. Check Out the Hotness By clicking on any of the feeds you imported into Postrank, you can check out the hottest posts in that blog's recent history. Hello time saver! Some of you might be temped to call it a day at this point, and we have captured a lot of good intelligence with relatively little work - but don't stop now, there's more we can do! You'll want to take these next steps, too. Import Into a Feed Reader Go back to your Netvibes or other reader's "add a feed" page and you'll see the option to import an OPML file. Import your new Postrank.com filtered OPML file and you'll be subscribed to just the hottest posts from the best blogs in your field of interest. Oh but there's still more we can do! Make a List of the Links You Found There's a number of different ways you can do this, you could have made a separate list of your links before you subscribed to their feeds, but I didn't in this example. Instead I went into Netvibes, clicked on the title of each blog and copied its home page URL over to a list in a text editor. Why do you want this list of links? Check out the next step. Make a Reference Search Engine! Google Custom Search Engine is really easy to use and is an incredibly powerful tool. Just paste the list of all your top sources in your field into the box on the page, save it, then bookmark the URL of the resulting search engine. Now any time you want to look real smart on a topic in education, you can just search for keywords in your Top Education Blogs Custom Search Engine. We have a lot of different Custom Search Engines that we use here at ReadWriteWeb. Want to see what the results look like? Here's the Custom Search Engine we've got so far for Top Education Blogs .

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How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic

Sponsor Post: MyDomain Shows How to Take Your Business Online in 2010

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Editor's note: we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. Over the past decade, the Internet has evolved at a rapid pace, and if you didn't jump on the bandwagon in years past you may be feeling like it's a bit too late to establish an online business. That's not the case, however, and 2010 is the perfect time to start doing business online. The underlying technologies of Internet architecture are well-established and are more affordable now than ever to end-users. Sponsor The last several years have also seen a huge increase in the number of available social tools, web utilities and online services that make promoting your business and being visible online easier and more affordable. The number of Internet users continues to grow substantially across the globe, and there are an expansive number of channels you can use to reach potential customers online. From an economic perspective, now is also a good time to consider starting or growing your business. The global economy is showing signs of recovery from recession, and catching an economic upswing when growing a small business is always a good thing. Small business loans from banks and other creditors may still be difficult to come by, however, which makes an online business an even better choice due to low start-up costs. In recent history, a great deal of attention has been paid to the massive growth in large social networks, but now the Internet appears to be shifting towards a more local or hyperlocal focus with smaller communities inside bigger networks becoming more common. As a result, small businesses offering local products or services can find a targeted audience of potential customers to engage with. All these factors make now a great time to start your business online. Follow through on a 2010 resolution to make money from what you enjoy doing by starting a complete business from the ground up, adding an online component to your existing physical business, or just using a website to supplement other income and test the water for your idea. Below are a few steps you can take to get started. 9 Steps to Getting Your Business Online Find a little cash : It's probably going to cost a lot to get started with a business website, right? Not so much. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can't afford to start a business online just because you see startups with millions of dollars in venture capital funding featured on ReadWriteWeb or other tech blogs. A huge number of successful online small businesses were started out of a home office or garage workspace. The Internet is massive, and if you can find a good niche, you don't have to be everywhere at once to be successful. Costs for getting started with a domain name, hosting, basic website creation and online marketing can easily be kept under $1,000 in your first year of business if you plan well. Get a strong domain name : If you're in the early planning stages of your business, always keep potential domain names in mind when choosing a business name. If you move forward with a great business name only to find the domain name is taken , it could mean back to square one on name planning. Instead, keep a domain search handy as you brainstorm and get creative with names to find a great fit. Your domain name will be your website's permanent address on the web, so it's important to get it right the first time. Get Web hosting : You'd be surprised how many people think the domain name is all they need to build a website. What you need next is a place to store website files online. That could be something as simple as basic web hosting or a more powerful solution such as a virtual private server - both of which we offer at MyDomain. There are many other options as well, including self-hosting on your own server. There's a decent chance you know these basics already, so if that's the case, make sure to share your knowledge with others who are looking to get started online. Build a website : There are a huge number of options when it comes to creating a website in 2010. Most hosting packages come with some a website builder that will create a decent, if not slightly dated looking website from a template. If you're not experienced in web design but want to create a good-looking site yourself, look into content management systems such as Drupal, Joomla, or even WordPress as viable options that are easy to keep updated. The best - and not-surprisingly most costly option - still remains to hire a Web design company or freelancer. But if you're serious about your online business, your website design and usability should be a top priority. Create an e-commerce strategy : Now comes the fun part: figuring out how to let other people pay you. If you want to have an integrated shopping cart solution, you'll be able to sell directly through your site and manage complete product listings. However, this type of solution is the most expensive and complex way to sell online, and a simpler solution may be a better fit for a small business just getting started. A great place to start is simply integrating services such as Paypal or Google Checkout into your website to accept payments. Another viable alternative is to use a website as an informational source for your business, but sell through another online vendor like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy . A final option is to choose to not sell online, but instead establish a website to promote and market your physical business. Secure your site : If you're planning to sell through your website or will even be collecting sensitive information from visitors, you'll want to look into getting an SSL certificate for your website. SSL encrypts data transmissions to and from your website and is most commonly used to protect credit card and financial data. Varying levels of encryption and visible security indicators for your website are available. Network like crazy : Traditional networking can be crucial to the early success of a business, and social media can enable you to network effectively online. Talk about social media for business use is everywhere, and there are a huge number of resources and articles available to help you get started. Make sure that above all else, you go where your customers are. Utilize the tools that will allow you to most effectively communicate with those customers. Track like crazy, too : Make sure you're using website analytics to track your website visitors and sales. Part of the beauty of the web versus a traditional storefront is the ability to easily track, sort and analyze all of the data collected from visitors to your website. Analytics can help you improve your website design, track your sales conversion, see where you're ranking in search engines and much more. Google provides some of the best options available with Analytics , Webmaster Tools and Website Optimizer that all provide invaluable data for any online business. Grow and organize for the future : If you've made it to the point where you have a website set up, sales are coming in and your business is growing, it's the perfect time to make sure you're fully organized online. Use custom email addresses for your business, and make use of powerful collaboration, calendar and task management tools such as Open Xchange , Microsoft Exchange or Google Apps. Stay on top of the latest Internet trends and changes as things will continue to change rapidly for the foreseeable future. From there, carry your 2010 success long into the future as the Web continues to expand as a great place to do business. Discuss

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Sponsor Post: MyDomain Shows How to Take Your Business Online in 2010

Sponsor Post: Mashery’s Tips to Enrich Your Developer Community

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. The holidays are underway and 'tis the season of flowing eggnog, overgenerous meals, and contemplation of both the year gone by and the year to come. Reflecting on 2009, it's obvious that there has been phenomenal growth in the business of APIs with recognized sites Best Buy, Netflix, Etsy, New York Times, CBS Interactive , PayPal, LinkedIn, and others keeping busy ramping up their API platforms to extend their businesses in new directions. Sponsor What's not so obvious is that cool, compelling API offerings are only part of the equation. The true key to a successful API platform is successful developers. Launching an open API platform requires a holistic strategy that includes a value proposition for developers as well as your company, plus an actionable plan for cultivating a community inspired by economic opportunity. Here we present you with some thought-starters to help you with your 2010 developer community resolutions: Give the gift of self-help documentation and support Developers are smart. They are motivated to find the answers themselves. Establish your developer portal as the face for your API platform. Supply effective tools and the latest information about your API to give developers the answers that they are seeking. Always start with a value statement about your platform that answers the question: "Why would a developer want to build an application on this API?" Consider both new and experienced developers and cater the value proposition so you can provide a reason for developers to build once... twice... and keep on building in order to grow your application portfolio. Your portal is the knowledge gateway to your community, whether they are new to your API offer or seasoned partners who want to get the latest status and release information -"Gee, I wonder when that bug fix will be taken care of so I can pick up development?" Achieve this by applying a three-pronged approach to your developer portal and community tools: Developers go to your forums to search for answers, not to ask basic questions and wait days for the answers. Optimize search and prune your threads so that your discussion boards are a living knowledge base of accurate FAQs for your API platform. Always add a status dimension to your discussion boards. Badges, exposing number of posts, and user ratings are a simple way to provide your most knowledgeable and active community members with a stamp of expertise. Offer small incentives to your experienced posters who are willing to handle the newbie questions. Their help will free up your resources to focus on the more complex issues. So keep 'em happy. Include an open source dimension to your tools and documentation. Solicit input and suggestions, verify and proof the activity, publish or deny the post, and alert the contributors of the action. Open sourcing allows your API platform to support a greater breadth in coding languages and get updates updated more frequently. Above all, if you launch an API platform, support it. By establishing the developer portal you are making a commitment that someone on your team will be there to respond to the developer community you are attempting to grow. Always continue to monitor and contribute to the discussions, and provide updates when and where relevant. Stay factual, be helpful, and don't hit send if you're feeling defensive. Moderators should be strong listeners because lessons from your community are the best feedback for successful growth. Marketing is not a bad word Don't be afraid of marketing. Bad marketing is a used car salesman trying to sell you something you don't need. Good marketing is information you need to make the best decision. Developers may say otherwise but they do respond to marketing that gives them useful information. Elevate and showcase the voices of developers who find information about your API useful. In many cases all you have to do is add a dimension of developer participation in marketing you are already doing. Feeds, Feeds, Feeds. Customizable, automated, real-time feeds. Blogs, Twitter, and RSS status alerts are simple to implement and create a stream of multi-channel activity that can be maintained with a lean team. Additionally, comments, re-tweets, and @replies are easy ways to track community interest, opinions, and trends. Be sure to list your API on ProgrammableWeb , a high-traffic directory and news source for the world of APIs. ProgrammableWeb is a prime resource for developers looking for new APIs. Look into adding a customer-centric Net Promoter Score (or NPS) metric to measure your program success. Knowing if your developer community would recommend your service to others adds an important satisfaction metric to gauge adoption and activation. Join the events bandwagon. No need to earmark non-existent funds for massive, impersonal developers conferences . Aim for an intimate, well-organized, and focused event to activate dormant developers into friendly evangelists. Recognize, celebrate, and reward good behavior. The more positive interactions you can create enables and grows ambassadors who do the job for you. Build a team of evangelists and allow developers to reap the rewards from their hard work. Provide developers with compelling incentives and data sets to create value Yes, of course, the business comes first. The decision of what data to expose with your API platform needs to support and align with your corporate and product strategy. But don't develop an API platform ecosystem built only to maximize value for your company positioning developers as the contributors. All stakeholders both contribute and extract value from a sustainable, healthy ecosystem. Don't forget to consider the value that your platform will provide to developers. Who are the customers of your platform and what are their needs? What monetization models would create the best incentives? What is the economic appeal of participation to developers? A popular API provides a compelling value proposition to the platform provider, the platform participants, and end users. Know what to measure and why you're measuring it A community for community's sake is a beautiful idea. But when backed by company resources, the community should exist to create value and opportunity around your API. Have the foresight to build in the right measurement tools to validate the effort. Consider your budget decision makers and track for success. Start with straightforward quantitative numbers: live applications, developers that signed up for the program, API keys distributed; then calculate the activation rate percentage (number of live applications / total developers). Identify any revenue figures attributable to your API. Depending on your API monetization strategy this could be through direct sales, revenue-share, advertising, affiliate programs, or another creative model. Look into positive qualitative feedback and voices of members of your community - posts, tweets, comments - items that can showcase developer appreciation, interest, and evangelism. This feedback should be monitored year-round and shared with the platform team and executives on a regular basis. It's a human reminder of the intrinsic value the community work brings to the brand and business. Would you host a holiday soiree and forget to prepare for your guests? So there it is. Don't fall into the "build it and they will come" mentality. It's no fun to stand on the sidelines watching other communities have all the fun; you need to invite them to your developer party! Whether you are newly launching or extending your community efforts, try some of these approaches to propel your API platform strategy in the direction of growth in 2010 and beyond. Discuss

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Sponsor Post: Mashery's Tips to Enrich Your Developer Community

Facebook in the Factory: Manufacturers Want Social Software, Too

cgseo — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:10:29 +0000

Factories may not be the first place you'd expect to see demand for social technologies. But social networks are changing how manufacturers view their operations. In a recent survey of 268 manufacturers, 63% of respondents said that enterprise resources planning (ERP) software will provide its highest value when integrated with social computing technologies. Users want ERP software to perform the functions of collaborative technologies and social networks. Sponsor But why do manufacturers want social technologies in the enterprise? According to Manufacturing BusinessTechnology , a trade publication, they want to develop ways to share the knowledge of senior engineers and professionals. Among manufacturers with more than $1 billion in revenue, 72% said they wanted this capability. Manufacturers are most interested in using data from social networks to capture leads, research competitors and perform business intelligence functions, such as product training. They are also interested in receiving contextual information from similar users at other companies, and troubleshooting. Manufacturers are turning out to be the surprise adopters of Enterprise 2.0 technology. In a recent survey done by the 2.0 Adoption Council, manufacturers were some of the most eager adopters of social technologies. The survey of manufacturing managers was done on behalf of IFS North America , one of the largest software providers to manufacturing markets. IFS is developing its open-source applications to fit the changing manufacturing landscape. For example, it is migrating away from static documentation technologies in favor of more collaborative applications such as wikis. Many manufacturing companies face an aging workforce. A new breed of socially oriented technologies will be considered part of doing business for a younger generation. It's evident that real-time technologies, social networks and cloud-based services are having real impacts across our economy. In 2010, we expect to see clear examples of how these new messaging and communications services affect supply chains across multiple industries. Discuss

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Facebook in the Factory: Manufacturers Want Social Software, Too

Harvard Medical School’s Learning Technology Must Be Smart…Right?

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:38:30 +0000

Research from Harvard Medical School has resulted in a pretty sharp SaaS learning system. SpacedEd , as it is called, uses a simple question and answer format that adapts to the person's level of knowledge. Today the adaptive technology is taking a leap into the business world with SpacedEd Enterprise , a service designed for corporations and for-profit educational groups. Sponsor SpacedEd is based upon the spacing effect, which states that people learn more effectively when presented information that is repeated over spaced intervals. Spaced Education is the company managing the technology. It conducted studies that show some pretty compelling results from training they did with doctors. For example, the SpacedEd training helped decrease cancer screenings by 26% in random clinical trials of 95 Virginia primary care providers, representing a potential cost savings of $650,000 per year in test costs alone. Here's how the service works: The learner receives course materials that are delivered electronically in a question format. People may receive questions by email, through an RSS feed or through a web site. Answers may be posted using any connected device, reflecting the nature in which people are conducting their lives. People receive two questions per day. If the person gets one of the questions wrong then it is posed again one week later. If answered correctly, the question is repeated three weeks later. If the person get it right a second time then the question is dropped from the course material. Course material is delivered to the recipient based on their knowledge level. SpacedEd Enterprise is designed for corporate clients and for-profit learning organizations. Administrators may control the access that users have to the courses. The service includes the capability to answer questions in a blog format so they may elaborate and create their own questions. SpacedEd offers a 30-day trial. Customers may use the technology on a pay-per-use basis. Discuss

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Harvard Medical School's Learning Technology Must Be Smart...Right?

Google Wants to Speed Up the Web: Launches Its Own DNS Service

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:54:57 +0000

Google just launched the Google Public DNS . Just like OpenDNS , Google Public DNS will allow users to bypass their ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS). DNS servers are, in many respects, the backbone of the Internet. DNS allows you to type a domain name like www.senate.gov into a browser instead of a machine-readable IP number like http://156.33.195.33/ . Google argues that it wants to give consumers an alternative to their ISPs' DNS services in order to make the Internet "faster, safer and more reliable." Sponsor According to Google product manager Prem Ramaswami, the company's engineers have been working to improve DNS over the last few months. Instead of performing DNS lookups on an ISP's DNS server, Google will use its data-center and caching infrastructure to resolve these domain names. After SPDY (which augments HTTP), this is Google's second major project that touches upon the core infrastructure of the Web. Using Google Public DNS Google Public DNS uses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as its IP addresses. Advanced users will surely have no problem making the necessary changes to enable Google Public DNS. The company has also released a set of step-by-step instructions for Windows, Mac and Linux users that can be found here . A First for Google: Phone Support for a Free Product In addition, Google is also offering phone support, which, to our knowledge, is unprecedented. Given that a mistake in changing your DNS settings could easily make accessing the Internet impossible, this is probably a good solution in this specific case. Privacy According to Google's FAQ, the company will only keep temporary logs and erase all the information it collects through the public DNS service within 24 to 45 hours. The company promises not to keep any information that is linked to IP addresses in its permanent logs. As of now, it doesn't look like Google offers any additional services besides the pure DNS lookup. Unlike OpenDNS, it doesn't block malware sites or present users with a list of alternative addresses (and ads) if it can't resolve an address. Discuss

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Google Wants to Speed Up the Web: Launches Its Own DNS Service

7 High-Tech Twitter Users Who Fell For Phishing Scams

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:25:04 +0000

Twitter's default URL shortening service Bit.ly announced steps today to stop phishing and malware attacks from being passed around online through its service. If effective, the effort should help a whole lot of people save face and prevent those moments of panic when you're afraid you may have lost access to your Twitter account forever. Really, though, people who take tech seriously don't fall for those kinds of things, right? Wrong! Below we offer the job titles of some of the most surprising people we've received phishing direct messages from over the last several months. It's a pretty surprising list. Sponsor May this serve as a memorial and a reminder that when new communication media emerge - even the most savvy people can get on board and fall for the oldest tricks in the book. Remember also, this could happen to any of us (apparently, perhaps) and thus the old saying "there, but for the grace of the Fail Whale, go I." "I made $300 today with http://ifortune4u.com" - and assorted variations... Bio: Market analyst following datacenters, energy efficiency, and blade servers. That's complicated stuff but probably pretty mechanical. No wonder a little human-engineering was able to overcome this person's defenses. Bio: Enterprise Comms Analyst That's Comms as in communications? Bio: Industry analyst: enterprise communications [Different person, same analyst firm as the above] Oops. Why are these analysts, some of whom charge up to $1000 per hour for their work, falling for a scam that promises relatively small sums of money? Bio: Consultant in large scale data warehousing. Looks like just a little bit of your data just got warehoused! Bio: Strategy planning at [Giant European Firm] Enterprise Communications How's this for an enterprise strategy? Know a phishing scam when you see one. Bio: Customer Interaction Analyst at [Giant Marketing Research and Analyst Firm] / Speech Reco and UI Geek / Trendspotter Oh my... Bio: an investor and co-founder of [common web 2.0 term].com; a founding partner and Vice-President in [big Web 1.0 company]...8 million page-views and 1 million unique visitors per month...with zero marketing budget. Surely there were people pulling scams like this back when you were...building a website with 8m monthly pageviews...with zero marketing budget... Want to brush up on your social networking skills, so you can stay off of lists like this? Check out Sarah Perez's post from October How to Avoid Malware on Facebook and Twitter: 8 Best Practicies . You can find the whole ReadWriteWeb team on Twitter here . You can follow us with the knowledge that we aren't going to spam you with scammy Direct Messages - or at least if we do you can write a blog post teasing us about it. Discuss

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7 High-Tech Twitter Users Who Fell For Phishing Scams