Kikabink News

When the volume of spam hitting my inbox dropped suddenly last week, I thought it was just me. It seems, however, that Internet users around the world have seen a significant drop in spam. And now the intriguing story behind the sudden drop has emerged…

Brian Krebs, reporting in the Washington Post, says that at about 4:30 p.m. EST last Tuesday, the volume of spam being delivered across the world dropped by about 65 percent. It seems that various Internet service providers discovered that a web hosting company in Silicon Valley called McColo Corp. was hosting organizations responsible for much of the world’s spam.

Unfortunately, the relief is likely to be temporary. Those spammers are likely to find other hosts! But Brian Krebs asks a reasonable question: why did it take so long for anyone to work out that a firm in the heart of the Internet and computing community - we’re talking Silicon Valley of all places - was distributing the bulk of the world’s spam?

It appears that McColo - which has not been charged with any crime - hosted a number of key Internet servers (i.e. computers that host websites and send out email, etc) which controlled networks of computers. These networks were used by their various owners to turn hundreds of thousands of compromised PCs into spam distributors or ‘botnets’.

McColo effectively ran the ‘master servers’ that the various dodgy spam organizations used to take over the botnets which, in turn, were used to send out all the spam. When McColo’s Internet service providers took it offline, the master servers went offline… which meant the botnets could no longer be used to send out spam.

Source: Brian Krebs, “Answers Trickle Out as Spammer Networks Remain Compromised”, November 19, 2008

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I got spammed by an SEO consulting company yesterday. I get hundreds of spam emails per day, but this particular email stood out because it was sent by an Australian company based in my own city. A company that should have known better. (I’m tempted to name and shame them, but I really don’t want to give them any link value!)

Since we offer Internet marketing services, seeing this email made me MAD. It’s actions like this that give our industry a bad name. But I’m even more stunned at how DUMB this company is to send out generic emails offering its SEO services. There are so many things wrong with this picture, I couldn’t possibly list them all in this email, but let’s discuss three aspects that should have been obvious:

1. Sending out spam is against the law. I believe sending unsolicited commercial email is illegal in the United States and other countries. It certainly is in Australia, and has been for many years now. As a prospective client: could I really trust a company that so blatantly breaks the law?

2. Sending out spam is wrong from an Internet marketing point of view. It shows disrespect to Internet users and also makes me wonder: what would this company do regarding SEO if I did engage them? What kind of black or grey hat tactics would they use that might jeopardize my business?

3. The email itself was not personally addressed to anyone at our firm, and was a generic offer to provide SEO services. Had the sender bothered to look at our website they would have noticed that we were a COMPETITOR. One operating in the same city and country at that!

Actually, there’s a fourth issue worth mentioning…

4. Out of curiosity I visited the company’s website. The headline read: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Web Marketing & SEO”. Now, maybe there is a market for “cheap” web marketing and search engine optimization services. But to me, that’s a bit like a law firm advertising itself with the same line: “Guaranteed Lowest Prices for Legal Advice.”

Um… do you want the cheapest legal advice around… or do you want the best, most cost-effective legal advice that delivers the results you want? The same principle applies to Internet marketing services – especially SEO. Do you want to pay the cheapest prices… or do you want to get the best results for your money?

Cost-effective… value for money… affordable. They’re all terms that may be appropriate. But “Guaranteed Lowest Prices” sounds like their running a discount store. Not the kind of company I would want as my trusted SEO advisor…

Over at Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel reports on some research by Forrester Research, Inc. indicating that RSS penetration among Internet users may have peaked at 11 percent.

Yes, you read that right: just 11 percent.

Sure, almost 50 percent of Internet businesses have added RSS feeds to their websites, and RSS adoption among Internet users has increased from 2 percent in 2005 to 11 percent now. But if Forrester Research’s findings are accurate then of the 89 percent of users who don’t use RSS feeds, only 16 percent are somewhat interested, and just 3 percent are very interested, in using them.

According to Forrester, marketers have not done enough to promote the benefits of RSS to their customers. Probably because they’re too busy promoting the benefits of RSS to other marketers! And there ARE benefits - just ask a guy like Peter Drew about the power of RSS in terms of search engine optimization.

But when it comes to consumers using RSS, maybe Steve Rubel is right when he says that “feeds are way too geeky for most and the benefit does not outweigh the learning curve.”

Rubel also makes a great point: just because RSS adoption may have peaked, it doesn’t mean other online optin communications aren’t working. Writes Rubel:

“The Facebook newsfeed, Twitter and Friendfeed are perfect examples of opt-in vehicles that bring content you care about to you… In each case, you’re total in control. You can unsubscribe from individuals or groups and tailor the stream so that what you want finds you… RSS is only one form of opt-in communications. The potential is bigger when you look more broadly to social networking. This larger promise still holds and as the technologies become more invisible the newsfeed could even one day subsume RSS.”

Source: Steve Rubel, “RSS Adoption at 11% and it May Be Peaking, Forrester Says”, Micro Persuasion, October 20, 2008

Synovate surveyed 13,000 consumers in 17 countries and, as reported by eMarketer, found that 58 percent of adults in these countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States) were NOT familiar with social networking.

42 percent of adults did know about social networking and 26 percent belonged to social networking sites.

More interesting to me was another finding: of the 26 percent of adults who belonged to one or more social networks, 36 percent said they were “losing interest” in social networks. Indeed, 55 percent of Japanese users were losing interest, followed by users in Slovakia (48 percent), Canada (47 percent), Poland (45 percent) and the U.S. (45 percent).

eMarketer predicts that 44.3 percent of U.S. Internet users will belong to social networks by the end of 2008. But I wonder if, despite exploding growth in other countries, 2009 may be the year that U.S. social network membership peaks… after which growth plateaus and total social network membership stabilizes.

I suggest this because (a) social network membership growth has softened in the U.S. - the number of users has grown by just 9 percent between June 2007 and June 2008, and (b) the nature of social networking seems to be such that it will ultimately only appeal to certain kinds of Internet users.

Many people who “try” social networking may find that spending hours on one or more social networks - creating profiles, joining groups, making friends, exchanging messages, sharing images, movies, music, etc - just doesn’t fit into their lifestyle.

Having said that, I think there’s still plenty of growth potential among niche social networks. And you can pretty much include discussion boards in that category too, since many of them have either morphed - or are morphing into - fully fledged social networks. (What is a discussion board or forum but the original version of a social network?)

Source: eMarketer, “Social Networks Are Not Yet Universal”, eMarketer, September 3, 2008, Anna Johnson, “Facebook Is World’s Biggest and Fastest Growing Social Network”, August 14, 2008

eMarketer reports that online video advertising spending is set to grow from $1.2 billion in 2008 to $4.5 billion in 2012.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. alone, eMarketer predicts web video ad spending to reach $505 million this year, growing to $3.4 billion in 2012. This will be 78.9 percent above the estimated spend in 2011, due to an expected jump in online video consumption among Internet users.

eMarketer predicts U.S. online video viewers to number 190 million in 2012, meaning that nearly 90 percent of U.S. Internet users will watch online video.

Source: eMarketer, “Web Video Ad Spend to Grow Worldwide”, eMarketer, August 21, 2008, eMarketer, “Online Video Ad Spending Growth”, eMarketer, August 14, 2008