It happened to me several times via different people on Facebook chat . I had a Facebook chat like this with someone I know from real life:

hi
hi
Wanna laugh?
sure!

at which point I received a tinyurl address, leading to a malware delivery site.
my reaction was:

ops! that was a virus, good thing i dodged it
There are no viruses there

A bit later, another person I know from real life:

hi
hi

Pre-emptively I tried to check in front of me is a real person:

how are you?

It continued:

ok. wanna laugh?
no, thanks

But I received again a tiny.url or bit.ly encoded address to which I didn’t reply further.

Seeing this primitive dialogue, I suspect there is a malware with some chat boot embedded or a low-wage worker in the 3-rd world.
Anyway, the malware addresses will lead you to a fake personalized YouTube page like this, trying to make you run an .exe:

See the problems:

• the numeric URL is the first thing to give it away as malware, unfortunately some browsers, like Chrome, will hide the URL bar by default, leaving the user more vulnerable (Furefox is expected to blindly copy this feature too, making even more naive users vulnerable)
• the target has knowledge of my real name, making me more inclined to trust the source;
• the "video" is a link to an .exe file, something able to trick unsuspecting Windows users;
• the first couple of comments are fom real Facebook contacts, making you be even less suspecting;
• the status bar shows the download as being an .exe, Firefox removed the status bar at all before FF4 and restored it after the users outcry, it shows it was a wise decision.

What can I say? this is a pretty sophisticated attack, combining AI (bots), social engineering, competent crafted design and advanced use of facebook APIs. Be careful!
PS: of course nothing bad happened to me, I spotted the URL instantly, noticed the .exe and don’t run Windows anyway.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives you as much competition as you can imagine. It is too crowded and congested. Even the internet affiliate marketing is a field, where you can find a millions of webmasters, running their affiliate sites.

Having a website is not enough to make your business running and able to compete. You must take other alternatives to give way for the online community to access your website at any rate or chance possible.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

Invest in marketing your internet site. There are basically two options available to you, the SEO and PPC. These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.
1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% – 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get a search engine optimization, you will have to build on your own internet site frequently hit internet links to web site pages. The process will involve IBLN or Independent Back-Linking Network, wherein hundreds or even thousands of pages will be utilized to promote a particular website of a client.

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.
2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first listed in the search engine.

With this kind of advertising, you can still basically control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also very well check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

There are some guaranteed benefits when you get to maximize the PPC strategy.

* PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

* At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. Could it possibly happen that someone out there will go on clicking on your ad? This will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. If this provides a lot of worries, be rest assured that there is a protection for you. Networks are able to recognize fraudulent clicks.

* You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period you want it again displayed.

* You will also be able to adjust well to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach this two is to evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

Blogger and Tumblr represent two ends of the blogging spectrum. Blogger is the classic free host which is still widely used. Tumblr is the choice of a new generation of bloggers who prefer quicker, more visual posts. Obviously absent are WordPress and LiveJournal.

If you’re a photo fiend, Flickr is king, so I get that, but Instagram? This hot new mobile app  uses a variety of filters to create works of art out of those lunch and puppy photos that people like to share on Twitter. Is this really a service that figures into a person’s online influence?

The one that really perplexes me is Last.fm, which is a music service. I would have gone with a more general entertainment social network like GetGlue, but no one asked me.

Before this update, I saw Klout as a business tool. A way of measuring the sphere of social influence people have so I can hone in on influencers for marketing purposes. These new networks, feel more “fun” but I guess they do all figure in to a person’s reach even if all they’re posting is photos.

Right now, my Klout score is 38. Frank and Andy both have me beat with scores of 55 and 65. Maybe if I link out to my four defunct Blogger blogs and the Tumblr and Flickr accounts that I don’t use, I can close the gap.

This is a pretty big deal for those SMB’s that are paying attention these days While the additional information is striking for the end user it can be a web site owner’s worst nightmare. Why? Well, Google’s Related Places from their Place Page data is put front and center for your visitor to see. Now we are seeing what Google had planned for some of the information they recently stripped from their place pages.

Now, more than ever a businesses website better keep a visitor’s attention. Right now, not all sites are seeing the extension pop up but in the local space it looks like it is the vast majority of sites are seeing the bar with this additional information. Even Wikipedia pages get the “related treatment”.

Now the competition isn’t just in the SERP’s but it can come up on you’re your own website! I liken it to being in a store that is running ads for their competitors on big screens while you try to shop at the store. Not ideal for a businesses in most cases.

Also, if you have a dicey history with reviews those little buggers can show up on your site in a manner of speaking. Once again, if this doesn’t make an SMB get on the ball maybe nothing will.

It’s important to remember that this information will not be ubiquitous because not everyone will be using these tools. For those that do, and let’s face it most searchers who are tech savvy are influencers, it provides a whole new experience and a way to always be comparison shopping.

Not sure how I feel about this one yet. For the end user it could be like hitting the information jackpot while for a business it could be like a punch in the gut. Of course, there are all stops in between as well.

Prepare to be surprised – the film, crisp and attractive with over 60,000 views so far, has been made by the much maligned MEA (Ministry of External Affairs).

In the past year, India’s foreign office has uploaded close to 200 videos on India, its politics, history and culture, on the world’s biggest social media platforms. Through Facebook, Twitter and the web, MEA, famous for its grumpy silences, appears to have harnessed the power of Web 2.0 to reach out to the world successfully. “We plan to be in the global top 5 by the end of this year,” Navdeep Suri , additional secretary, said.
Western diplomats, accustomed to sighing over MEA’s obsession with secrecy, now admit many countries could take a leaf out of India’s public diplomacy division.

Another film, “Integral India” returns to the confusing days of Kashmir’s accession to India, in the voices of those who were there and who lived to tell the story for posterity. A piece of oral history of one of the most contentious issues in South Asia, the film highlights the soul of Kashmir, with a simple statement – that the “secular fabric of Kashmir could not accept religion as a basis for division or for defining nationhood.”
The newest film in their library celebrates the sari in ‘Six Yards of Grace’ featuring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Vidya Balan.

MEA’s Facebook page goes to 6,000 people-who-like. “For a ’sarkari’ page, that’s pretty good,” says Suri. The break-up of users is revealing : 70% male; 45% between 18-24 years of age and 18% between 25-34 years. That’s a fairly good measure that youngsters are MEA’s bigger consumers. The biggest users are from Egypt, followed by Indonesia, Colombia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

In other news, Amazon is now using its considerable database to help target advertising all over the web. According to AdAge, Amazon quietly slipping into the ad market at the end of June but with the proper management, could become a major force in that area.

The plan is to shift all of the data from the site and dump it into buckets based on product selections. That data will then be sold to an ad exchange network where it will be matched up with advertisers and finally delivered to the consumer in the form of a targeted ad.

Amazon isn’t building their own ad network yet. Right now, it’s about packaging and selling the data they do have, which is no small feat. Maybe Amazon should hire Zippy to help them out when he finishes his shift at Facebook. Seeing as how fewer people are mailing letters these days, he should have plenty of time to spare.

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