Battle for the Web – Spam

The battle for Web 2.0 is in full swing! Developers, e-business, cyber-geeks, and other entities are mobilizing to control this new horizon. This is a positive thing, except that the same old negative constituents are at work too. Web 2.0’s greatest enemies are the negative forces trying to corrupt the character of the new platform. Much of the discourse on the subject has been about the proliferation of old selling tactics onto innovative web 2.0 applications and innovations. We fear that great services or web sites will eventually take on the same character as the older versions. 

Spam has one of the most destructive effects on the credibility and function of the web. A short while ago, we were under the impression that Spam was under control. New tactics by spammers have overloaded the anti-spam tools of the system administrators. Spam is beginning to filter though even the most sophisticated filters using botnets, images, and fewer URL’s in messages. Text based filters simply cannot keep up with the newest spamming techniques. The expense of filtering spam threatens to price many administrators into extinction.  

Spammers utilize the latest high-tech toys and gifts in order to grab the attention of e-mail recipients. These e-mails are utilizing images of the latest game consoles and other sought after items to get past text oriented filters. According to Marshal’s Spam Volume Index, China and South Korea lead the way in generating spam laden e-mails. Out spending unwanted advertisers into obscurity is not a long range global solution!   

Numerous forums and blogs like Freedom to Tinker have constructive discussions ongoing, with informative and healthy suggestions offered. However, a larger issue exists from the perspective of the true web 2.0 ideology. These problems can be addressed using current methodologies, but new approaches will soon be needed if web 2.0 is to live up to expectations.  A collective effort must be made to remove support for negative entities. At the very least, undesirable elements must be compartmentalized. 

Eventually, developers of web 2.0 elements will have the ability to effectively starve or segregate these bad elements out of the system. In order to accomplish this we will have to develop a web mentality that renders spam useless. I expect the new landscape for web 2.0 and higher will have to be multi tiered. Within these tiers, unwanted elements will have to be excluded or segregated. What this means is a global system of filters and safeguards married to a new philosophy for users.   

E-mail is not the only victim of this attack. Blogs, directories, or any venue that accepts hyperlinks are now huge targets for spam. Spamdexing can have a devastating effect on the blog community, where resources might not be available to protect blog sites for the long term. The problem with content spam is obviously how it degrades and clutters the comments sections of web sites. The larger problem is not the promotion of services, but the quality and validity of those services. Trust and credibility are the essentials for any web 2.0 application. The battle for web 2.0 is underway! Collectively, we can attain the trust, quality, integrity and benefit of something never before seen! True innovation is what we seek, so we need to start thinking with our collective intellect to solve this problem.