kullin – Page 16 – Media Culpa

Instagram’s increasing problem with spam

Since Instagram has been predominantly a mobile app, its main advantage has not been that it drives a lot of traffic to other sites. So unlike for example Pinterest, it has been relatively free from spam until now. But the last few weeks, we have seen a major push from spammers that use hashtags to find images to publish spam comments on.

At the moment, I can easily scroll through the photos in my feed and find several spam comments, most seem to be on images that use hashtags. This is what happened in the comments to my latest photo, within a few minutes of posting the hashtags (one has since been deleted):

Comments like these are very easy to find. Here are some more posted on some of my friends’ images and on mine:

It is not very hard to determine that these accounts are completely fake. Many of them have fake followers with names like these:

Others have some 14,000 followers that when you click on them, simply don’t exist.

Users can delete and spam report comments and accounts, but some spammers are so active that there is a need for general spam filters that could automatically filter out comments about sites like “followsta gram” and “ig fame”. Spam is annoying for users and need to be taken care of. After all, there are many of us that love Instagram. Don’t let the spammers spoil our instafun.

Infographic: Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney on Twitter

The 2012 U.S. presidential election is a tight race with both candidates getting about the same amount of votes in recent election polls. During the election race, social media has played a very important role. Here is a quick infographic outlining the Twitter battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama has ten times as many followers but Romney has more mentions per tweet.

Click on the image for a larger version or here for a pdf.

Instagram a gold mine for journalists during hurricane Sandy

The hashtag #Sandy on Instagram has more than 315,000 photos, most of them uploaded during the last 24 hours during the hurricane Sandy in New York and the east coast in the USA. The vast number of images uploaded by ordinary citizens is a gold mine for news media. We have seen it before and this time it is happening again, journalists asking for permission to use photos on Instagram in their reporting.

Here are a few examples of comments on one single photo:

Fake photo of hurricane Sandy goes viral on Facebook

During breaking news stories like natural disasters, social media can be an invaluable news source. The problem is that with increasing attention the likeliness that someone will take advantage of the situation also increases. Yesterday, it didn’t take long for spam links to appear on Twitter under the hashtag #hitsunami which was used to report about events during the supposed tsunami that would hit Hawaii.

Also, pranksters and people who are just misinformed tend to spread false rumours and fake photos and videos because social media is so fast and few of us actually stop for a moment to check the source of the information. A photo from the hurricane Sandy, aka Frankenstorm, has just gone viral on Facebook with currently more than 177,000 shares. The problem is that it is fake, and definitely not taken today. A quick picture search on Google reveals that the image appeared already two years ago.

The viral image:

A two year old version of the image from Sept 16, 2010 was posted on Urban Legends (link now taken down).

The person who posted the image on Facebook also did some research and concluded that it was fake:

Here is the original photo of the thunderstorm that was used to create the fake image:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/n_supercell_thunderstorm.htm

As always, it if looks to good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Stop for a moment and check before you share.

Hat tip: I found this via Andreas, @Iam_Curtis on Twitter.

Case: Bob Dylan creates video with Instagram photos from fans

In a recent campaign, Bob Dylan invited fans in Canada to create a video for his song “Duquesne Whistle” in the same style as his classic video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Fans could participate in a contest by choosing words or phrases of the lyrics, write them on a sign, take a photo and then tag photos on Instagram with the hashtag #dylanlyricphotos.

About 130 images were uploaded using that hashtag and some of them ended up in the final version of the video:

A similar idea was launched by the Swedish winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 – Loreen. Fans were invited to post photos on Instagram and a video for “Euphoria” was to be produced. However, I have never seen if that idea ever materialized. More information about the Dylan video here and here.

And here is the original video for “Duquesne Whistle”.

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Cristiano Ronaldo reaches 50 million fans on Facebook

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has quite a fan base. On Twitter, he has close to 14 million followers and on the Chinese equivalent Sina Weibo, he has 9 million followers. But it is on Facebook that the largest number of fans are connected to Real Madrid’s forward. He has now reached 50 million fans on Facebook, beating rival Leo Messi of FC Barcelona with more than 11 million.

Impressive as that is, it still doesn’t put Ronaldo in the top ten of most liked Facebook pages. The top ten according to Fanpagelist.com are:

Facebook – 79 million
Texas Holdem Poker – 66 million
YouTube – 64 million
Rihanna – 62 million
Eminem – 62 million
The Simpsons – 55 million
Shakira – 55 million
Lady Gaga – 53 million
Coca-Cola – 53 million
Michael Jackson – 52 million