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Possible Reduction In Spam

The NY Times reports that the largest spam gang on the Internet is being shut down, starting with their assets being frozen. Some key numbers shared in the article:

  • This group makes $400,000 a month
  • They send 10 billion spam emails per day
  • This group, at one point, sent out 1/3rd of all spam
  • 90% of all email people receive is spam

If these numbers are true, then:

  • The group made 1/7500th of a cent for each email sent (the only cost-effective way had to be sent from unknowingly affected computers)
  • Email users should expect a 33% drop in spam, and an 44% drop in overall incoming email volume.

I wish it were true, but I’m skeptical that we won’t see such drops. Unless the penalties are extremely harsh, other spammers will step in to get a piece of the newly available spam pie.

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LinkedIn Humor

Thought this was pretty funny when accepting a LinkedIn request from a new co-worker named Jack (look at the action buttons):

LinkedIn Humor Don't Know Jack

Apparently I either accept the invite, or admit I don’t know anything.

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Celebrity Vote Meme

This well-done video featuring the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Forest Whitaker and other celebs, is sure to be one of the most rapidly deployed viral videos. The non-partison video is aimed at getting more people to vote using the invite 5 friends meme strategy.

At the time of this posting, the video has less than 100k views. I expect it will surge to a million views in short time.

I’m registered to vote, so I’ll pass this along to 5 more who run websites or blogs in the search community:

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Outside of SEO

I’m feeling a bit guilty for not spending more time writing about SEO on this blog. But, I’m happy to say there is a reason, a very good reason. As you may know, I recently wrote, directed & produced a 30 minute short film which is currently in post production, but mighty close to complete.

film blogBesides learning every nuance to the Final Cut Pro Studio suite, I’m now sharing my experiences with the short film blog associated with the movie. If you are into movies or movie making, I’d love to see your participation on the site. Yes – the image to the right is the Unseen Abilities still image of choice to describe some of our SoundTrack Pro experiences.

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Jane and Robot Events

I attended my first Jane and Robot event on June 25th at the office of Ignition Partners. As you might suspect, a search event geared towards developers & designers attracts your regular assortment of web geeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the audience was dissapointed that they never got to lay eyes on Jane, nor meet the Robot.

jane and robot

Jeff Pollard gave a rapid talk on AJAX SEO pitfalls. Though it was nothing new to me, the audience seemed to receive it well – Jeff’s really knows his stuff. What I was most surprised by was the number of people I hadn’t met before and the Q&A afterwards. People asked very pointed questions like: “Does PPC affect your organic rankings” and “if we are already crawled well, why should we use sitemaps?”

I really appreciate Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia volunteering their time to educate developers on white-hat SEO and creating an opportunity for SEOs to meet up from time-to-time. Jane and Robot is a service that should be embraced and promoted by those in the search industry.