Regulating open blogs in a social networking community February 28, 2008

On SoberCircle.com, we use a unique method of functionality on member blogs.  Rather than restrict the flow of ideas that come out of blog posts to just that member’s group of friends, we chose at the outset to have all new blog posts appear in a running list where members could peruse the posts and make comments to them.  We do allow the members to make their blogs private, along with a number of other privacy features that can be applied to the blog or an individual post.  We wanted to promote the idea of open share, and it has been wildly successful.

The problem with open blogs is that from time to time it facilitates exchanges between members who don’t see eye to eye, thus chaos ensues in what is meant to be a peaceful and therapeutic environment.  To safeguard against this it would require several monitors constantly watching the posts and comments made to posts.  In a community that receives several thousand posts and comments daily, its a daunting task.

I am starting to think that the answer is a yea/nay system for rating blog relevancy, ala digg.com.   With Digg, you get the option to Digg or Bury and post based on the content.  This then opens the door to systematically rating your users based on their participation.  In other words, a member who constantly produces good posts might have more clout in the community that one that is always producing irrelevant or unnecessary content.  This in effect allows the community to be self sustaining by giving the community the power to monitor itself.  I believe this is the direction we are heading and it isn’t such a bad thing.   As a social networking community developer, I am constantly trying to give the power back to the people and empowering your community is the key.  If it improves the community without disenfranchising the masses, then it can only be a good thing.

Spam: The Cancer of Any Online Community February 12, 2008

At 11:37 CT today, a community conscious member of SoberCircle brought it to my attention that there was some spam making the rounds through member’s inboxes. Thank God for a loyal member base. This goes back to the principals discussed in Laying Down the Law on Your Social Networking Website. I would have caught this within an hour or so by looking through my spam auditing application. Fortunately, this member gave me a heads up before I ran that report.

Here’s the message:

Hello My Dear!

Hello My Dear!
i am miss Favour i saw your profile and become intrested i will like to know more about you please contact me at , (wfavour99@yahoo.com) please do not reply to me in the website because i will not have the time to answer you there, just send your mail to my yahoo id then i will send my picture for you to know whom i am. remeber age, coloure and distance dose\’nt matter but what matters is true love.
Your\’s Lovely New Friend
wfavour99@yahoo.com

Does it get any more blatant than this? It never ceases to atmaze me. Every spam message we have had on the website in recent months has followed this general pattern. And this is not a bot doing this. The process and send times are way too slow for a bot. So where is this coming from you might ask??? :

person: Mody Ndiaye
address: SOCIETE NATIONALES DES TELECOMMUNICATIONS
address: Sonatel
address: Dakar
address: Senegal

They mostly come from the wonderful West African nation of Senegal. Its insane.

Why do these people want to connect via you email address?

Most likely these individuals are low on the food chain of an organized crime scheme that plots to engage in an email correspondence where they promise to send you a picture of themselves, only to be a file laced with a trojan that can then steal data from your computer. The most common trojan for this is a keystroke recorder that tracks when you login to sensitive sites like bank accounts and credit cards. Once these people have your login info they can then setup transfers from these accounts.

The second scheme is much more rudimentary in nature but also lethal if done effectively. Scammers are constantly looking for susceptible users to run phising schemes against. Chances are, if you are naive enough to fall for the first email, you will fall for further phishing schemes later (i.e. your bank has recently updated its systems and needs you to reenter your login information).

Don’t Fall For The Bait!!!
If any member approaches you at random and asks you to start a correspondence outside of the website, don’t go for it.  If you are remotely intrigued about the offer, try to continue the dialog on that website for at least a couple of days.  If its bogus, the perpetrators aren’t going to waste their time trying to scam a single person.  These people are only interested in mass numbers.  Always look at websites you visit and pay close attention to the base part of the URL.  If it is your bank, your bank’s website is yourbank.com, make sure the part of the URL before the / is yourbank.com.  Often, scammers like to use urls like login.yourbank.com.oiacis.ru/.  If you were clicking on this link, all your information entered will not go to yourbank.com, but to oiacis.ru.  This is how the game works and its time to wise up to it. Please remember that financial institutions will NEVER approach you through email to ask for sensitive information.

Laying down the law on your social networking website February 10, 2008

I have been asked about this twice in the last week by aspiring social networking startups.  Every so often, the community’s tolerance is tested by a few social aggrevators.   These aggrevators feed off the attention that comes from being the odd man out, the one guy that everybody loves to hate.  They seem to positioon themselves this way by design, to draw the ire of all the loyal members of the community. 

 This is where I have to step in.

Community Ownership
Each community is unique, but the common thread between the good communities is the existance of a community conscience.  Now this conscience is what often tells the administration when things go wrong within the inner minglings of the website.  The administrator can then go back and verify the facts from fiction.  When a social networking website is lacking this oversight from the member base is when the administration loses touch with what’s going on.  The truth is, unless you have a budget that affords you the luxury of employeeing monitors to watch the website 24/7, there is only one way to know what is going on at all times.  That is where your members come into play.

Getting the Members to Buy In
First, your community must strike a chord with its members.  Without the passion, you don’t develop fans of the site.  Those fans often turn into some of your best members.   Secondly, the website has to have a visable ownership presence.  In my case, I come in and clean things up on a regular basis but I try to give the community enough room to mature naturally, without turning the whole thing into a dictatorship.   Don’t be the babysitter. Define your rules, display them clearly and follow through when people break them.  My style is to issue warnings first and then take further action when it become necessary. 

How to take action
Regardless of whether your community is built from scratch or a prepackaged solution, make sure IP addresses are recorded when members register.  In an open social network, bannished members can rejoin under an assumed name and create more havoc.  This doesnt stop the people who go to other computers or have dial-up access.  What it does do if this individual is able to change IP address is give a hint as to the location.  With the location in hand and mannerisms that mirror prior activity, you can easily build cases against individuals who return to cause more harm.  Regardless of what names a perpetrator uses, the mannerisms always mirror each other, it amazing to watch.  I guess web habits are hard to break.

If you are building your own product from scratch, design your registration module to block registering members who share an IP address with a member who you have banned.  Yeah, you might block some poor innocent soul who had the misfortune of following in the footsteps of bad apple, but its a risk that is definitely worth taking.

Clean Up & Prevention
If members ask why another member was banned, you have to answer honestly.  I find it easier to state the violation and move on.  I don’t go into deep detail about the punishment.  I just make a clear, honest and straightforward statement without getting specific.  The one thing you have to prevent is retaliation.  If a member is banned for attacking another member and the banned member has close friends still in the community, there is a good chance they will target the subject of the original attack.  Taking a clear stance against libel and personal attacks is a good defense against this.  This is a part of clearly defining your rules and sticking to your guns.

Running a social networking website is a wonderful adventure that I recommend to anyone out there that identifies a need for a network for specific people.  There is a large space out there for niche communities and we’re only in the early stages of the “land claim” for these spaces.  With a good plan, a little luck and a loyal membership, you could do amazing things for a community of people out there on the web.