Comment spamming is bad, shilling is worse. Why? Because automated filters detect 99% of comment spam. The spam filter here on The Virtual Handshake Blog has caught over 750,000 spam comments in the past couple of years.

But shilling… shilling is hard to detect and often goes unnoticed the first or second time. Someone leaves a comment… a decent, on-topic comment… but then at the end throws in the mention of some product or person that has little, if anything, to do with the post on which they’re commenting.

And then you get a second post a week later from a different person that follows the same pattern. Maybe they really are just raving fans of some new product that you’re not "in the know" about.

But then you get a third post another week later, and you start noticing little things like the fact that all of the commenters have @Yahoo.com addresses. Maybe you investigate a little bit further and find that there’s a similar pattern on other web sites. Sooner or later you realize that you’ve been spammed all along and didn’t even notice it. And unlike the 750,000 comments that got automatically deleted, these three really tick you off. Why? Because you’ve been deceived.

What’s even worse is when you find out that the person behind it all touts themselves as an internet marketing expert.

Want to hear the whole story? Check out James D. Brausch, Glyphius and Shilling.

Yet another great video from Lee LeFever explaining a Web 2.0 phenomenon:

Ready to try it? Join Twitter (if you’re not already on it) and follow me!

More great Web 2.0 videos from Lee:

• Social Networking in Plain English
• Blogs in Plain English
• Wikis in Plain English
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English

Anil Dash of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type blogging software, has an interesting commentary today on the state of data portability. In summary, he says that despite our many technological advances, the fundamental ability to embed dynamic content — particularly text-based content — from one site into another hasn’t really progressed very far beyond basic copy/paste, at least not to the casual non-technical user.

Here’s his post, embedded using the new feature he added on his blog:

Of course, I couldn’t just click-and-drag it, and the script didn’t behave very well within Windows Live Writer, but I like the concept.

Great quote from Tom Hanks on Oprah:

I found that I will not be able to overtake the world and bend it to my will unless I have a MySpace page.

Here’s Tom Hanks’ MySpace page.

Of course, leave it to Julia Roberts to express the naivete of the general public upon finding out Tom has a MySpace page:

What? Are you 17?

I saw a lot of cool new tools for blogging this past week at BlogWorld. One of the ones that really impressed me was Windows Live Writer from Microsoft, which apparently just came out of beta.

If you were at the show and you blinked, you missed it. The Microsoft guys were in an understated little 10×10 both — I don’t even think they were wearing Microsoft shirts. I think Microsoft kind of missed the boat on the event… may have been hedging their bets.

But as Chris Keating wrote about his experience setting up the booth:

The common response:  "WOW".

In a nutshell, what WLW does is make full WYSIWYG offline editing available to bloggers without knowing a lick of HTML. As anyone who’s ever worked with the visual editor in WordPress will tell you, it has some significant shortcomings, such as:

• The CSS styles in the editor don’t match your final output.
• Floating images flush on the right or left side while leaving a proper margin to the text.
• Referencing a CSS style.
• Embedding Flash, Javascript, etc. - things like pasted code not behaving correctly because line breaks are inserted.
• Losing your work because you wrote online and the connection went down just before you hit Save.
• Wanting to work offline in a WYSIWYG environment, but having a better publishing method than copy/pasting your HTML from Dreamweaver or something.

Windows Live Writer solves all that. It’s a full-fledged WYSIWYG interface, but some really smart thinking went into the design of it. I found it fairly easy to configure it for my four WordPress-based blogs (I’m writing this post using it), although the part where it prompts you for the RPC URL is a bit daunting if you have no idea what they’re talking about.

I’m not going to do a lengthy review — really, the best thing to do is just try it yourself (it’s free). If you find the WordPress visual editor clumsy and highly restrictive, and either don’t know how to do the HTML or don’t like being forced to in order to get a decent-looking post, then you’ll really appreciate Windows Live Writer.

A constant complaint we hear around the office is that emails we receive (and sometimes send) are poorly written or unclear.  According to “How to Write a Perfect Email”, when writing an email that warrants a reply, there are four key components to get a quick and valid response:

1. Brevity- Keep it short.

2. Context- How do you know me/where did we meet (Give information that would make a person remember you) and put it in the subject line.

3. Something to Act On- Make the request clear and ask closed ended questions.

4. Set a Deadline- Set a date when you need the information, give one follow-up email and then pick up the phone.

My colleague Michelle Reicher observed that the guidelines set in this blog are a good standard to follow, but, “I disagree with the blanket advice to ask closed ended questions. Keep the request and question clear and concise, but allow the responder to give as much information as is necessary to move forward. When one sends an email with questions, the goal is to solicit a response, but it is important to have a complete, comprehensive, and useful response not just a yes/no answer. Yes/No responses answer the immediate question, but do not allow farther explanation that may answer future questions or give farther insight into the matter at hand.”

In The Cranking Widgets Blog: “How to Construct the Perfect Email Subject Line”, the blogger observes that a good subject line is imperative for a successful email:

“There are 3 simple tips that, if implemented properly, will make your email subject (and, subsequently, your email) much easier to read.

1.      Use Keywords [to identify the purpose of your email.] All email messages fall into one or more of 4 possible categories:

o        Questions (or messages that elicit a response from the reader)

o        Responses (messages that are in response to questions or other inquiring messages)

o        Informational (or FYI - messages that are meant to inform but don’t require a response)

o        Spam (jokes, pictures of your nephew’s baseball game, etc. - as well as actual spam)

2.      Briefly describe the subject - This is best done before you start writing your message. Finding the right balance between vague and overly-specific can be tough. Personally, I think it’s like anything else - you get better at it with time.

3.      For Pete’s sake, never leave the subject blank - This is something I’ve mentioned before, and it bears repeating.”

The body of the email will never be read if the context of the subject line does not act as an icebreaker or a contextual reminder. If the subject line merely says, “Hi” then it is synonymous to a cold call, but if the subject line identifies the business or how you know this person it becomes analogous to a warm call or a referral, which are generally more fruitful and productive than an unsolicited call.

I’m happy to report that Grouply, an extremely high-potential startup on whose Advisory Board I sit, has just launched. Grouply allows you to access all your online groups like Yahoo Groups in one place with a much better user experience.

Like Meebo, Fuser, and Orgoo, Grouply enables you to access complementary services from one place. And like Ning and Facebook, Grouply helps you build an interactive, social community. What makes Grouply unique, however, is that it works with and improves your existing online groups. Grouply effectively converts your old-style mailing lists into modern social networks.

By the nature of Nitron Circle of Experts‘ business model, we are heavy users of online groups— alumni associations, teams, professional organizations, neighborhood associations, discussion boards, mailing lists, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc. But for each of our team members, keeping up with all the events, announcements, classified ads, job postings, and questions and answers piling up in our inboxes is not feasible. As a result, we (like the vast majority of Internet users) do not take full advantage of our online groups.

With Grouply, you can keep up with your existing online groups in 80% less time (according to the company’s research). You receive a “Smart Digest” email each day that summarizes what’s going on across all your groups, highlighting what’s interesting to you and hiding what’s not. You can view a single cross-group event calendar, see what’s popular among fellow group members, and quickly search or browse across all your existing groups from one place. Grouply works with Yahoo Groups currently and support for more systems is on the way.

There are several reasons why I’m so excited about Grouply:

+ Grouply is addressing a very large market of unsatisfied users. There are more than 300 million users of online group systems such as Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, and Classmates.com. Eighty-four percent of American Internet users have used the Internet to contact or get information from a group–more than have used the Internet to read news, search for health information, or to buy something. Grouply is starting with Yahoo Groups because they’re the market leader, with 108 million users in 8.7 million groups.

+ If Grouply succeeds, it will be well-positioned to generate substantial online ad revenue. By analogy, perhaps the most powerful touch point that Microsoft has on the typical office worker’s day is Outlook, since so many of us spend so much of our day in Outlook. Think of the highly-customized advertising that Grouply can sell on its platform. Grouply has the ability to target ads based not just on the content of the pages you view but also on your individual interests, including the groups you belong to, the types of messages you search for and interact with, and the geographic location of you and your groups.

+ Grouply has the potential to be extremely viral. Traditional social networks grow one “friend” at a time. But Grouply leverages the millions of existing online groups and communities. In just a few seconds, a user registers and begins to access and participate in all of her existing online groups through Grouply. She soon finds that her Grouply experience improves dramatically as more of her group members use it, and this network effect compels her to invite even more of them to try Grouply. Grouply both motivates and enables her to invite all of the members of all of her existing groups to try Grouply at once.

+ No migration required. While Ning, Facebook, and others offer compelling group platforms, they all face the same major challenge that many of the most interesting and active groups are already running on systems like Yahoo Groups. No group leader wants to deal with the hassle of trying to move all their members and years worth of messages archives from one system to another. Fortunately, Grouply handles all this automatically. Group members individually register with and begin accessing their groups through Grouply, and all message archives are brought over when the first group member signs up. Transforming your existing, old-style online group or mailing list into a modern social network is a painless automatic process, not a maintenance nightmare.

About a year ago, Mark Robins, co-founder and CEO of Grouply, asked me to join their Advisory Board. I’ve been honored to be a very, very small part of this.  Rich Reimer, another co-founder, and Mark are both business school classmates.

I’m happy to be participating at a Software and Information Industry Association lunch /webcast on October 31 in midtown New York, on “The Promises and Risks of Social Networking in the Information Industry”.

The event is on “how your enterprise can profit from social networking: in promotion and marketing, in the development of new products and content creation, and even by making communities one of the services your business offers as an ancillary to content products.”

The other panelists are:

Leslie Forde, VP of Strategic Alliances, Communispace;

Kim Kobza, President and CEO, Neighborhood America;

Scott Parry, General Manager, Reuters Advicepoint

Karen Christensen, CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group will moderate.

Some of the questions that will be addressed include:

• How can we make our communities persistent and sustainable?

• What increases the value of a community to its participants?

• What social media are appropriate for my business?

• Does it really make sense to use existing free social networking communities like Facebook and Second Life?

• Can we develop our own unique social networking systems with open source technologies?

The event costs $50 for non-SIIA members. Alternatively, the event will be available via webcast. Register here.

In light of all the discussion lately about photos on LinkedIn and its impact on hiring, etc., I found the following pretty ironic when I stumbled across it on MySpace:

View photo (PG-13)

Now it’s one thing to be unconcerned about what photos a prospective employer might dig up about you if they search hard enough. But posting about your job search on your MySpace blog next to a shot of your undercleavage is something else.

I don’t know — she has experience in marketing… maybe she knows better than I do.