I enjoy technology, I embrace it. I really like social media and the ability it gives us to be connected to the world and to other people in the world. I have a Facebook account, although I’m not ultra active in it. I have a Twitter account and like to peruse it and post to it on a somewhat frequent basis. There is one thing that just irks me beyond all with Twitter. It’s those article spitting people on Twitter.

If you’re connected to a group of people beyond 100 you are bound to have an article spitter. Article spitters are Twitter users who if you check out their Twitter page, you only see posts referring to articles online. Sometimes there are even links to purchase products they are pushing online.

To me, this is Twitter spam. If you’re not going to be communicating with other users and you just spit out random links to articles you’re spamming. Twitter should be a tool for people to connect and communicate, not an alternative to setting up a Web site posting your information online and then spending hours tweaking your site for search engine placement.

More and more I’m seeing articles and products that people buy online that “teach” people how to make money online using Twitter without ever setting up a Web site. The secret behind it? Follow enough people, get lots of follow backs, then start spamming everyone your links to the product you are trying to sell. You then hope that people on Twitter click on your link, then buy the product.

I think that even the emergence of services that allow you to have items saved then posted to your Twitter account at a later time show this trend to Twitter spam. Why would you need to have a service that saves a link to something, then randomly posts it to your Twitter account later? Why not post it when you come across it? Probably because most of the people using this, scour the Internet for articles, then save them and then just tell the service to post it randomly so that Twitter won’t shutdown their account. In all, there’s no real two-way communication taking place online.

I’m not saying that this shouldn’t ever take place, but if that’s all you’re doing…well, you’re entitled to your own opinion. But overall, I think that it contributes to the negativity towards Twitter that is out there online.

One of the worst things out there on the Internet right now, as far as spam goes, is the circulation of email chains (also knows as “forwards”). This involves sending videos, stories, jokes, warnings, etc. to everyone in your address book by simply hitting the forward and including everyone in your inbox.

Have you recently received an email like this?

FW: Add Cell Phones to Do Not Call Registry
FW: SB-2099 – Bill Requiring Federal Tax on Guns
FW: Ericsson ‘Free Laptop’ Promotion
FW: Fourth-Grade Teacher’s Letter to Obama
FW: Barack Obama Is a Muslim
FW: Mr. Rogers Was a Marine Sniper / Navy Seal

I hate to break it to anyone who has stakes their lives on any of these being true, they’re not. They are hoaxes and often have particial truths but that are misconstrued to get peoples’ attention and have them forward the message to everyone in their email address book.

Why do these emails exist?

The short answer is simple: SPAM.

Take a look at the last email that you received and forwarded to someone else. Look at how many email addresses are in it. The last email forward I received had a grand total of fifty-three email addresses embedded in it.

David Emery, on UrbanLegends.About.Com, explains that the perpetuation of the misinformation in these type of emails are done because “it rouses people to action.” – David Emery, Urban Legends Guide

Making people scared, worried, concerned, or elated at the prospect of getting something free, gets people to hit that forward button and blast the email to everyone they know.

Sooner or later, this message is going to end up in the hands of someone who “harvests” email addresses to sell them to spammers. In fact, some of these email harvesters actually subscribe to newslists of jokes and inspirational stories, in order to guarantee that they’ll get the email forwards.

Why you may ask? Spammers don’t make money on the things people buy from spam emails, they make money on the number of successful emails that get send. So if a company selling some product pays a spammer to reach people, they will pay the spammer some pennies for each successful email receipt.

In other words, every time you send out one of those forwards, you are putting all of your friends’ email addresses (not to mention your own) into the hands of spammers. No wonder everyone is always perplexed at the amount of spam they get!

Furthermore, imagine this email message being sent to 25-100 people every time you or someone else forwards and copies your entire hotmail or yahoo address book. Then each of those individuals does the same. After a couple of rounds, the giant message is being delivered to thousands and thousands of email inboxes all over the world. As a one time email administrator, I can assure you that email servers don’t like these large messages, and they bog down the email delivery process.

What can you do?

There are a few things you can do. Either you should stop sending email forwards, or you should do the following:

• Look at the text of the email message. Are there email addresses in it? DELETE THEM ALL before you forward the email.
• When you forward the email, you should not put any addresses in either the “To” field or the “Carbon Copy” (CC) field. Every email address must go in the “Blind Carbon Copy” (BCC) field. This is the only way to guarrantee that your friends’ email addresses will be invisible to others.

Of course, that won’t prevent your email address from ending up in the hands of spammers, but at least it protects your friends.The next time, however, you do receive an message like this, reply to the sender and inform them about the problem of sending emails like this with all of the addresses visible. If you’re not comfortable with sending the message, at least point them to an article they can read about it and what they should do in the future. With more education on the part of Internet and email users we can all help curb the SPAM problem and make the Internet a better place.

The new craze on the Internet is social networking. Being able to connect with people all over the world gives individuals tremendous power to accomplish good, but at the same time it’s a two edged sword; you can very quickly and with relative ease, make a fool of yourself and discredit all that you’ve worked to accomplish.

I think we’ve all witnessed the good, the bad, and the ugly of social networking. We’ve probably also heard of the mishaps that have taken place because someone posted a bit much on Facebook or Twitter. A random party photo, or a snide comment about a co-worker or boss, can come back to haunt the individual.

In order to take advantage of the best social networking has to offer, we can’t just focus on doing the positive things, we have to also limit the negative things we do too. It’s like wanting to be rich, earning $500,000 dollars but then at the same time spending $500,000. In the end, your negative (spending) cancels the positive (earnings).

Social networking has some clear negatives to avoid, and good to do:

BAD: Irrelevant Updates: Unfortunately no one cares that you just woke up at 11 AM (actually, it makes you look lazy, and potential influential connections will look down upon these things). No one wants to know that you had cereal for breakfast, brushed your teeth, or walked the dog. Everybody does those things, so it’s nothing new, nothing important. There’s nothing wrong with the everyday things, but keep it minimal and interesting.

GOOD: Insightful Updates: Post about things you’re reading, comment on events, and what others have said. Updates are like free marketing, it is a great way for start-ups and companies to gain an underground following.  You can use it to broadcast updates, news and even articles and blog entries to the masses. Individuals can also use it to show their skills, talents, expertise, and by the value of your content, prove to others that you are worth the connection.

BAD: Insincere Connections: On more of the social variety of networks, it amazes me when people you haven’t spoken with in over 15 years request your ‘friendship’…only to turn around, after you accept, and never contact you again. Others post themselves on various sites just to be able to get more followers or contacts, just for the sake of numbers.

GOOD: Powerful Connections: Your contacts should be useful. You should stay connected with these people, comment on what they are working on, reading, actually stay in touch with them. When the time comes that you may need something, they will readily come to your aid. If you haven’t ever bothered to stay connected (other than just having the connection) there’s little chance that you’ll get any help. Show your worth and when your contacts need something, they’ll come to you.

BAD: Inaccurate Contact: If your contact information is old, and not up-to-date, it’s of no use to your contacts. If you have a Web site listed in your profile, keep it up-to-date. If you don’t have time to do that, make the site just a landing page with basic information on how to contact you.

GOOD: Up-to-date Contact: If you have work information, skills, experience, etc. keep that up to date too, you’ll be surprised how many people look at that and if the information is old you may miss some opportunities. I would suggest that you “Google” your name and see what is out there, then get to work at building your personal brand. Your personal brand is your name, if you have a common name it make take a little more work since there will be many other people doing the same time. Setup your basics, Web site (with your name [or a variation] as your domain name), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GoogleProfile. Get your name out there, what you do, and how to contact you.

Taking some of these basic steps will ensure that you develop at strong, professional online profile that will be useful to you and not something that will handicap you in future opportunities. Developing an online profile through social networking will increase the influence you have from your normal social group of co-workers and friends to include a whole wide community of people with similar interests, skills, and experience throughout the world.