Posts Tagged ‘bebo’

Social Networking in Ireland

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I don’t really get social networks. Maybe it’s because I’m a geek and I don’t do “normal” conversations. I get bored easily.

I’m good at listening to other people talk without being able to summon the interest to actually get involved. Though get me talking on something I’m interested in, and you won’t be able to get me to shut up – computers, the Simpsons, Star Gate, Star Trek, Terry Pratchett, rugby, snooker, good movies, WordPress, web design, Microsoft vs Apple, Internet Explorer vs Firefox ….[1]

Which all goes to show that despite the fact that I work in a bar and can, if the job requires it, talk to anybody about any subject under the sun, I still don’t do social networking all that well.[2]

Considering what I just wrote, you’ll probably find it hard to believe that I have a Bebo account,[3], a twitter account and a Facebook account. All underused and rarely checked.

Bebo annoys me. Too many kids shouting, with bad spelling and using terrible grammar.[4] Every time I see a comment left on a Bebo page, all I want to do is take a virtual red pen to it and mark the spelling and grammar mistakes.

Facebook annoys me because every time I log in there are 101 Application Invites waiting for me, and every one of them wants my personal information and requires me to invite 2,000 of my friends before I can participate. To me that’s just spamming and phishing, and I hate it. I really hate it.

Twitter on the other hand does have potential. Yes, posting is limited to 140 characters at a time, and you can’t embed images, or do anything really fancy with it, but that’s the best thing about it. It’s a simple idea, well executed. I think I may actually like Twitter. My only problem is that I don’t know enough people on Twitter to properly make use of it in a social sense.

So where is all of this going? Well, here’s where. Here’s a map of the world showing the most popular social networks within each country. The map is a bit small, so you’d think that Ireland would be hard to spot. Not so. Here’s a hint: it’s the only country coloured in red.

Social Networking Map

Social Networking Map

Notice anything else? It’s the only country in the entire world where Bebo is the dominant social networking site. To me that says two things:

  1. Considering the quality of the content on Bebo, this country’s future is fsckd[5], and
  2. Considering the age group using Bebo, I’m not the only one in my age group who doesn’t get social networking.

Now this map doesn’t give any figures, so I did a bit of digging around, and according to Alexa, 9.5% of Bebo’s traffic comes from Ireland. (In comparison, 50.5% comes from the UK and 14.9% comes from the US – figures are correct as of 30 December 2008.)

In fact Bebo ranks as Ireland’s sixth most visited website, behind Google (.ie and .com), YouTube, Yahoo and Windows Live. In other words, it’s the second most popular non-search related website in the country. That’s scary.

Facebook comes in at number seven on the list, and Twitter doesn’t even feature in the top 100.[6]

Does any of this have a point? Not really. I think it’s interesting to note that while the rest of the world is busy giving away their private data and helping to spam their friends and on-line acquaintances, we’re still at the stage of leaving “omg!!!!! u were so all over de plase last night. u goin out 4 de match 2morrow????? luv to ya cuz!!!” comments on Bebo.

Like I said, I don’t get social networking – maybe it’s because I don’t speak the language.

  1. I just read back on that list and realised that right there is a good definition of geekness. [↩]
  2. I don’t consider blogging to be social networking, as this is usually just me talking to myself. Unless I develop a couple of separate personalities, it tends to be less than crowded around here. [↩]
  3. Which I “donated” to my place of work [↩]
  4. Get off my lawn! [↩]
  5. ”LOL – OMG! u iz de bestest” – shoot me now. Please. [↩]
  6. Maybe that explains why I like Twitter – it hasn’t been discovered by enough morons to make it a site worth avoiding [↩]

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Bebo’s Spam Policy

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I maintain a Bebo profile for work. Personally, I’m not a great fan of Bebo, but I can understand why it’s one of the most popular sites in the country, and when your customers are part of the Bebo generation, it’s one of those things that you have to do.

What bugs me though is the fact that over the last few weeks, there’s been a huge increase in the amount of spam being sent on the Bebo network. Being the conscientious Internet user that I am, I of course report any spam received to Bebo.

I report spam because I loath spammers with a depth that is hard to describe. They are the absolute dregs of the Internet community. They prey on the computer illiterate, easily led and the just downright terminally stupid. Spammers create such a nuisance that a lot of time and resources are lost just to dealing with the vast amount of spam generated by these scumbags. In my opinion, anyone convicted of spamming should be left on a desert island, as far away from computer access as possible, and left to fend for themselves. Being the bottom-living scum that they are, it wouldn’t surprise me if even their SOS messages became an effort to hawk dodgy pharmaceuticals, fake watches and penny shares. OK, ok, rant over, back to Bebo’s Spam Policy.

Bebo’s spam policy pisses me off just as much as any spammer would:

What is considered Spam?
Spam is a comment or posting that bears no relationship to the content to which it’s related. For example, if someone uploads a video and all the comment says is ‘Check out ma’ page’ then that is clearly Spam. Multiple postings of the same comment is also Spam.

What happens after I report Spam?
All reports of Spam will be manually reviewed. If the reviewer agrees that it is Spam then the poster will be blocked from further posts for a certain period.

How long are Spammers blocked for?
It all depends how many times they have Spammed. The first time will be just 8 hours. The second time 24 hours. The third time 3 days. The more complaints received the longer the block will be for.

I can understand that a social networking site such as Bebo has to be careful when it comes to dealing with spam – too harsh a policy and anybody with a grudge can report a user for sending spam and innocent users could end up losing their profiles.

But when Bebo say that they manually review each report before taking action, then simply blocking spammers is a cop-out. To me Bebo are saying that they recognise that a spammer is sending possible pornographic spam to young kids, (every piece of spam I’ve received over the last few weeks has been links to porn websites), but all they’ll do is slap them on the wrist and leave the spammer keep their profile. That to me is a spam policy that is bordering on the criminally negligent.

Spam like this should be removed, the sender banned, the originating IP address logged and the senders ISP notified. The ISP should then notify the user and cut their access to the Net. Now some will make the argument that the majority of spam is generated on ordinary user machines which have been unknowingly compromised and are part of a “zombie network”. To that I say, “So? They should still lose their Internet access.”

If your computer has been compromised, and you don’t know about it, then you should be kicked off the Internet until you have resolved the problem. If you’re computer is under the control of another party, then chances are they’ll probably have your credit card number, bank details and more than enough information to steal your identity. Keeping you off the Internet and preventing your computer from passing on your personal information is doing you a favour.

I’d happily sign up with any ISP that promised to do this. Start with the backbone providers and let it trickle down to the major ISP’s and from them to smaller ISP’s, and we’d eventually have a lot less spam on the Internet.

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Posted in Internet, Rant | 6 Comments »