Category: socialnetworking

Update, 3:20pm

Just off the phone to the Publicis. There are two issues here: one is the broken configuration of @pm.ad as the reply-to email address. A misconfiguration error.

Thanks to Publicis for reaching out and being honest; and starting to resolve the issue.

From earlier today:

1. Potential source of the “follow”: I mention metamucil on twitter. No occurrences of this word on my blog until this particular posting. and others such have found the same issue with unsolicited email from the same sender, with similar contents.
2. Up until this point, I have been a happy and regular user of said fibre supplement brand below. Note that this brand is owned by Proctor and Gamble. I am not going to link out to said product.
3. The person that received this email is mentioned 5 times on my web site, and there is at least one link from my site to theirs (note: I have “xx”’d the name out below)
4. The owner and publisher of this web site, Nick Hodge, in no way, explicitly nor implicitly gave permission for any brand: including Microsoft, to use to my blog as “trusted reference sell” nor source of email addresses. Reading Microsoft’s policy on Online Privacy, I am pretty sure that doing this style of “email harvest and reference social marketing” is highly wrong, and contravention of this policy is a serious offence.
5. “Unsolicited email” is spam. Plain and simple.
6. The content on my site is (cc) Attribution-Non-commerical Share-Australia 2.1, as per the link at the bottom of each page. I consider this spamming is a breach of my Terms and Conditions.
7. Subsequently, I am very unhappy with Publicis Mojo. You do not get social media, you are a spammer. Of the worst kind.
8. I am recommending the receiver of this email report both Proctor and Gamble, and Publicis Mojo as a Spammer as per the Spam Act (2003) and amendments
9. It seems that the domain name “pm.ad” might exist, however further research by an white-hat security expert:
   • *.ad is a top-level domain owned by Andorra, the country
   • pm.ad would be a logical place for ‘publicismojo an advertising agency’ to register; or may be used for internal sites
   • if you send email to ‘postie@publicismojo.com.au’ the bounce back is from the same mail.publicismojo.com.au IP address as in the below spam example: 134.159.132.130
   • 130.159.132.130 is Publicis Mojo in Australia (as per apnic)
   • robtex has some interesting details on this domain range

From: Blog Seeding <BloggerRelations@pm.ad>
Date: 2008/12/9
Subject: For xx
To: xx@xx.xx.au


Hi xx,

Sorry for the unsolicited email.

I was reading your blog and noticed you're particularly influential in the blogosphere.  
I even saw your blog reposted on NickHodge.com.

I'm working on behalf of Metamucil on their new Fibresure product and 
I was wondering if you would be receptive to us sending you a xmas gift pack? 
No obligations, of course! 🙂

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Publicis Mojo

From Glenn Derene, wiring at Popular Mechanics in “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It”

… with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

I find this article resonates. The concept that a mathematical formula can replace the collective knowledge of trusted friends always seems weird, and the absolute innocent dorkiness that “algorithms solve all problems” as naive.

Being able to ask your twitter-hive mind friends a question, say about WordPress themes (see: http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/2508) and receive an intelligent set of answers is way more powerful than blind search engine bingo.

The power of the internet comes from its ability to very cheaply connect like minded people into loosely coupled communities unbounded by space and time.