instant history

Bitly FishEvery Twitter user loves bit.ly. It's simple. It's pretty. It's quick. It makes it easy to jump right into getting click through metrics and see who's actually reading your posts. But is it accurate?

Particularly as compared to more "professional" tracking offerings out there, like Google Analytics or even a website's original logs, there have been concerns raised about how accurate those instantaneous numbers bit.ly gives out are. I've increasingly heard, for example, that bit.ly does a relatively poor job of parsing out bot traffic, which presumably just spiders through Twitter links looking for sites to spam.

I to test these services with an informal experiment: I would compare Bit.ly traffic against Google Analytics against my website's Drupal logs. I wasn't looking for the perfect solution, just to see how different the numbers these three reporting methods were giving.

The ground rules were simple: I would send out a bit.ly'd link to Twitter, explaining the test, and asking my followers to click if the wanted to. Polling would be closed at midnight, EST, but then I would look at the next few weeks to see if these alleged bots continued to inflate numbers.

The results were interesting, if not shocking, but some specific points about bit.ly, click tracking, and Twitter analytics should be noted:

• It's a rapidly emerging field. If there is a problem with bots or something else inflating numbers, bit.ly will probably correct it as quickly as a public fuss is raised about it.
• There's a lot of complicating factors that will leave Twitter click analytics a volatile field for a while. Already, I'm sure the rise of URL elongating services like Longify have given these services a huge headache.
• Even if Bit.ly isn't perfect, it's pretty damn good, and I think it's a reasonable question to ask if there is a "perfect" Twitter Analytics solution, or if there are just solutions better fit for your needs. Either way, I'm grateful they don't put obnoxious framing like Ow.ly does. And I don't mean to detract from Google Analytics, which is also a pretty powerful tool once you have it up and running.

But enough chit-chat, let's get to the meat: How did bit.ly stack up to Google Analytics and Drupal's own web logs? See for yourself:

So Bit.ly is more than two times higher than Google Analytics, but Drupal's logs (which I know for a fact are all too happy to count every last spam bot and betty) are twice that, and five times higher than Google Analytics.

A couple other things worth noting:

• The Drupal test page was exclusively promoted through Twitter. It wasn't linked to from any other site, except through my Friend Feed which automatically aggregates my Tweets.
• As a counter to the bot argument, after that first day of posting my Bit.ly link only registered one more click, and that was the next day, a completely reasonable time frame for a user to see the post.
• Google Analytics registered 0 clicks after the first day of posting.
• Drupal registered a handful (maybe 5) after the first few days.
• In each of these three services, I made sure to remove any click I might have accounted for.

So, what do you think? Is Bit.ly still a useful tool? This is obviously a fairly small sample, but I'll keep an eye on how these tools stack up against each other over the next months, and hopefully have more data to share.

Besides, even at its worst, Bit.ly has got to have Conan O'Brien's "Twitter Tracker" beat:

Further Reading:

• Bit.ly's excellent blog which tackles a lot of these issues.
• The original Twitter Tracker segment
• A FriendFeed discussion of Bit.ly count problems
• TechCrunch on Bit.ly's Grand Plans

Finally, users can record and find Facebook chat history, but it requires a bit of a workaround including a Firefox plugin and a Facebook app. Not the most elegant solution, but for those who are just can't seem to keep track of what they're Facebook chatting about, it'll have to do.

First, head over to the Facebook Chat History Manager homepage and install the plugin. It'll prompt you over to the Facebook app after successful installation, where you'll have to register the app and then create a local user account (all the chat history is stored on your own computer, not someone else's servers).

One interesting thing to note: Unlike in GMail's GChat, the chat logging application doesn't notify the person on the other end that your conversation is being logged:

The logs are also not particularly well formatted nor particularly intuitive to access. At any point in Firefox, you can just hit CTRL-ALT-F and the logs will come up, but there's no easy way to click through to the logs inside Facebook itself, short of going to the application's own URL. There's also no way to search for chats, so you're stuck either wading through them by date and name, and the output isn't exactly well styled:

The good news is that these quibbles can probably be fixed with relatively minor updates, and the solutions gets bonus points for offline chat history access. In any case, it's the best that can be done until Facebook unveils a chat history lookup of their own. If today's announcement of improved Facebook inbox searching is any indication, that could be the near future.

Further Reading:

• Find your Facebook message history
• What to do if you get hit by the Facebook brunga.at virus attack
• Facebook virus attacks continues: Check kirgo.at, nutpic.at, and brunga.at continue to lure unwary
• Facebook says "Check 121.im"; Common sense says don't

Found via BingThere are a lot of things not like about Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, but children getting access to porn through its video preview shouldn't be on the list.

The fact is, every filter (read: porn blocker) is going to have loopholes or workarounds, or else it will signal so many false positives as to make the Internet useless. Blame it on pornography's subjective nature. Blame it on how big and complex the Internet is. But all this logic seems to get thrown out the window as soon as someone whispers "But think of the children," and soon you have not only TechCrunch issuing warnings about Bing's video porn preview (they should know better), but also CBS News ("Parents Beware" the headline warns) and, inevitably, Fox News.

Please. Microsoft has too much riding on this to let it stay a black eye for long, and indeed, shortly after the Bing porn previews became public knowledge, Microsoft offered one way to close the porn hack, and then another.

Most telling, however, has been the response on an educational IT listserve I'm on. One administrator issued a challenge: "For those that have really good filters, try logging on as a student then BING and go to video - search porn - then put the cursor on one of the videos. Preview time."

Not so fast, one respondent who, you know, actually did this:

Our filter, Web Gateway by McAfee (formerly Webwasher by Secure Computing) appropriately blocks the content. Web Gateway enforces "safe search" and students are not able to change the option to turn off safe search. Additionally, searching porn related terms resulted in content that stopped the pages from being displayed.

And then three other school administrators, all using different filters, reported similar blocking success. One had to tweak some manual settings, but the other two worked fine blocking errant Bing queries out of box.

If school IT administrators aren't worried about Bing porn when it's their job to stop this stuff, why the hell are Fox and CBS News in an outright, end-of-days panic?

Oh, right. Ratings.

Brian Morrissey, an editor at AdWeek and, since I joined the service, one of my favorite Twittering journalists (not to mention his homonymical last name to mine!), tackled shortcut-taking Twitter contests in a blog post of his own last week, and unsurprisingly he does a better job than yours truly, when I wrote about the ethics of Pay-per-Tweet and Twitter contests.

Morrissey pretty quickly outlines how much these somewhat tacky contests can save over traditional marketing campaigns, as well as the potential hidden costs (using as a case study the Squarespace iPhone "giveaway"):

Is this effective? I'm not sure. No matter what, it's pretty low cost -- the 30 phones will cost it under $10,000 with no media or creative costs to speak of. It's clear that Twitter will need to crack down on this kind of hashtag gaming (hello, #spymaster) for people to become trending topics. This kind of thing, to me, quickly becomes spam.

$10,000 for absurd amounts of reach, even if it's low-impact reach, is every advertiser's dream. Having worked at an advertising boutique for a few weeks one winter break, I can tell you those numbers blow billboards, radio, and almost all traditional creative out of the water by such a margin it's not even funny.

But how do you qualify the loss of brand equity associated with annoying customers with such a blatant attention grab? Already, one of Morrissey's readers has posted a Mea Culpa for responding to the hash tag scheme.

Follow Brian Morrissey on Twitter. While you're at it, follow me too; I'm much more letter efficient.

More on social marketing:

• The ethics of Pay-per-tweet, Twitter contests, and word-of-mouth marketing
• The Sinister Sibling of Paid Reviews
• Commercial alert on buzz marketing, another term for social marketing
• Marketers Demand Ad Audits
• BusinessWeek on MTVu's Y2M Acquisition

For years, I've been telling people I want to get away from Google, but I keep finding myself using more and more Google products: Gmail, GoogleTalk, Gchat, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Picasa ... The list goes on and on. Oh yeah, and Google search.

But while Google's certainly convenient, I'm not really comfortable with having all my data in one company's hands, even if their motto is "Don't be evil." So I've started building my own iGoogle-like dashboard right on my very own site, using Drupal. It's been surprisingly easy, and with about 2 hours work, I could embed my RememberTheMilk to do list, package tracking, my upcoming stories for the week, check Facebook, and more:

A Google-free iGoogle

And it's all within an interface I have complete control over, can back up easily, and can modify to the smallest detail. Drupal even makes it easy to sort things into neat columns.

Full disclosure: I'm kinda cheating a little bit, because I'm still using Google Gadgets for my webpage, but at least it's a step in the right direction, and much of that functionality wouldn't be hard to reproduce piecemeal in a 100% Google-free way.

So, what would you put in your own custom Google-free iGoogle page?

After my posts on how to fix the Facebook virus after an attack, I've noticed a number of searchers looking for information on how to find a particular message in your Facebook message history. I've put together a Facebook message search guide to help just these people, including some bad news about Facebook chat history. Read the full post.

BostonTweet & @Sayagle are giving away 2 dozen Sweet Cupcakes (2 $36 gift cards)! RT to enter - drawing on 6/4 http://bit.ly/ibCHl

--BostonTweet

Seeing more and more sweepstakes offers on Facebook and MySpace lately, and almost all of these sweepstakes comes with the same "cost": Get a chance at a prize X if, and only if, you log yourself as a loyal follower, friend, or fan, virally spreading on the contest to your RealLife™ friends.

There's nothing wrong with these contests per se, unless you factor in how obnoxious and sort of slimy it is for your friends to try and capitalize on your friendship by begging you to sign up for offer X. I recently started receiving Facebook messages with just such a request, and couldn't help but feeling like ...

Read the whole entry here

Yodlee MoneyCenter is apparently considering launching some new features, ranging from a way to gauge your environmental impact based on your purchase history to peer-to-peer financial advice. Since Yodlee also powers Mint Financial Services and BankOfAmerica.com, don't be surprised if the features make there way over there, too.

Read the full post for all the feature details.

June 5th: I've been scouring Twitter and Google Alerts for the latest on more LEGO Rock Band songs, so I'll add them as I find them. Jump to the Lego set list.

I don't have much more to report on LEGO Rock Band's songs last time, but I'll take it. IGN's preview had a glimpse of the trademark LEGO humor we'll see:

This isn't simply making a band and jumping into a world tour -- although you will make band members. Here, you'll be going about… being a band, I guess, and challenges will pop up via cutscenes. One will start with some LEGO dudes trying to demolish a building, and when they fail, you'll have to rock hard enough to topple the walls. In another scene, you'll be performing on a helicopter while being chased by a giant robot.

But more importantly, it gave us another song, raising the known total (once including some gleaned from LEGO Rock Band fact sheet) to 8 known tracks. Without further ado, here is the complete known track list:

• Pink: "So What"
• Good Charlotte: "Boys and Girls"
• Europe: "The Final Countdown"
• Carl Douglas: "Kung Fu Fighting"
• Blur: "Song 2"
• The Jackson 5: "I Want you Back"*
• Vampire Weekend: "A-Punk"**
• Foo Fighters: "Breakout"**

The game is also confirmed to allow downloadable content (DLC), although it's not yet confirmed whether or not that will include giving your brick avatars access to previous Rock Band tracks.

* denotes discovered in IGN's article.
** denotes discovered through GoNintendo's LEGO Rock Band fact sheet.

Article updated 9:32 a.m. June 4 to reflect original sources.

The Internet doesn’t work on a daily schedule. But even more importantly, it abhors the absence of voice. There’s a reason why opinion writing tends to dominate the most-read lists on our “news” sites. Indeed, what we’ve seen is that Internet communities tend to form around voices — informed, passionate, authoritative voices in particular. (No one wants to read a bored blogger, I always say.) --Dan Froomkin (source)

I hadn't realized it had been over three years since I attended Harvard's Nieman Conference, but the date stamp doesn't lie. I checked back because I saw Dan Froomkin, who I'd found to be one of the more memorable speakers that year, is still actively involved with the Foundation, authoring a series of blog posts on the future of news. The particular segment that caught my eye was entitled "Why 'playing it safe' is killing American newspapers."

Froomkin was an "early adopter" of blogging as far as newspapermen go, joining WashingtonPost.com in 1997 and being the long-time writer and blogger for "White House Watch." Looking back over my notes when I first heard him speak and what he's saying now, I'm surprised by how little they've changed.

Continue Reading

To: Microsoft Xbox Team
From: Michael Morisy
Subject Line: Inclusion of Twitter on Xbox 360

Dear Microsoft XBox Team,

[Via Harvard Business' New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets]

Sincerely,

Michael Morisy

Most of my hits lately have been people searching for information on bunga.at or another variant, like kirgo.at, nutpic.at, or 151.im. I've put together bits and pieces of information on the continuing Facebook phishing attack, but here's a quick guide on what to do if you've already fallen for it:

• IMMEDIATELY change your passwords, particularly if you use the same password for Facebook as you do for other sites, like your bank or e-mail. This is the most important thing you can do, and the number one way to protect yourself from further, serious damage.
• Report the breach to Facebook by e-mailing them at privacy@facebook.com. They're likely getting dozens of e-mails on the topic every second, but if they have your info they might be able to scrub any damage done before it gets passed much further.
• Post a link on your wall to articles like this or the Facebook Phishing Scam Awareness group and let your friends know you've been compromised. It happens, but spreading the word about what they can do can minimize the damage.
• Check your sent messages: You might be able to see who you've forwarded the worm to, and if so you can reply to all the people and warn them not to click your link. This won't always work but is worth a try.
• Run anti-virus. Some users who've been hit have reported getting attacked by a Windows executable, and de-activating whatever nasty payload you might have gotten should be your next priority after changing your passwords and trying to prevent the virus from spreading further. If you don't have anti-virus already installed, learn your lesson and at a minimum, go install AVG, which is free. Many, many schools and service providers also give out free anti-virus to their students and customers.

Facebook itself had a few anti-phishing recommendations:

• Use an up-to-date browser that features an anti-phishing black list. Some examples include Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox 3.0.10.
• Use unique logins and passwords for each of the websites you use.
• Check to see that you're logging in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain.
• Be cautious of any message, post or link you find on Facebook that looks suspicious or requires an additional login.

Further Reading:

• Facebook virus attacks continues: Check kirgo.at, nutpic.at, and brunga.at continue to lure unwary
• Facebook says "Check 121.im"; Common sense says don't
• Facebook's blog post on how to Protect Yourself Against Phishing
• Find your Facebook message history

Already hit? Check out this guide of what to do now.

Looks like claims to have cleaned up the the Facebook 151.im worm were a bit premature. I've gotten three more offers to check scam sites in the past few hours, including to Kirgo.at, nutpic.at, and brunga.at. It looks like the phishers have changed from the Isle of Man's .im domain to Austria's .at. I'd still pick the former this time of year.

Most of what I wrote about the Facebook virus previously still applies, although it looks like the bad guys' servers are having trouble handling all the images, which will hopefully slow down the amount of people falling for the trick.

One way to make sure that it's the real Facebook site you're logging in to? Simply put in a made up e-mail and password in the login page. The phishing sites have been putting out a "502 Bad Gateway" error, while the real Facebook would ask you to try again. Note that this is not a 100% fool proof method (check the address bar!), but few phishers, particularly for a scheme like this, are likely to go through the trouble of a complicated input verification scheme.

Further Reading:

• What to do if you get hit by the Facebook brunga.at virus attack
• Facebook virus attacks continues: Check kirgo.at, nutpic.at, and brunga.at continue to lure unwary
• Facebook says "Check 121.im"; Common sense says don't
• Facebook's blog post on how to Protect Yourself Against Phishing
• Find your Facebook message history

First off, welcome to my personal home page. As the "About" sidebar says politely to your left, this website does not represent the views of anyone but Michael Morisy, unless clearly attributed.

I am a news writer for TechTarget, a Needham, MA-based technology business-to-business (read: trade) publication. They run several dozen websites, of which I write for five:

• SearchUnifiedCommunications.com (My articles)
• SearchMobileComputing.com (My articles)
• SearchTelecom.com (My articles)
• SearchNetworking.com (My articles)
• SearchEnterpriseWAN.com (My articles)

A few of those sites also have associated blogs at which I post with varying frequency:

• Telecom Timeout
• The Network Hub
• Unified Communications Nation

The vast majority of my new writing these days can be found at these locations, although I do blog here as well as enter the occasional creative writing contest. I'm also the volunteer videographer for Boston International, which brings in some excellent speakers and puts together some swell events. I'm also always looking to volunteer as a videographer or in another media capacity (sound editing, writing, photography, etc.) for any worthy, charitable causes. If you know of any, get in touch as described below and I'll do my best to help out.

How @Morisy uses Twitter

My tweets are a blend of personal and professional related messages. This isn't a mix everybody enjoys, but I don't particularly want to share the travails of my every day life and few people care about the same so I hope I strike a good balance. If you don't follow me, I've long since moved past being offended and I realize that for some people, 5 tweets a day is excessive while for others less than 20 posts means you're not really using the service. I usually end up somewhere in between.

I also frequently use Twitter's search as a way to locate possible story sources, particularly when I want an unfiltered perspective that isn't pre-screened by PR types (no offense to my many PR followers, but that's just my methodology).

I use Notify.Me to update me to any @replies sent my way on IM (I highly recommend it, particularly to you on again, off again Twitter-ers), so even if I'm not using Twitter, it's not a bad way to grab my attention. I tend to be less responsive to direct messages, though I try to get back to people in due course.

Contacting me in general

I'm a relatively irregular Twitter user, although I've grown to be a fan. I read maybe 5% of my Twitter stream, so if you'd like something to come to my attention, your best bet is to e-mail me (see sidebar), instant message me (Just "morisy" on GChat, "MMorisy" on AOL instant messenger), or call 1-857-488-3081.

My preference is actually that order: E-mail for initial contact and so I have it as a reference, follow up via IM, and then, for something that's more complicated or urgent, phone. If we don't talk often by AIM, please identify yourself and I'll try to add you to my buddy list.

Thanks again for checking out my blog. Sorry if this was a bit dry, but it's semi-work related. The rest of this site, I promise, is not, and feel free to explore the somewhat varied postings on journalism, media, technology, and other odd bits that please me. Feedback is always welcome.

Actually, just 24 pounds, but it still stings.

I tried a lot of queries without success on WolframAlpha, the new "computational knowledge engine," ranging from rates of homelessness and AIDS in various regions to salaries for college graduates. None of the first 20 or so queries gave me back meaningful results. Then I decided to hold myself under Wolfram's unflinching light by putting in some of my vitals. After all, Googling oneself is a time-honored tradition, so why shouldn't Wolfram'ing oneself become the same?

Here's why:

While I know I could afford to drop a few pounds, 186 lbs for a 6'3" male sounds pretty downright unhealthy, and is about 20 pounds south of what my doctor recommended with his weight chart.

Obviously, WolframAlpha's databases could still use expansion (that or I really am a lot worse off than I thought).

But while these results weren't exactly pretty for anyone involved, I still see some strong potential for the service (which is NOT, as has been reported again and again, a "search engine," at least not as the term is commonly used today).

Mr. Wolfram's introductory screen cast alone was enough to get me excited, even if, as a friend remarked, playing around with it for a few minutes shows just exactly how close you have to stay to its databases to get meaningful results.

That said, the empty handed results on AIDS, homelessness, global warming ("Functionality for this topic is under development..."), post-graduate pay, etc. etc. shows not the engine's weaknesses, but how much potential it has as more databases, licensed or under public domain, become available. Having an engine that calculates and beautifully displays previously impenetrable data sets could be a huge asset to journalists, researchers, and everyone else with an inquiring mind.

In the meantime, there are plenty of cool things WolframAlpha can do. I suggest:

• Searching your birthday
• Compare cities you've lived in
• Your life expectancy
• See how closely related Sharks and Octopii

are before watching the movie

I really disagree with Silicon Alley Insider founder Henry Blodget's thoughts, that WolframAlpha's just another search engine destined to fade:

Our prediction: Wolfram Alpha (terrible name) will see a nice spike in traffic for a few days, then it will disappear unnoticed along with all the other "next-generation" search engines.

Why?

Because search isn't broken. It can be improved, yes, and companies like Wolfram Alpha will show Google how to improve it. But no search engine we've seen, including this one, comes close to making the quantum leap in performance required to get real volumes of Internet users to switch.

Specialized data base search engines have actually done quite well. Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline are some prime examples (and ones with great business models to boot), but Zillow's also a fan favorite, despite supposedly terribly inaccurate house price estimates that realtor's routinely gripe about.

Is Google broken? No, but neither was Yahoo or Lycos, really, when Google burst onto the scene, and to be honest, calling WolframAlpha a "Google-killer" mostly misses the service's point, which is not to search but to calculate specific results based on verified data.

Further Reading:

• Search Engine Wolfram Alpha Launches With Big Dreams And No Chance
• Can WolframAlpha Escape The Curse Of Google Challengers Past?
• Computational knowledge engine (search engine) Wolfram Alpha is live