Social Media Marketing Strategies

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This idea was inspired from this post by J. Phil of scribkin.com. The idea is simple, and I think will be very rewarding.

When I first joined FreindFeed in February, it was easy to maintain a normal balance of my friends and their activities. This was easy because my number of subscriptions was low. Five months later, over 330+ people are subscribed to me, and I have reciprocated back to about the same number. The core group of people I follow are great. They provide tremendous value to me with the content and conversations they create, contribute and participate in. I often find myself on FriendFeed sticking to and staying close to the herd I follow. While there is nothing wrong with this, it’s coming at an expense which is isolation.

I feel like I have isolated myself and a lot of subscribers by sticking to the herd. I very often will visit the blogs, like content, comment or share the content of people who are newly subscribed to me. This has become a nearly impossible task, to keep up with over 330+subscriptions. Google reader helped tremendously in this task when my member circle and rss feed count was lower. I currently have about 300+ feeds in Google reader & Toluu alone. In some respect it has become what I feared the most, quantity and not quality. The time has come for me to broaden my horizons on FriendFeed and stray from the pack.

This will last for 5 days beginning midnight tonight 7/29.

The Objective: To participate only in my circle of 330 friends. Sorry foafs. This entails only liking and commenting on content from members that are subscribed to me. Now the noticeable change will be in the content I share via Google reader, and the content I post via bookmarking using Diigo and the Friendfeed bookmarklet. The content I share must come from a members blog that is subscribed to me on Friendfeed. The usual content from the trusted sources such as Duncan Riley, Louis Gray, Hutch Carpenter, Steve Hodson and Sarah Parez will still be shared on my feed for the next 5 days. Not only because I like their writing, but more importantly because they are subscribed to me on Friendfeed and part of my member circle. Begining tommorow and lasting 5 days, I will actively share content from a majority of members blogs I have never seen, much less visited. I will have the same level of engagement with my conversations, comments and liking.

I have set up a new Google Reader account for this purpose. This account is only for member blogs that are subscribed to me. Going through 330+ members profile is not feasible, so I started this thread on FriendFeed asking members in my circle to post their blogs. If you subscribe to me and publish a blog, please list it in this thread.

The Goal: To broaden my horizons and to truly get to know the people that follow me better. I hope after 5 days, my level of engagement on FriendFeed will be more enriched and fufilling. I will post a follow up once the 5 days are over.

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed

One of my core responsibilities as a system admin is preventing credit card fraud on our network. I’m basically the primary gatekeeper who determines the validity and legitimacy of all new online orders. With the large amount of business we do on a daily basis, it’s impossible to completely eliminate credit card fraud. Even with the help of filters and automated systems, inevitably fraud gets through. I am realistic about the situation, all I can do is minimize, deter and stay one step ahead of them.

It’s a daunting task. These fraudsters are mostly international.  They often work in organized groups and are constantly adapting their tactics and testing our systems. These probes of our security, at the front door and inside are non stop. This continues around the clock, 365 days a year.

The company I work for  has been in the industry for over 10 years. The name is well known and established. The down side to that is the scammers caught on long ago, and word got around that we were the one stop shop for hosting accounts. That was 1997, fast forward to today and things have changed drastically. We have improved our systems, the cyber criminals have improved theirs. They are and always will be one step ahead of us. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse.  In 1997 the cyber criminals were mainly reeking havoc on networks by sending spam, and launching DDoS attacks. The Internet was young then and scammers were just learning to take advantage of this new medium.

It did not take them long, and we now have a cesspool of fraud on the Internet. What adds to the cesspool of fraud is globalization.

The majority of these cyber criminals are from, Africa, Romania, Russia, South East Asia. These global criminals often come from poverty and third world countries. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, to the tune of $49.3 billion in 2007 in the United States for identity theft alone. Most of these countries simply don’t have the man power nor funding to arrest these cyber thugs. It certainly is not a priority for them or the FBI.

To understand a cyber criminals mind, you must think like them, essentially almost become one of them.  This is how I play the game everyday. Unfortunately at this point in the game, it’s often at some unknowingly random individuals expense. This persons credit card number, possibly social security number, drivers license info is floating around the net, being sold or traded in IRC rooms for instance. I often use social networking sites such as Friendster and Myspace as a tool for learning who our enemies are, their tactics, strengths and weaknesses. I have tracked a few individuals and groups down this way, I assume an alias and gain trust within there organizations. I use the necessary tools and translation software to extract what information of value I need. I randomly monitor IRC for activity.  IRC is social networking for cyber criminals.  Channels or rooms are used routinely to buy and sell breached consumer data. This data ranges from credit card numbers with or with out cvv2, social security numbers, bank account numbers and so forth.

The scammer is now armed with a fresh credit card. Their shopping spree might start off buying Skype credits and maybe some fresh Itunes. They then come to us to start their fraudulent activities off for the day. They are usually armed with numerous stolen credit cards, including cvv2, full name, billing address, telephone etc. In some cases they take over email accounts, or create new ones assuming the persons identity along with email passwords and personal information.  The smarter and more sophisticated criminals almost go undetected, these are the true challenge for me. The majority of the cyber thugs I have encountered are sloppy. They do not  attempt to use a proxy to hide their IP or use any other means to disguise themselves. They often test the system to see what will get through. The smarter ones can do it first time around, usually one or two fresh credit cards and correlating information is needed along with a good proxy.

Once they are in the door, it’s a race against time.

• Phishing
• Fraudulent escrow sites
• Fraudulent shipping sites
• Identity theft
• SQL Injection
• Spam
• DDoS attacks

This will be a continuing piece. More of the hosting underbelly will be upcoming in the days and weeks to follow. Stay tuned.

Mike Fruchter cyber criminals, internet fraud, irc

Mike Fruchter new media douchebags, Video

• Google reader
• Linkriver
• RSSmeme

Word of mouth offline via keywords

Mike Fruchter compensation content creators

Michael Harris recently posted on his blog, “Should I unsubscribe from people who don’t follow me back?”

Felix, a member on FriendFeed, recently released a handy little FriendFeed script called FriendVenn.

The script tells you 3 important things:

• People who you subscribe to, and people who do not reciprocate.
• People who subscribe to you and who reciprocate.
  
• People who only subscribe to you.

000000

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In the early stages of my experience in social networking, I had very little criteria for subscriptions. You subscribed to me, and I reciprocated. Looking back, that was purely a numbers game. Nowadays I have become more selective with whom I follow on the various social networking sites. I primarily follow people with the same interests as me, whether it’s social media, applications, baseball or boxers. The underlying theme is interests and content value. What value do you bring me? What value do I bring you? Value comes in different forms. It could be the content you are sharing, content you created, or comments you have made. I will not blindly follow or follow for bragging purposes on who has the most followers. I would rather have quality then quantity when it comes to my virtual friends and networks.

The chart above reiterates that fact. There are people who do not reciprocate, and I am totally fine with that. Why? Because they bring to me consistent quality content. Will they reciprocate back? Probably not, if they have not done so by now. Quality speaks for itself and should require no reciprocation. If I lived by the 2 way reciprocation law, I would unsubscribe from them, and I still would be able see their content through FOAF’S. On Friendfeed, when I subscribe to someone, I don’t need or expect instant reciprocation,or gratification. It’s a nice feeling, but not a requirement. I subscribed to Louis Gray shortly after discovering Friendfeed in February. It was 2+ months later that Louis reciprocated back. Louis did not blindly follow me back, It took time for him to recognize quality and value, and then reciprocate. The only way to get earned reciprocation is by contribution. I try to contribute quality topic related content , via blog posts, shared content, comments, likes, bookmarks and other related media as often as I can.

This leads me to the followability factor in social networking. What criteria prompts you to subscribe or follow a member?

• Affiliations
• Quality of content
• Quality of conversations
• Similar interests
• Popularity
• Recommendations
• Networking
  

Are you expecting reciprocation?

Related reads:

The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand

Mike Fruchter

Toluu is a one stop social supermarket for discovery of new rss feeds. How Toluu works is quite simple. Once registered, you will import your current OPML file into the system. The service will then search for other users with interests similar to yours. This is almost like a dating service, and will display the best matches accordingly. Toluu is not a replacement rss reader, but rather a type of condiment. This post  highlights some of the recent feature enhancements that Toluu has implemented.

Filtering made easy:

Toluu recently introduced 3 new filtering options. Now you can see your matches based on when they joined Toluu. Filtering by ‘This Month’ or ‘This Week’ shows only users who have joined in that period who match with you. This helps to consistently surface new fresh feeds and new members.

Feed views & statistics:

On feed pages, you now have the ability to see popular posts pertaining to that feed. You also can view how many Toluu members are subscribing to that particular feed.  The subscriber view will also show that particular members 3 most recently added feeds. This makes it that much easier for finding new members to subscribe to that share the same interests.

User interface:

When you hover over a feed anywhere on the site, a small tooltip will popup with the feed title and 5 recent posts from the feed. These post titles are clickable and link directly to the post on the source blog. These new quick tool tips are available anywhere a feed appears on the site, the activity page, match page, feed lists, profiles, and the feed subscribers view.

Activity view:

The improved activity view reveals a treasure trove of data. You can now see and sort feed activity based on contacts and favorite feeds. You can also see recent activity on Toluu from your friends, or everyone on the system.  Clicking the “Feeds” link, will show you feeds gaining traction on Toluu.

Scalability:

Toluu has undergone a major re-architecting of their matching system, this in turn has made the system dramatically faster and more stable.  The days of slow page responses are a thing of the past. The speed improvements Toluu made to the matching system, has also laid the groundwork to a more universal caching system.

Toluu is currently in private beta. If you would like an invite to test drive the service, please post a comment with your email address.

Mike Fruchter rss

The criteria for staying active in social media can be defined and interpreted in many different ways. This leads me to the foundation first, contribution. The frequency at which we contribute, dictates the level of our activity and inactivity in social media.

Measuring an individuals level of activeness can be based on the mechanisms we use for participation:

Communication:

• Blogs
• Micro blogging
• Presence applications
• Message boards
• Social networking sites

Collaboration:

• Wikis: Wikipedia
• Social bookmarking
• Social News sites

Multimedia:

• Photo sharing
• Audio sharing
• Video sharing
• Life streaming
• Podcast

I was curious to hear what applications people use to contribute and stay active in social media. On Friendfeed I asked, “What are the social media applications you use the most?”

Top applications used among commenters:

• Friendfeed
• Facebook
• Myspace
• LinkedIn
• Google Reader
• Disqus
• Del.icio.us
• Twitter
• Plurk
• Flickr
• Brightkite
• Last.fm
• Stumbleupon
• Wordpress
• Youtube

I stay active in a multitude of ways. These are the core applications I use. Some are linked to my services, so you can judge for yourself how “active” I am.

Creation:

1. Blog (wordpress powered)
   

Discovery:

1. Google Search (blog & web)
2. Google Reader
3. FriendFeed Google Shared Room
4. Toluu
5. Wikipedia

Bookmarking:

1. Diigo

Discussion:

1. Disqus
2. GTalk
3. FriendFeed

Distribution:

1. Google Reader
2. Twitter
3. FriendFeed

Networking:

1. Facebook
2. FriendFeed

Mike Fruchter contribute, Friendfeed, Social Media, Social Networking

I wrote a post a little over a week ago titled “The ticking time bomb awaiting Friendfeed.”  I talked about how Friendfeed will become a spammer’s new tool, more specifically on how they could monetize on their efforts using rooms on Friendfeed. Spam on social networking sites and applications is nothing new, it just comes in different flavors. Comment spamming, profile spamming, instant messaging spam etc.

Spammers finding Friendfeed is inevitable. The first flavor of spam, comment spam appeared on Friendfeed last night on various members feeds. I saw it first on one of Steve Hodsons threads. The community acted swiftly and within minutes Amber alerts, spammer alerts were sounded and black lists were created. Bret Taylor of Friendfeed reacted quickly and terminated the spammers account. Friendfeed is still a small fish in the social sea compared to Facebook and Myspace. I think community policing works great in small numbers. The dynamics change completely when you go from a few thousand active users compared to a few million. In my opinion, Friendfeed will become a household name such as Facebook or Myspace, as for when, who knows.  It is then that I can see social networking spam becoming a major headache on Friendfeed. We still have some time before  that scale of spamming infiltrates Friendfeed. Content aggregator sites will become the most powerful tool for the next generation of spammers lying in wait. Friendfeed will be a major catalyst for this.

Friendfeed needs a flagging mechanism put into place, such as is implemented on Craigslist. I would also like to see visible “report or flag this” link on all member feeds and rooms. I also like Robert Scobles suggestion quoted below.

“An algorithm for block spam here on FriendFeed: if an account has x more blocks than subscribers put the account into jail where it won’t show up in anything others than the jail. I don’t like Facebook’s policy of deleting stuff. Just move it to jail.”

I could not get a screen shot of last nights spam, due to the spammers account being deleted along with all the offending comment spam. I did find another instance of comment spam on Friendfeed as shown below.
————

——————–

Spammers will invade Friendfeed at some point at what level, that remains to be seen. It’s too early to tell at this stage of the game. Friendfeed needs to implement the tools and mechanisms now while in the early stages, rather then playing catch up later on. Give the community the tools, and the community will use them.

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed, social networking spam, spam

Mike Fruchter

Last night I blogged about 10 people you should follow on Friendfeed. This morning when I awoke and checked my email, I was pleasantly surprised. My inbox was flooded with 70+ new subscribers. 70+ new editors, who for the most part, (I) think share a majority of the same interests as I do.  As you have become my editor, I now have become yours. I think we share a majority of the same interests in technology and social media, presumably that’s what prompted you to subscribe to me. Surely it could not have been my distant side profile picture, or my last name which sounds like a curse word some of us might use too often. Our connection for the most part is an excellent example of silent social networking.

————-

—————————————–
This silent type of social interaction is a crucial element needed to make up a well balanced social echo chamber. On Friendfeed we do this mainly by liking a participants contributions, and sharing and re-sharing their content, usually through applications such as bookmarklets or Google Reader. One more example would be a type of online rating star or vote system.

This is a great example of how, and why this medium can be so powerful. This example being so virtual, still in some ways feels remarkably personal. The last phase of this new partnership is discovery. I get to discover close to 70+ new content feeds, flickr feeds, blogs, bookmarks etc. In addition to new content, we both introduce each other to thousands of FOAFS who we otherwise would never have known existed. 

Thank you new Friends, I look forward to seeing all of you on Friendfeed.

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed, Social Networking

On Friendfeed, I am currently subscribed to 190 people. This post lists the top 10 people I find the most interesting, according to Friendfeed. If you share the same general interests in social media as I do, you should consider subscribing to their feeds. If you are currently subscribed to me on Friendfeed, then you should already be seeing there feeds courtesy of Friendfeeds FOAF feature.

1) Louis Gray

Short Bio: Louis is a 31 year old technology blogger, and as of recent, father of newborn twins. In his day job, he works in corporate marketing for a Silicon Valley technology company.
Topics: Web 2.0, Social Applications, RSS, lifestreaming, Aggregation, Twitter, Friendfeed
Web: http://www.louisgray.com/live/

2) Hutch Carpenter

Short Bio: Hutch is a reformed banker and MBA who has been in the technology industry since 2000. Hutch recently left BEA Systems, where he did product marketing for its suite of Web 2.0 apps for the enterprise: wikis, blogs, mashups, widgets, and social search.
Topics: Web 2.0, Social Applications, Social Media, Enterprise, Friendfeed
Web: http://bhc3.wordpress.com

3) J. Phil

Short Bio: J. Phil is the webmaster of scribkin.com,”The site where code and culture converge”. The site focuses on social applications, social media bookmarking and networking sites, as well as creating primers on Web 2.0 applications.
Topics: Social Applications, Social Media, Social Bookmarking, Friendfeed, Twitter
Web: http://www.scribkin.com

4) Mitchell Tsai

Short Bio: Mitchell was a child prodigy who began college at age 10. He is currently retired. He was founder and CEO of DotCom Director, a venture capital accelerator that invests in and/or raises capital for technology companies.
Topics: Start-Ups, VC, Social Media, Social Applications, Friendfeed, Photography, Travel
Web: http://spiritualbusinesscompanions.blogspot.com

5) Franklin Pettit

Short Bio: Franklin Pettit is a South Carolina software developer. His blog was recently “Louis Grayed.”
Topics: Microblogging, Firefox and Extensions, Web/Social Applications
Web: http://www.fpettit.com

6) Charlie Anzman

Short Bio: Charlie Anzman runs SEO and Tech Daily. He is a skilled, SEO, SEM consultant.
Topics: Start-Ups, SEO, Analytics, Web 2.0, Social Applications
Web: http://anzman.blogspot.com

7) Steven Hodson

Short Bio: Steve Hodson is the webmaster of winextra.com. Steve is a die hard technologist with over 20 + years experience in the computer industry. Topics: Web 2.0, Web/Social Applications, Social Media, Friendfeed, Twitter Web: http://www.winextra.com

8 ) Tim Hoeck

Short Bio: Tim Hoeck is a coder, highly skilled in most programming languages. He currently works for a technology corporation, as a technical support trainer.
Topics: Analytics, Social Bookmarking, Mashups, Aggregation,
Web: http://timhoeck.com

9) Sarah Perez

Short Bio: Sarah has been blogging about technology since 2004. She had worked as an I.T. professional up until recently when she became a full-time professional blogger. She now works full time for the website Read Write Web and Microsoft’s Channel 10.
Topics: Microblogging, Social Applications, Social Media, Social Bookmarking, Friendfeed, Twitter
Web: http://www.sarahintampa.com

10) Mark Trapp

Short Bio: Mark is a IT manager for a graphic design company located in NY. Mark adds tremendous insight, and thought provoking commentary.
Topics: Culture, Politics, Social Applications, Social Media, (Mixture of topics)
Web: http://friendfeed.itafroma.com

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed, Social Media, Social Networking

I focused in on my last post, about how Friendfeed could be a great resource for spammers. Delving further into the subject, it got me thinking. With Friendfeed becoming a social bank of information, it would be an ideal tool for private investigators, law enforcement, debt collectors and so forth. We are so quick to be active contributors to social media, the majority of us, sadly do not sit back and think about the implications of how our digital footprints can be used against us.

What most of us do on sites like Friendfeed, Myspace, Facebook etc, can be classified as a type of life-streaming activity. Life-streaming is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media. Friendfeed is one of the platforms that facilitates the process. Friendfeed takes it a step further. It added the community aspect to life-streaming, something the competitors in the space, such as Socialthing & Profilactic were late to figure out.

Friendfeed allows one to add a multitude of services to compose their life-stream. You can broadcast your online status, your favorite music, videos, images, bookmarks. Location-based social networking, such as Brightkite takes it a step a further, and allow one to broadcast your location in real time, tracking not only you, but your networks of friends and family as well.You are archiving and broadcasting these activities simultaneously in real time, leaving a traceable, easily accessible digital profile behind in the background. There is not much we can do about that. This is a small price we all pay using social media online. We all have done Google queries on our names at some point. We find hundreds, some several thousand pages of archived public,  life-stream data. This data is accessible to any person, corporation, and even law enforcement entity.

Most private investigators and law enforcement use search engines as their primary source for fact finding information. Circumstances permitting, they would use social media as a second avenue for investigative research. Think about how beneficial the information an individuals lifestreaming feed could be . An instant profile can be created of the target. This profile could contain an individual’s photos, websites, comment postings (with time stamps), music play lists, tweets, employment and business affiliations etc. The scope of the profile and data will vary based on how active the target is, and what social media applications they use.

Friendfeed being the main hub for all these services to plug into, makes it the ideal one stop shop to monitor and profile a target’s activities. Private investigators, and cyber sleuths would have a field day monitoring sites like Friendfeed. They could easily monitor a potential cheating husband or wife’s daily whereabouts, twitter conversations, etc. This all can be done from the comfort of Google Reader, by simply importing the targets Friendfeed RSS feed. Law enforcement is one example, there is a whole slew of industries who can and are using an individuals life-streaming activities to track them down for whatever reason. I am not blogging about anything new. It’s common knowledge for most of us that everything we do online is logged, archived and stored somewhere. The question is, have we become to complacent on what we broadcast online? What are your thoughts on the negative ramifications of life-streaming and how it can be used against you?

Related reads:

Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams.

Mike Fruchter lifestreaming, Social Media

With the steady growth that Friendfeed is experiencing, it’s just a matter of time before the problem of spam infiltrates it.Friendfeed is still the shiny new toy that only the people in the know, know about. Because of this, the critical masses and the spammers have not caught on quite yet. The clock is ticking….

The convenient 6 click registration form makes it’s easy for spammers to sign up for “disposable accounts”, and to set up shop in seconds. The smarter spammers will use scripts to automate the sign up process. This will allow them to create several hundred or more throw away accounts at any given time.

The spammers have an arsenal of forty one services at there disposal. Any one of these services can be set up and deployed in seconds. Rooms can be created for any topic or product imaginable. It wont be long before the Viagra spam email of the day arrives and is directing us to the Viagra room on Friendfeed.

Friendfeed gives the spammers multiple ways of getting a message out. The most common would be to post the spam-vertised sites directly to the feed. The handy Friendfeed bookmarklet would accomplish this with ease. The rooms would be filled with link bait galore, allowing spammers more ways to monetize courtesy of, RSS feeds injected with AdSense as one example. The purveyors of porn might stand to monetize the most. They can take full advantage of full multimedia, using video clips, images, text and now even audio, making their rooms into free mini adult porn sites. Rooms have made the possibilities endless. The spammers will pick up on this soon enough.

The community, up to this point, has a done an excellent job of policing itself. What I would like to see is some type of flagging mechanism put into place, such as is implemented on Craigslist. I would also like to see visible “report or flag this” links on all member feeds and rooms.

What other forms of spam will Friendfeed face?

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed, Social Media, spam

Friendfeed is at its core, a content aggregator, but it is transforming into so much more. It’s becoming an online buffet of social media. It will satisfy any virtual hunger one may seek. It’s a smorgasbord of social interaction, and it keeps you coming back for more. It satisfies even the most insatiable appetite for social networking.

Beyond just being a content aggregator, it’s the community aspect that appeals to me the most. The community is comprised of people from all walks of life, age, professions, etc. What separates this social community from the rest, is the active participation from what some call,the “A Listers” or “Virtual Heros“. The virtual heroes are one of the essential ingredients that is building this robust community. They start, create, share and provoke the stimulating content that drive this community. The other great aspect of this community is that anyone can participate and be heard immediately, what I call “instant social gratification”.  We all need a healthy balanced diet. Too much of one thing is not healthy. On Friendfeed the balance in the food chain is that there is plenty of lesser known voices to fill the void. These smaller ,lesser known independents, or what some call the “Z Listers” are the other crucial ingredient that make participating on Friendfeed so rewarding. Friendfeed’s simplicity is that it makes the playing field equal for all to engage and participate. If you apply the the five c’s of social media. you can reap the rewards.

The community on Friendfeed is quick to reward others as well. Rewards come in the form of likes from your subscribers, foafs and potential new virtual friends waiting in the wings. Lesser known bloggers are getting a chance to be put on the radar, and share the spotlight with the virtual hero’s of the community. A rewarding moment for me was getting a notable mention from one of said “virtual heros” back in June. More recently today the spot light was shined on Five obscure blogs that sparkle. So lesson learned the more  you contribute to social media, the more you will get out of it. Stay involved with the community and the community rewards you.

Related reads:

The 6 Best Ways to Rock FriendFeed
Participate. Participate. Participate. Repeat.

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed, Social Media

One of my favorite functions on Friendfeed is the “like” feature.  The higher “likes” an item gets, the more attention it gets from the community. Think of likes as a reward system. The Friendfeed tech savvy crowd instantly recognizes quality and rewards the content authors and distributors with likes. Having a bigger subscriber base helps. This will dramatically increase the amount of likes on an item. Let’s not forget the swarms of FOAF’S (friend of a friends) that will follow the queen bee. The ultimate reward for having a large number of likes on your content , is to be listed with the creme de la creme on the “best of Friendfeed.” This page highlights the best liked content from the past day, week, or month according to the people you’re subscribed to. The like system on Friendfeed allows one to get instant social gratification.

Today I started a discussion on Friendfeed. I asked my fellow Friendfeeders a simple question, classify the type of liker you are. The responses varied and were very interesting. Among some of the reasons why I like content are to show support to the  author or content distributors.  Then there are topics that hit home and bring out emotion. I also like content as a substitute to commenting. A lot of time I am too busy or tired to leave a thoughtful comment, therefore a silent comment, by liking, still gives your seal of approval.

I decided to classify some of the types of likers on Friendfeed.

———————————————

• The Super Liker - Is a person who has a huge following and influence on Friendfeed i.e Robert Scoble. Whatever they like usually turns to gold.

• The Active Liker – Is a person who is really active on the site – They frequently take part on the site  by sharing, posting, and commenting, and are an integral part of the process.

• The Average Liker – Is a person who use’s the site recreationally, just to pass time whether screwing around at work or school to kill spare time. They typically do not submit or share a lot of content. They instead use the site for their own entertainment. Once in a while, the they might comment and get involved on something they are passionate about. Mainly they pretty much go about their business, adding friends now and again and checking in a few times per week.

• The Selective Liker – This is a person who is as selective with his likes, as a sommelier is with his wine.

• Supportive Liker – This is a person who always supports quality content. They fearlessly standby their network of friends. These likers bring a special trait to the game, it’s called loyalty.

• The Random Liker – Is a person who randomly likes any type of content. They are usually non-discriminatory.

• The like it likes it’s hot Liker – Is a person who strikes only when the content or a topic is hot…

• The like to go back to it later Liker – Is a person who use’s likes as a bookmarking system.
  

Coincidentally on Friendfeed, Julian Baldwin started this thread, which brings us to the last type of liker on the list I coined a  “Drive by liker”

Quoted from Julian

“ When you’ve liked every f*ckin piece of media that flows through FF then you’re not participating – that requires true assessment “

What type of liker are you?

Related reads:

FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index

Mike Fruchter Friendfeed