Comments on: Looking at Fake Social Media Profiles

By: Maurice

Maurice — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:01:56 +0000

A lot of the people posting don’t realise that using a proxy has been commen for years when large companies send letters they use dummy names for a number of reasons.

When I worked at BT I trained some BT people to post in usenet on uk.telecom and after the fact i wondered if I should have got them to use a pseudonym just in case some nutter went after her. Unfortunately this does happen I bet some of teh high profile female bloggers and vloggers have had creepy letters or stalkers

And in some areas of the UK (NI) being known as a BT employee was not something you would want widely known (the GPO being part of the crown forces and all that)

I also got asked to post a formal BT response on alt.2600 which would have been fun but probably forever marked me down as a secret squirrel (thats the slag term for the peopel who work with MI5 and SIS on phone comms tapping) if I had used my real name – they actulay decided against this probaly when the ex coppers in SD heard about it.

By: Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:40:59 +0000

Hi Michael, you claim those posts by GoogleGuy were written by different people, but they were in fact all written by the same person.

By: Michael Gray

Michael Gray — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:20:24 +0000

@David LaFerney: you would think so wouldn’t you

By: David LaFerney

David LaFerney — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:56:19 +0000

You would think that by now we would have all learned to take any information from any source with a grain of salt. “Oh my God! Someone misrepresented something on the Internet!”

By: Anthony a.k.a. OldSchoolSEO

Anthony a.k.a. OldSchoolSEO — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:06:10 +0000

Michael, Barak Obama wasn’t the best example here. It is common knowledge that he doesn’t sleep. In fact, he has a dedicated Social Media Marketing team (all cleared by the government) and they sit in a room for several hours per night (each with multiple PC’s) just pulling up cool twitter and myspace profiles and then he approves them all. Ok, truth be told, Michelle approves a good percentage of them , but they are married, and “two are one”, right? I hope everyone realizes this is a joke.

P.S. – Google Guy is reformed so he doesn’t count either

By: Michael Gray

Michael Gray — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:40:09 +0000

@Tanya Ferrell: you miss the point why is it “ok” for Obama to have a twitter account he has nothing to do with but when other people do it they are called spammers. Is pumping a message thru about debt reduction somehow a more self interested action than trying to convince people to vote for you as president?

By: Tanya Ferrell

Tanya Ferrell — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:15:17 +0000

Dude. I don’t think your Obama example is all that great. He only has 50,000+ Twitter friends and he’s a presidential candidate on the news every single day. He also promotes his account all over his website. Twitter spammers have way more friends. And his follower/following ratio is pretty close to 1:1. Of course he doesn’t do any of the social media stuff himself. That’s the job for his interactive team. But his social media success probably has more to do with his large amount of enthusiasts rather than manipulation.

By: Jack Jack Sirounian ( Search Engine Ranking )

Jack Jack Sirounian ( Search Engine Ranking ) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:37:04 +0000

Hello Michael, this is an interesting post, and I do agree with you to a certain extent. There are a lot of “fake” profiles on Myspace which make regular users look for alternatives. On the other hand many people sometimes make multiple profiles, to join different groups, and do different things…. I’m sure they have their reasons. Its like being involved in the whole social media thing you already know that…. by definition there will be fake profiles… It is like build into the idea of doing things over the internet… where people really don’t know who it is… and sometimes that is what makes it soo popular… because people pose as different genders, races etc.

All of the high profile music pages, are not managed by the actual artist. I don’t think they are spam… but are getting close every day…….They are posting bulletins on an hourly basis, and promoting things….

I guess all I am saying is that it comes with the territory. I have to agree with Doug about Ethics. I think it is important to be ethical no matter what you are doing.

By: Traffic2MyPage.com

Traffic2MyPage.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:38:26 +0000

i was using a fake profile name for a while on facebook.. im glad facebook disabled me because im sure people want to see real people

By: Yura

Yura — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:30:51 +0000

Let’s only take actions into consideration and be done with it. Sheesh. Bot or no bot, but if you get spam, it’s spammer. If you get good news from a candidate, good.

What if a bot were delivering top-notch stories, relevant to your interests, to your account? I bet people would subscribe to such bots on their own will.