Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

gabyfairfield — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:45:47 -0000

i am weary of spams.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

terrydane — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:31:49 -0000

ok, nothing to share.. enjoyed the post..enlightening really...

and your comment cracked me up.. hahaha

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Captain Jack — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:52:28 -0000

I'm hearing this is growing to exponential proportions and even morphing into other types of attacks. I have a friend that is getting like over a 1,000 @replies with the a duplicate link from the last @reply. If this is not controlled quickly the twitter wheels will come to a screeching halt. People will scatter to other forms of social networking apps.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Elaine Allison — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:57:29 -0000

A company called Pramana (spin out of Georgia Tech Technical Labs) can fix this problem.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Roger — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:11:07 -0000

Good to bring this up. I have posted a detailed evaluation of three ways in which Twitter Trending Topics can be abused with use of hashtags. http://tinyurl.com/qhe2ba

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

tom — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:18:34 -0000

indeed

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Ohdoctah — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:30:56 -0000

did you not click the link and see all the 20-40+ year old people making up porn names? yeah take a look. Kids dont tweet, they txt. and if you can get someone personal info from making up a porn name the internet is over. Hope your having a good day.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Troy Morris — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:08:41 -0000

I did not see this article before I attempted to make #icecreamtaco a trending topic. I'm fascinated by trending topics on twitter for a desire to understand it's tipping point. As far as a I can tell, most trending topics come into the top levels by people tweeting things like "what is [trending topic term]?"

Now I'm just creeped out you folks wrote on this the same day I thought to try it. :(

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

TweepMyself — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:02:58 -0000

I begining to wonder about bigger problems re; virus' attacking our iphones, B'berry, etc. for the benefit of an example - A virus or hacker has invaded "Tweep_??'s phone and because I follow him/her - I innocently click on some tiny URL on a tweet, (ie like opening an email) thinking its safe to do so? I use an iPhone and I dont even know I have the worm/trogan - until I connect my phone to my desktop to synch - I have AV but is there a 'GOOD" possibility of this happening?

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

James Hofheins — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:43:23 -0000

I had no idea that such an innocent sounding game could result in a form of identity theft. I really need to be more careful.

James Hofheins http://twitter.com/jwhof
Operation Kindness
http://jameshofheins.blogsp...

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

samdiablo — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:33:15 -0000

girls? lol - 15 year old boys, maybe...and even then, they'd have to be very, very bored

other wise, in total agreement with Sheamus (plus, any-one stupid enough to not know they're being scammed & give out private info kind of deserves what they get)

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Benoit Tremblay — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:16:28 -0000

I don't think it's twitter's problem. If #TwitterPornNames is a trending topic then it is a trending topic. Now there's concern because it is some sort of scam, but sometimes you can't protect the users against themselves...

It's a scam, but still...it got popular. Not every spam attempt will end up in the trending topics.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Aurora — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:13:21 -0000

Hey. Just to clear up whatever confusion might be here I'm the one who wrote the PC World article. First off Community Voices is not even written by anyone who gets a dime from any ad revenue. Secondly, PC World to my knowledge has never used Google Adsense that's really for personal websites.

Also guys keep in mind I wrote the article to alert people so they wouldn't be going off and posting their mothers maiden name etc. There are plenty of other twitter scams that are out there fake links on users that have a lot of people they are following and not a lot of followers can lead to links via bios or single links on the page, I'm sure you have all seen them. That can lead to anything from malware to pishing pages and more.

If you would like to find out your own proof my suggestion is to go and search twitter porn names in the past before the article was written. It was the trending topic at the time, and people were playing it before it was posted this morning. Yes though it does seem odd how fast twitter's reaction time is.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

iTbay — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:49:09 -0000

I agree: the trending topics are not 100% reliable at this point; however, when the playoffs were on for Basketball and Hockey on May 11 2009, 7 of the 10 trending topics related to sports teams. Also, when the hockey game was over, the Canucks and Hawks, two hockey teams, these trending topics were climbing the latter with the Canucks remaining in second place for a while and with their goalie, Luongo, showing up at the 9th topic - most comments related to fans saying what they were going to do now that the playoffs are over and the fact that they may want to switch to the greatest team ever, the Toronto Maple Leafs :) lol. There is a great presence in Western Canada, British Columbia province, that use social media, blog, and twitter - this was evident yesterday in the trending topics and is also relevant when searching Google Trends (North Vancouver blogs religiously). Therefore, as a whole, we cant let some bad apples spoil the whole bunch. For the most part, trending topics are still a reliable measure - scamming twitter is a trending topic right now!

@itbay

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Mr. Ilarijs — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:35:09 -0000

I would be glad about #ilaarijs , why not? :D - http://ilaarijs.blogspot.com

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Jason — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:01:32 -0000

Agreed!! I've been noticing this more and more lately. It's getting out of control fast.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Nickd — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:27:47 -0000

This is a classic "garbage in, garbage out" problem. 140 characters, voluntary hashtags and no voting make for easy tweeting and a big user base, but the data generated are mostly gargage. There's a way to fix it (more structured input) to make the trends more credible, but it would leave Twitter with many fewer users. Interesting dilemma for Twitter the business. http://blog.vanno.com/index...

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Lucy — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:25:09 -0000

I'm pleased to say that the Adwords loony on Whatthetrend seems to have stopped his editing war.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Andrew — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:24:16 -0000

I agree it should be moderated. I put my vote out on the blogosphere (http://www.tcapushnpull.com... - hopefully we are heard.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Bike Gamer — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:10:49 -0000

I was wondering the same about Porn Names Trend. I finally played along too but I gave fake name. But you're right, the trends too easy to manipulate and some jerks can take benefit out of it.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Lucy — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:05:26 -0000

Shame about the loony posting mad rants on whatthetrend and getting rid of the useful info other people bother to put in, I've been trying to correct it (as have some others) but he's obviously doing it full time and is having an editing war with everyone else. Don't know why he's bothering, it's a shame because normally whatthetrend is really useful.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

805Therapy — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:02:39 -0000

Good info. What is twitter doing to moderate scams and protect it's users?

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Ohdoctah — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:35:03 -0000

You are right. Girls do this stuff all the time. If you were in porn what would your name be? people make up crazy stuff and they move on.

I mean honestly.. Mashable could have started the porn game to write a post on the manipulation of twitter. I mean really there are far worse scam and spammer moves going on on twitter. Now hop to it and save the world!!

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Hagan — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:29:23 -0000

If spam is viral, it's still viral.

Re: Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

Tiffany Monhollon — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:26:58 -0000

Totally agree - as this thing spreads out and approaches the "utility" function Ev is so fond of projecting, Twitter needs to fix these types of things and the other spam that's becoming rampant on the site. Those of us who have been using Twitter for a while can already see the compromises that are happening - and I think now is the time for Twitter to act - and hopefully avoid the spam-haven-approved label MySpace developed.