This week is a busy one. However, I am experimenting with a different approach to the weekly social news in a nutshell posts and I think you will enjoy it a bit more than simple headline lists.

There is quite a stir regarding Twitter this week from Twitter spamming to FriendFeed allowing comments to be sent to Twitter. Spam problems will eventually become a problem for any service whether it is social or not. Robert Scoble has a great post on the secret to Twitter that is well worth the read. Spamming on social networks is not new. Orkut has had a spam problem in the discussion area for quite some time. Even on Facebook discussions, the spam problem rears its ugly head occasionally.

Over the last week, I have been fighting zombie pingback spamming on several blogs. It appears that spammers are using proxy servers to inject pingback spam into blogs. I ended up turning off the automated pingback and track back on several blogs I host for clients. Spammers if given the chance will abuse web applications and as long as there are web applications, there will be those who inevitably exploit them. I do know that Spammers are actively exploiting the dasBlog (open source asp.net blog application) pingback system.

There are several new social networks in the news this week, namely iBeatYou, which is a social network that focuses on competitions. I am not sure how well this idea will go over but you can bet there will be many alpha males on the site strutting around like a cocks-of-the-walk.

Tabber, a social profile aggregator, has had a makeover according to Mashable. Evidently is looks like FriendFeed. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Revou, which is a Twitter clone allows you to host your own Twitter-like script for a mere $399.00. TechCrunch has the details.

Facebook is about to launch a preferred application program that has caused Google to scramble and launch a competing platform according to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. I guess the future of social networking will eventually be annoying widgets and applications (Lord help us). Facebook appears to have had a security issue that allowed other users to view private photos, even if they aren’t friends.

The New Yorker has an interesting piece on the death of newspapers. I think the subject has received more than enough coverage including my own slant on print media and advertising. Print news publishers are finally waking up the fact that no one is reading print media anymore (for the most part), they must now innovate or die. I’ve been talking about this for over five years and publishers still aren’t really listening to anyone about it.

I finally received an invite to the socialthing private beta. Hopefully in the next couple of days I will have a short review on the service.

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