The BBC wrote an article on spam which you can read here.
Some key takeaways - according to Spamhaus more than 90% of email is spam 
BT, Bulldog, Wanadoo and Tiscali are failing to tackle the problem of botnets (spam sent from ordinary household computers that have been hijacked by hackers).
I’m not sure whether it is an omission or whether the 2nd and 3rd largets ISPs (Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse) in the UK are doing a better job of dealing with this.
Earlier today, I spoke at Marketing Tech around the idea of treating email marketing as a conversation. From the feedback it seemed to go down well 
The conference overall was good - I liked the interactivity of the sessions rather than the more usual presentations delivered usually - it is nothing like the interaction present in tech/web 2.0 conferences though - but then this is a much less tech orientated crowd - it was mostly brand or internet marketers present. In fact, I never even saw an open laptop during any of the sessions.
The session I was looking forward to, and most related to this blog, was the Web 2.0 session presented by Will Mcinnes (I am 99% certain he will visit this site again if he practises what he preaches and tracks his “ego” online!). These sorts of sessions are again completely different to the web 2.0 conferences. I asked a question regarding Twitter and how brands should look to get involved. I don’t think he really answered my question - mainly because not many had even heard of Twitter yet - even my geek savvy Account Manager had not heard of it as (though I sense she will be using it shortly) - I imagine this would almost be sacrilege in a web 2.0 conference these days! In any case, the session lived up to expectations and I thought he got across the concepts of “buzz marketing” and “sentiment analysis” and the idea of having a conversation with your audience which I believe is the way forward. Of couse to have a conversation you have to listen..
So one of the tools he mentioned was Brandwatch which I am assuming are these guys. They look interesting, and seemed to be able to show where conversations involving your brand are taking place. It is certainly a good place to start. Nielsen Buzz Metrics is a similar tool - I have used Nielson’s BlogPulse in the past to track conversations online and found it to be a useful free tool, though Will mentioned that Nielsen’s Buzz Metrics is paid for. Google Alerts is an even easier starting point to track your brand online, though possibly more time consuming.
Anyway, I don’t want to regurgitate the whole session again here - I recommend you head over to either Will’s blog or his company website for more info.
So you can now add your facebook friends to your windows live (or MSN) messenger account. (You can also add your msn messenger friends to facebook). I gave it a quick test and sure enough it pulled all my contacts out of Facebook and offered me the option of adding htem to my messenger account.
One problem.
It did not differentiate between those that already have a Messenger account; those that I am already connected to and everyone else.
Basically I have to spam all my friends asking them to sign up for Live Messenger, surely Microsoft can check who has a valid account or not? I am ignoring the fact my friends could be using Yahoo Messenger (whom I can also connect to using Live Messenger) - as I assume Yahoo will not let Microsoft check for a valid account.
Another major issue, is that it also only pulls in my main email address from Facebook - not my Live messenger account which I have filled out in my profile so anyone using this would connect to me using the wrong account anyway.
Oh dear.
Friendfeed and socialthing are both lifestream aggregators. They pull in your information stored across multiple services on the internet into one place. You can then use those aggregators not just for your information but also to follow the lifestreams of others.
Louis Gray believes that friendfeed should win because of one key feature - its ability to build a community or network by allowing users to comment on items posted inside friendfeed.
Muhammad Saleem believes that SocialThing’s ability to allow users to comment outside socialthing inside the external service is the better solution.
I have not yet seen SocialThing (it is in private beta) - but it strikes me that SocialThing’s methodology is the way to do things provided you can still see the conversation inside socialthing.
Of course, Duncan Riley of Techcrunch thought that Friendfeed is just another lifestream aggregator (compared to Plaxo Pulse, Tumblr, Spokeo, Second Brain, SocialThing and Iminta) and that why would you even want to republish Twitter and Google Reader shared items. Can’t you just go to their sites?
I think right now they are all much of a muchness in comparison with each other. Friendfeed does have the ability to connect to 30 other services online and a huge following, SocialThing has a lot less services and even less of a following. I completely disagree with Duncan on the lack of need to republish.
My view is that these lifestream aggregators have huge potential for consumer benefit online. It could become the platform for web services, allowing users to choose their favourite photo/video/blog/whatever provider whilst not forcing their friends to sign up or worse visit lots of different sites to see them all. Duncan makes a valid point though about Twitter, its very nature means it takes up a huge portion of the overall feed. What I would like to see is the ability to separate items into different areas so I can follow people’s Twitters in one area, photos in another and blog posts/interesting items somewhere else. ie customizability of the lifestream.
I have been a reader of Louis Gray’s blog and his Google Reader shared items for a while now and I think he is straying into the territory that Scoble used to drift into when he was at Microsoft. Namely, tunnel vision on one topic. Lous’ shared items is one huge mass of Friendfeed coverage, whilst his blog has been mentioning it in a majority of recent posts. It is starting to get a tad boring.. you like friendfeed I get it! What I don’t understand is why cover them so much? Is there some connection between Louis and friendfeed? Is this just a way of giving Louis Gray some attention? Or is it just a great service that incites this sort of coverage?
Some thoughts on Friendfeed coming up shortly..
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple
