Spamming Social Media Sites
by skypecaptain
Recently I received a tip that someone was spamming Trulia Voices with advertisements for Realtor.com. The allegations which are detailed on this page were basically that a user was repeatedly responding to individual queries with short answers that provided links back to Realtor.com (you can see all the answers on their profile). The Voices community is alleging that this user and others (see Real Estate Pro in Thousand Oaks) are working for Realtor.com – based on the zip code they identified, which just happens to be close to Realtor.com’s headquarters.
Tying an individual’s identity to their Zip code is a bit of a loose connection – though it certainly looks suspicious.
Catching people by their IP range however, is a much stronger case.
Virgil Griffith’s Wikiscanner has already caused a bit of a kerfuffle as it has nabbed some pretty high profile companies making changes to Wikipedia database. Companies like Ford, Dell, Wal-Mart have all made some controversial edits to pages on the wiki and been nabbed. Wired Magazine’s 27bstroke6 blog has been keeping track of all of these changes.
So being curious, I ran a number of Real Estate 2.0 companies through the engine and didn’t expect to find anything terribly interesting. I did find however, that someone from Trulia’s IP range (see Wikipedia scanner results) had been spamming Wikipedia with links to their community profiles. You can see the changes on the following pages:
- New York City
- Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California
- Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California
- Russian Hill, San Francisco, California
The changes, which were all made late last year, have all long since been erased by Wikipedia editors.
In both of these cases, I suspect these moves were not officially sanctioned policies – rather the actions of overzealous individuals.
It does raise the issue of the ethics in spamming social media sites and more importantly, the possibility of the PR blowback because of it. In this age of greater transparency, the actions of a single individual (however well-intentioned) can have a negative impact on your corporate image, and all it takes is a passionate community or a simple tool like Wikiscanner to hold you accountable.
HomeInput | Aug 22, 2007 | Reply
This is such a shame. I wonder if the average Trulia user will understand what Trulia has done. Or will they care?
Rebecca Levinson | Aug 23, 2007 | Reply
Very interesting post Joel- I would prefer to get the traffic by true interest rather than by shortcutting the path. Though their are probably those who just prefer to get the traffic. Period.
Rebecca D. Levinson- http://www.connect2agent.com
Nice Job | Aug 23, 2007 | Reply
Spam or even slightly aggressive transparent community participation by individuals with a specific agenda or bias on behalf of a company is here to stay. Welcome to Web 2.0.
Good of Trulia to pick up on the Move.com folks raiding their Voices. It’s probably just the beginning as Move releases their social solution in October. If I were Move, I would’ve started trying to violate Trulia Voices and Zillow’s Wiki and any other real estate site with some pseudo-half baked social aspect to see if there’s any there-there. Also, Realtor.com could’ve been doing it just to help their own product development – you should always try out your competition’s dog food.
But Trulia shouldn’t cry wolf, since they know they’ve been doing the same thing. People in glass houses should not throw stones.
Lastly, you could get PayPerPost to do any of this on your behalf. There is a dozen plus cottage industry type companies that will “provide marketing services” on your behalf in community, social network, blog, etc type sites.
So to all my fellow realtors out there, how excited are you now to spend 30-45 min a day trolling these sites now and being a neighborhood expert. Pretty unexcited if you have to do it just to protect your page or your comments from a competitor.
TitleRep | Aug 23, 2007 | Reply
Speaking of spamming, Google has decided that my blog is a spam site. I am no longer allowed to post to it until someone from Google reviews it and makes a decision as to it being a legitimate blog or not.
I wonder how long that could take?
Maybe it’s time I look into another blogging solution instead of the Google Blogger platform.
Carson @ RealEstateRemix.com | Aug 23, 2007 | Reply
Unless a person understands the give-take philosophy of social network marketing, they will not know what else to do but spam. Check out WannaNetworks’ giant user base of ruthless mortgage brokers. If you have nothing to say, then how can you network? Noobs value quantity over quality. They cannot find a peaceful balance between company promotion and human interaction. In the end, these are people who see these messages and it ultimately hurts the spammers image.
tampella@hotmail.com | Sep 4, 2007 | Reply
Im glad you like my Spam picture.
You know whats funny? I have all rights on this picture reserved. Still I can find it all over the internet including some russian home pages. They talk about spam and illegal things but have no concern when they take other peoples pictures without even aknowledging them.
I appreciate a lot that you provided a link to my picture page.
Thank you.
Skypecpt.
Chris Dowell | Sep 4, 2007 | Reply
So true. Last year I didn’t need to moderate my comments. The whole year I received less than 50 spam comments. Last month alone, I received over 300 spammy comments. Most never read the post, they just spammed my blog with their comment. A few did read the post and tried to start with good post then went into their spammy comment. As social media sites, blogs and forums get more popular, there will always be people looking for an easier way to get their message out. Until all spam is stopped by some anti spam software, the spamming will get worse.