Categories
End User spam

616 spam comments in 24 hrs

Just done a bit of an experiment. I deleted a load of spam comments from the blog yesterday at 6am and this morning gone back in and counted the little critters again. In just over 24 hours I’ve picked up another 606 spam comments. There may be some legit ones in there but they ain’t gonna be seen amongst the dross (sorry yawl).

It’s basically around 25 spam comments an hour. We never see spam emails any more, at least not when using gmail. This isn’t entirely true as I do get crap from “seo experts” who address me as “Hi” and quote the “can spam act” in the footer. They always get labelled as spam (may have mentioned this before but it’s an ongoing situation).

I’m sure the 25 spam comments an hour far exceeds the rate of spam emails when we used to get them. Although this spam is mostly captured (Akismet) you do have to occasionally remember to permanently delete it or it would start filling up the server.

In the way you used to get quotes about the size of the global email spam problem it would be interesting to look at the equivalent stats for comments.

The pics below show zero comments initially then 616 a day later. There is something very satisfying about pressing the “empty spam” button. It’s a bit like driving down a clear motorway when there is a 10 mile tailback going the other way.

I wonder what the clickthrough rate for a spam comment is. Must be infinitesimally small. You would have to be paticularly stupid to click on one of the links.

screenshot showing zero spam commentsspam606-642

Other spam related posts:
Louis Vuitton spam
London Book Fair 2014 – unsubscribe spam
Spam blocking strategies

Categories
charitable End User social networking

world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

世界記録のコメントWe had a good go at it guys. When I first discussed the world record attempt for “most comments on an online news post” with the Guinness World Records® people there was no record in place. We came in at 5,455 comments in 24 hours.

Unfortunately in the meantime a Japanese pop star – don’t ask me his name, I was too distraught to register it1  – has come in with 56,800 on his fan website. Apparently a quarter of all his registered fans left a comment. That’s life folks.

However we should not be dismayed. We should rejoice. First of all we raised just over £6k for the RNLI. The RNLI needs £150million a year to keep going. That’s a lot of two pences rolling down that lifeboat donation box and every little helps.

Secondly I contacted Charles Arthur, Tech Editor of the Guardian who after digging around a bit discovered that the most comments ever on a Guardian news post was 4,789.  The Guardian is reputed to have a monthly unique readership of 50 million people globally so the fact that we beat their number for most comments is huge news. NOTW phone hacking not unsurprisingly seems to be the subject that generally attracts most people to comment at the Guardian.

Perhaps I’ll change the subject next time to something more inflammatory. I think we will have another go – next year maybe. There was huge enthusiasm amongst everyone who participated. The main feedback from GWR, apart from the fact that they enjoyed following the attempt was that it appears that this sort of record is generally best suited to celebs with huge  followings. A bit obvious but perhaps we can prove that wrong someday:)

Still to do: tech post & look at the “most inspiring comments”. As regard the latter if anyone has any they would like to highlight let me know – leave a comment on this post linking to their favourite comment.

That’s all folks.

PS world record attempt blog post here

1 tbh it’s ‘cause I couldn’t understand it & didn’t want to look stupid asking for the name again 🙂

Categories
charitable Cloud End User social networking

World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

To get 2012 off to a racing start we will be having a bit of fun on trefor.net and aiming for a world record for “Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours”

This is a genuine Guinness World Records category in which the current record stands at 100,000. That’s just over one comment a second. Should be easy huh? 🙂

The attempt begins at 6am GMT on Thursday 5th January 2012 and ends 24 hours later. It would be nice to think that we could smash the existing record by a country mile. Someone mentioned 1million comments – why not?

Between now and then the blog is moving to a high availability, high performance platform, details of which will be made available in a blog post on Tuesday 3rd January.

In the meantime there is much spreading of the word to do to make this a great success.  You will be kept up to speed with any relevant news regarding the world record either on the blog, Twitter (#comment24), Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn (actually all of the above).

We will also be letting you know in advance the type of content that will be in the post for the record attempt so that you can get your thinking hats on in advance for your own comment.

It would be great if you could spread the word on this by “liking”,” Linking”, “sharing” “tweeting” or just telling your friends by good old fashioned “word of mouth”.

Trefor.net also has a page on Facebook where you can find out more and a Facebook event here.

Hope you can help  🙂

Tref