DISQUS

Adam Elend · 4 months ago

I think Soren said it. "Anymore detail then that doesn't help our community, it only helps those that are trying to spam."

Transparency is certainly an important principle of the social web, but not an immutable one. The guiding principle I like is "what value am I creating for the user?" Soren's comment suggests that defense outweighs transparency in terms of user value in this case.

To give even more value to your community, you can certainly say, "we're doing our best to fight spam. if you think we're doing a good job, ping me and I'll tell you how we're doing it. If you think we could be doing better, ping me and give me some suggestions!"

marissa (camp 1) · 4 months ago

i would argue strategy always matters and doesn't fall into the broad categories of lover or fighter. for whatever reason, this makes me think of the argument of assimilation vs acculturation ( when one culture assimilates into the dominate culture, or maintains identity regardless of dominate surroundings). One can assimilate or maintain and both could be argued as somewhat strategic.

But to use your example, maybe it was a lack of strategic awareness that failed twitter in combating spam.

On the one hand, if twitter restricts their platform too much, it affects everyone. On the other hand, they are spammed. I think it’s a tricky medium.

By the way, there are many interpretations to sun tzu. It’s an art in how you understand it. I just don’t think it’s realistic to say you aren’t strategic when you built a business on top of another one. Navigating your resources and utilizing them carefully is at the heart of a sun tzu quote somewhere.

It came across to me that you are a lover and don’t think strategy matters and that puts a giant frown on my face. ( I may have misunderstood, but i also don't buy anyway)

i guess i'm trying to say, by saying you are a lover not a fighter isn't really a parallel to i'm a strategist vs. i'm not one.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

if I give you a raise, than phil will ask but if I could I would :)

I am just happy that the four of us think so strategically all the time and overlap and diasagree and still focus.

Soren Macbeth · 4 months ago

ditto

sayemislam · 4 months ago

Big thing I took away from Sun Tzu (and also Clausewitz and Machiavelli) is that there's no strict rule to follow in the game, sometimes you even have to break some, and that you always need to constantly adapt to your surroundings and changing times.

I think if Sun Tzu had a Twitter account and wanted to really ninja-kick spam out he'd take notice of how open and incredibly viral this environment is, and try to craft up a similar message to fight it and be very vocal about it. Thinking of the recent #followfriday trend and how widespread it's become.

Hmm.... what if we had #unfollowmonday?

Just thinking out loud here... it'd be the day where everyone on Twitter takes action to improve this platform by unfollowing spammy accounts and reporting them to @spam.

Also, I think all this Sun Tzu strategy stuff varies from person to person - when you keep yourself light-hearted and humorous, they never see you coming...

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

I started unfollow friday but got bored. Good stuff sayem

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

Also the @spam account sucks

gregorylent · 4 months ago

the insight into the thinking behind the sun tzu mindset and its inappropriateness for current times is astute ... and could be a much longer article, if not a book ... maybe the one umair haque is writing ...

and twitter/spam .. my god .. i can only conclude this is a company whose product, by luck, is much better than the company itself is ...


(and then there is disqus, dont dare write your comment before you log in .. poof, gone}

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

Disqus and akismet from wordpress are the role models.

Love them both

Soren Macbeth · 4 months ago

Strategy and tactics will never, ever go out of style. I don't care if it's web 2.0, web 3.0 or web 9000. Building a business in a (relatively) free market will always entail competition and thus always require strategy and tactics.

What you are talking about is the job of marketing, which is itself part of strategy. Absolutely we should be letting our community know that we hate spam and are doing absolutely everything to combat it. However, that is all that we need to say about it. Anymore detail then that doesn't help our community, it only helps those that are trying to spam.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

Agreed

JakeGint · 4 months ago

I don't think you have any choice in the matter. Weeds will grow in your garden, whether challenged or ignored. You still need to Round Up their asses.

(yes, that was a MON plug)

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

your comments re always great and make me laugh

JakeGint · 4 months ago

Geez, thank HL!

David · 4 months ago

"Therefore, do we let everyone know we hate it and are implementing ways to beat it down or do you keep your mouths shut because if the spammers know you are implementing the filters, they will try harder to beat it?"

Good question, I'd be interested to hear responses on that as well. What is the biggest spam issue in the Stocktwits stream - is it the accidental $ tweets which have nothing to w/ stocks, or is it more an issue of penny stocks & the like?

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

the biggest spam issue is links to pay and bullshit sites.

we will beat it.

AGORACOM - George · 4 months ago

Howard, I've had to deal with this very issue for some time now and can unequivocally say that I have benefited from NOT letting my enemies/competitors know what I know about them.

Enemies (spammers, bashers, etc.) - They know we have some pretty kick ass back end monitoring but don't know anything more. Hence, they keep walking into them without even knowing.

Competitors - No way I alert them to the flaws in their models (operating and business). Simply watch, learn and avoid their mistakes.

It's a dog eat dog world. Sun Tzu will always apply. Always.

The Greek

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

i dont want to comepete against you dude

ppearlman · 4 months ago

i agree w george

Mark Montgomery · 4 months ago

The reasons behind the amount of information overload, to include spam, provides a good case demonstrating why Sun Tzu is more valuable today than ever before. An quick bit of mental math suggests that twitter generates far more revenue at much greater margins for entrenched vendors in the ecosystem than it does for itself- one reason of course is precisely because it is obviously intended to waste as much memory and bandwidth as humanity can generate, thus providing an important part of the upgrade demand cycle. Trust me, anyone attempting to prevent or resolve this issue is swimming up a powerful stream- I've been doing it (mainly attempting) for years.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

Ok. Like it

vruz · 4 months ago

I think Mark is right, and Twitter is going the way of traditional SMTP/POP email.

What constitutes spam is subjective and the transport layer should remain agnostic.
Twitter could implement an api that allows microniche communities to tweak their own bayesian filters, so that spam is better dealt with at community level.

I think the change we're experiencing here is fundamental, as much as to say that the traditional OSI model for computer networks should add another layer on top to better represent the community that's above the application layer.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

great insight.

i am mad about twitter, but they really cant be blamed and its why I keep my complaints on the personal blog.

lucky for us we are a niche and it IS our job to figure this out and hey....if we figure it out best, there could be a big business in it.

vruz · 4 months ago

I think it requires Twitter-side support, just like Gmail learns what
you like and what you don't like.
Filtering infrastructure, community policed.
You can't ask every niche community to develop their own
infrastructure, that's supposedly what Twitter does.
Other than fooling around with Oprah, that is.

Can you tell I'm disappointed too ?

2009/6/27 Disqus <>:

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

As I have jokes before ev and biz best biz model would be to charhe 50k for appearnaces like greenspan.

I think disappointed is the right word.

EVERYONE that knows ev in my circle of friends, loves the guy.
He must be a great dude.

I hate stirring it up when a 40 person company grows this fast its almost impossible to cover all loose ends.

It just feels way too loose.

vruz · 4 months ago

I don't know them, they sure seem likeable and even loveable guys, no
doubt about it.
I just wish they had a stronger focus on DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS,
DEVELOPERS, and less on the Kutchers.
Shaq's not gonna take out the spam for you.

2009/6/27 Disqus <>:

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

There is a blog post in there

Shaq can't kill spam, just breeds it.

dave · 4 months ago

Look on elance or any other 'rent a coder' website. A lot of jobs are geared towards creating and delivering spam . Captcha software (sites where you have to look at a picure and enter the skewed letters or numbers to post et...) has been largely defeated by sites like decaptcha.

As long as men think their dicks are too small or want to make $5000 monthly posting links on Google, spam will be around.

Mr. Unexpectedly · 4 months ago

Seems to me that "fighting" spam--which I don't think is the same as competing in more general business terms, since that can take a variety of approaches, an increasing number of which don't even worry about what the competition is doing--is a lot like playing poker with bullies. You cannot stick to a single strategy, because if they find your weak spot they will exploit it. So perhaps at times you keep your head down, and at times you put it up and roar, particularly when you're coming from a position of strength, e.g. new innovations in software (which have stocktwits looking great) that you WANT the spammers to come at.

I've always thought Sun Tzu's comments on agility and surprise have stayed fresher, and are more contemporarily relevant, than those on strength and force. The former qualities are ever more common in our lives (in and out of work), while the latter have sown quite a bit of destruction of capital, literally and figuratively. But laying traps and pivoting 180 degrees via top-down revisions and radical overhauls to strategy or tactics do not necessarily require worrying about the enemy. It's the capacity to adapt YOUR OWN business, right there in front of god & everybody, that I believe will create success in this new environment. Stocktwits is a case in point.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

i just love sun tzu and getting un tzu's by people in daily life.

poker is the most viral and open game because as you say it allows thosre that adapt and not rely on a single strategy to win out of nowhere.

jbeyda · 4 months ago

I think that soren is right to say that strategy never goes away and that this is really a strategy vis-a-vis marketing discussion.

the stocktwits community appreciates knowing that problems such as spam are being addressed. we dont, however, need to know the exact details of how you are going to solve the spam problem. we are smart enough to realize that giving us these details will only help the enemy. trying to solve the spam issue without telling the community you are doing so probably hurts more than helps b/c the community feels ignored.

brands/communities have the opportunity to use social media to create unparalleled loyalty. Listening to what your fans/users/community are saying on twitter, facebook or the blogosphere is critical. Acknowledging that you are listening and making changes based on what you hear will create loyalty. It gives your user base a sense of importance ("the company is listening to me and my ideas matter")

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

I was only using spam as an example.

In the social web, staying ahead is harder than ever.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

What really hurts twitter and spam is that there are so few narrow communities to attack the overall problem themselves is impossible

Tony Simon · 4 months ago

If everyone makes use of 'Block' the way they are supposed to, it gives a signal to Twitter to take appropriate action. My perception is that Twitter has been quite responsive and timely.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

That's why it works so well on the personal level for non spammers and is a homerun platform either way. I have total spam control. Buyilding a bix on top will see more than typical failure thouygh

vruz · 4 months ago

perhaps Twitter should just stay out of the way and let "microniches" define what constitutes spam for their sensibilities ?

what's spam for me (Michael Jackson anyone?) might not be spam for you.

Chris Rechtsteiner · 4 months ago

There are really two distinct SPAM issues as it relates to Twitter. The first is pretty simple - one-to-one relationships. If you don't follow people, they can't get to you. Problem solved.

However, when looking at a community like StockTwits, well, it's not that easy b/c people want the collective knowledge with and without following. Years (and years) ago, whenever we put into place self-service web apps the most important role was that of moderator. These individuals were tasked with keeping order and, quite frankly, tossing people out when they abused the system.

Sadly, this seems to still be the best way to manage such situations ... at least until the algorithms can catch up to real-time threads & their relation to other comments in the thread for relevance. That doesn't appear to be too close, at least from my vantage point.

RacerRick · 4 months ago

It used to be that every couple of weeks, followers would drop by 10%. Twitter was doing a great job of getting rid of the idiots.

That doesn't seem to happen anymore.

Anyone who sets up an auto follow direct message - instantly banned from twitter.

RacerRick · 4 months ago

One thing on community...

you guys have done a great job of building the (legitimate) participation. It takes a couple of dedicated people at first... then it grows. You can have all the fancy technology in the world, but without dedicated people, it won't grow.

Kudos because you guys have done a better job than any other twitter-based community (so far).

Sachmo · 4 months ago

It'd be nice if buy and sell timestamps were integrated into the user portfolio on stocktwits. For example, I buy $dxo on 3/11/09 (3:23 pm) sell on 5/29/09 (10:30 am). My portfolio records a 89% profit.

Users ought to be able to peer directly into other user portfolios. (Users can hide their portfolios if they choose. In fact default setting could be hidden portfolio).

I can look into another user's portfolio and see if they are successful in numerical form, possibly charts, (as opposed to sorting through tweets). This would greatly aid users in determining which other users to follow.

Stocktwits could also have a biggest gains / best trades section in the frontpage.

Also could be optional as to whether a user displays what percentage of portfolio is in particular stock, bond, etc. Obviously amounts would only be in percentages, not dollars.

I'm not really sure if this is possible given your platform, but it would be nice to hide my 'tweets' on stocktwits from twitter.

Have you ever thought of morphing stocktwits into an online brokerage?

It would solve your monetization problem in a minute (though I'm sure would be no easy task). Also, think of all the cool things you could do with it... users could literally follow other users into trades in real time.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

we have thought, timelined and also talked to online brokers.

you will be seeing shortly some of these ideas .

Sachmo · 4 months ago

Great, excited to see what you have cooking.

stockfrocker · 4 months ago

If I want spam, I can go to yahoo. What you have built here is actually useful to stocknuts. don't loose it.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

24 ho;urs plus a day to ensure we dont. thx.

kileyay · 4 months ago

I agree, dude. The spam problem on Twitter is totally out of control. That being said, I think even at StockTwits shades of grey abound. Can a person link to their site once? Twice? What if they link to a specific section of their site in context of a value-adding tweet? What if the site has a good product pertinent to markets?

If it's this difficult to separate spam from value on a niche vertical community, how grand is the task on the entire Twitter network? If Twitter seems to not care, maybe it's because the scope is unpossibly large. Thoughts?

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

work in progress daily

jeremystein · 4 months ago

im waiting for social media security companies to sprout up. its a human problem. like identify theft, etc, it can't be stopped, only contained. people will always find a new ways to spam.

howardlindzon · 4 months ago

really good thinking actually. it is a human problem. i will have to turn
that into a post or you write it for us.

authorityseo · 4 months ago

I find the new spam threat is real person spam which is real people posting but they are obvious because they post one line comments that don't make any sense to the post.

I won't post how I was defeating spam.

What amazes me with the complexity of some spammers as people that smart have to be able to make money a more honest way

howardlindzon · 1 month ago

I know the pain

Thomas Huynh · 4 months ago

Sun Tzu isn't about fighting. It is about winning. You can learn more about applying the principles correctly in today's environment at Sonshi.com.