Attack of the Ronbots!

Confirmed: Someone is illegally spamming the internet on behalf of Ron Paul and they're using a botnet of hijacked computers from all over the world to do it.

A few days ago this mass emailing was conducted. Subject lines were randomly selected from a list of approximately 17. The spam actually created it's own fake first & last name as sender, but the addresses of compromised computers were exposed. Some of those emails ended up in the inbox of a computer forensic expert at the University of Alabama, Gary Warner, who broke the story on his blog and to Wired.

This is a dark, but pivotal moment for the "netroots." After all, It marks the first time the internet has a had a global, presidential spam campaign. Heck, you might be participating and not even know it.

It also reminds of something else I had never seen: a 3,000+ dugg Ron Paul story that never quite made it to Digg's homepage. Take a look at it and I think you'll understand why!

Is Top Digger Hosting Malware, or is Google unfairly 'Burying' Him?

Self-proclaimed "Social Media Maven," top digg user, and blogger, Muhammad Saleem is a forced to be reckoned with on Digg.com. He regularly has numerous stories on the homepage of digg- almost on a daily basis. He' part of a weekly podcast, the drill down, and as one of digg's unofficial top 3 submitters, he's literally directing hundreds-of-thousands of eye balls in web traffic per week.

I've followed "msaleem" on digg.com and netscape's social new site, propeller, where he is a paid member of the community. He consistently submits popular content and is an active and high profile participant and contributor in the social ecosystem of many of these bookmarking communities.

I was therefore very surprised when I googled him to find out that Google's search says Muhammad's site will literally be harmful to my computer and won't even allow me to click through to his blog! I've visited Mu's site numerous times in the past. I have never wondered about my privacy, safety, or security in doing so. However, at least according to Google anyway , I should be concerned. Considering the number of other visitors and digg users that likely have visited it, I think perhaps we all should be, at least until Muhammad comes forward, or the issue is cleared up.

Which leads me to this: I have contacted Muhammad on pownce about this 2 days ago, and he still hasn't responded. I'll update if he does. In the meantime, if anyone out there is a web expert and safely can attest to the veracity of Google's finding (or lack thereof) and the safety Mu's site, I'd definitely want to hear about that as well.

Complete Update From Muhammad on Pronet Advertising

Update 2 - 10/29: I've heard from another webmaster, that this is something that has happened by mistake before. I find that to be troubling, especially when it comes from Google. If certainty is in doubt, Google really needs to take the site/result out the index instead of labeling it like this. The lack of specific information as to what the alleged badware is, is very frustrating too.

Update 3 - 10/29 10:17 PM, cst: A friend emailed me that they think there is something running on this site. Upon clicking through from a bloglines reader, their My Avast software popped up virus alerts. Still lacking complete details, but be careful. There are two kinds of viral content and this is one you don't want.

Final Update: See the linked Update from Muhammad above regarding what happened and how it's been fixed. It turns out that his index.php file was hacked and there was in fact some malicious code there (a Javascript Trojan from what some vistors could discern) It's more important than ever to make sure your systems are secure and up-to-date. As we increasingly put our lives online, and the dark hackers get ever more sophisticated, we are constantly at risk. Look for more posts on security to follow.

Digg Adds Search for User History, Limits "History" to Recent Activity?

It seems that Digg.com may have taken 1 step forward but 2 steps back with the addition of the user search feature.

Checking my digg history, I notice that it only goes 3 pages back. I discovered this when I tried to search for a story I know I've dugg within the last 72 hours. Upon searching for the exact title or even by specific keywords, I got nothing. Trying to manually page back led me to discover this new 3 page limitation.

The history data and ability to view isn't completely gone, it's just hiding. The URL for each page of your history ends in /page1, 2, 3, and so on. So by manually typing in subsequent numbers it you can view further back.

In spite of that, the user search is not indexing anything past 3 pages of recent history, which defeats the purpose of a search feature altogether. How hard is it, really, to check something you've dugg recently? I don't know about you, but if I'm searching for something, it's probably because I dugg it a while back and can't find it easily the manual way. Now, it seems, they are trying to prevent finding it either way.

The Digg homepage and upcoming queue are time sensitive in nature, but it is still social bookmarking isn't it? Is our digg history / collection of bookmarks now temporary in nature too?

As an aside, you can no longer view the your submission history by whats hit the homepage either. What are they trying to hide?

More from the, "you have too many friends" dept.

Along with Facebook, it's been revealed that Digg.com has a friend limit of it's own. From Mrs. Silence Dogood's blog, it appears that limit is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or so. You're probably thinking:


"why in the hell would anyone want 1000 or more friends?"

"Isn't that too many?" "How do you manage that?"

"Isn't that just ridiculous??"

In the new world of social networking, bookmarking tools and technology, and with the ever changing way that we communicate, contact, and interact who is to say how many friends/contacts/feeds is too many?

If another user wants to really engage with the community of users around them like this, using the tools and capabilities provided to them, I say more power to them. As long as it's not for spamming or nefarious purposes, I don't see any problem someone having as many friends as they can manage.

Thoughts on Digg's "Fat Belly" of stroy submissions

Cruising through the upcoming queue on Digg.com, it's becomes quite clear that the changes to the site have fattened it's belly in terms of stories with 20-40 diggs. Additionally, it seems to me that the # of active digg friends is more important than ever to get a story on the front page.

I regularly get 10-15 incoming shouts per day to look at stories (most of which do get promoted) and though it's slowed down a little, I still get at least 10 or so notifications of people following me. (Ironically, none of these followers are digging anything I've submitted ;-)

I digg for it's own sake, and as long as I have time to do it, I'll keep posting stuff that I think is cool whether it gets 20 diggs or 2000

In the meantime, I think I am going to start looking more at the stories by # of comments and also by length of time in the queue. I want to find the other "fat belly" or "long tail" stuff thats simply flying under the community's radar.

Getting real with anyone who follows this site...

I'm seriously considering shutting this blog down. Whether or not I do, one thing is for certain: I don't want to pretend to be some kind of "social media consultant" I've come to the conclusion that there isn't (or shouldn't) be any expert wisdom when it comes to sharing information with people.

I very simply am just another geeky "early adopter" internet junkie. After spending more time reading blogs not on the digg rotation, I've decided that being "real" is far more interesting than trying to imitate Techcrunch and write press release garbage. There's a place for that kind of thing, and some people do it really well. I do plan to continue to follow tech development that indexes, tracks, and disrupts on my other blog, but as far the whole "social media" is concerned, I kicking it casual from here on out.

I originally started this blog to save my favorite posts from digg and had the idea of doing kind of a extended commentary on stuff I felt strongly about or just very interested in. It's never really taken off because I don't have the time to write as polished of pieces as I want too, and in larger part because I never, ever leave the damn digg site long enough too.

Perhaps I'll get back to this original concept. In the event that I don't and you are (or fancy yourself to be) a "social media" blogger/person/consultant/entrepreneur/ regular old person: I'm listening to any ideas or even offers for the domain.

You're not a "friend whore" just becuase you have a lot of friends

I am not a huge user of facebook (although my wife is) but I just read a great post from Robert Scoble on why their 5,000 friend limit is, in his opinion, unnecessary and restrictive. What I like about Scoble's post is that even irrespective of facebook, it's the best defense I've ever read for having a large online social network.

I have many personal friends who simply don't understand or actually frown upon having significanty more "virtual friends" than real ones (the "friend whore" accusation). I've never really been able to convincingly articulate why I have a few hundred friends on Digg or Myspace, etc...I am sincerely not out for any kind of online popularity contest, but what can I say, I enjoy networking and making contacts with interesting or like-minded people.

Scoble articulates better reasoning & justification for having a large contact list as well as a great explanation of the real friends/ virtual friends dichotomy: Virtual friends or contacts are not necessarily real friends, nor do they have to be.

When Digg.com made changes to their site and allowed for an unlimited number of friends, shouts, etc. I initially noticed that several diggers who I was "friends" with had un-friended me. My wife, who is not on digg, guessed that perhaps people felt like since I had several hundred friends already, I was something of a "friend whore." and that was a turn off. I don't know if this is the case of not, but I read hundreds of RSS feeds and enjoy following like-minded bookmarkers. If that's a bad thing, than shoot me.