Off the Pass: week of September 6, 2010
It doesn’t take long. As soon as something grows to popularity and main stream use in the online world, the spammers and malware spreaders follow. Like flies to dung. Social media is no exception and the “attacks” range from harmless sneaky spam tweets from users who unwittingly gave an app access to their accounts to the more menacing phishing attempts trying to steal passwords or even credit card details.
Last week saw Yet Another Bogus Twitter App, TwitterNation Counter, do the rounds across the Twitterverse. Enticed by the promise to see which user was the first in a country to join Twitter lots of people authorized the app using the clever but oh so dangerously simple OAuth (Open Authorization) procedure. What they didn’t realise was that the app also put out a message spreading a link to the app on to all their followers.
While this app was quite benign, it is an excellent example of how easy it is to give total strangers access to your social media identities. You click a link, you are asked to authorize the app in a Twitter.com branded web page, and the click of a candy shaped button later you have allowed the developer of said app to get access to your personal information and possibly even send messages in your name. You aren’t even asked for your password, which is what OAuth is all about: allowing other apps and websites access to your account without knowing your password, so you can revoke their access as quickly and easily as you gave it (and should you change your password, the authorized apps continue to work seamlessly).
It took years for most people to learn never to double click on email attachments from strangers, or even from friends if the message seemed off kilter. Based on what we are now seeing on Twitter (remember Twifficiency, anyone?) and Facebook (second most targeted phishing site) there is a new learning curve to climb.
Some advice, to minimise the risks:
- Don’t experiment with new services from your official brand accounts. Either wait and Google the service to see if other users have tried it, or experiment using a dummy account.
- Use common sense and knowledge about your friends and followers to make a judgement call on whether or not following that link or installing that app might really get you a new, shiny iPad. If it sounds to good to be true…
- Regularly review your user profile with regards to which services or apps you have authorized to access your account. If you aren’t using a service any more, always revoke their access. In Twitter you do this under “Settings”, “Connections” while in Facebook you go to “Account”, “Application Settings“.
Be safe.
In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:
Related to the above note on social media security, last week I got an email about updates to the Twitter URL shortening service t.co. In a push to increase clarity and safety, Twitter.com will start showing the domain behind a shortened link so you as a user more readily can see where a link will take you.
Great analysis on the battle for the local advertising market: Google Places vs Facebook Places, Search vs Social. This is a discussion you as a restaurateur can’t afford not to keep tabs of.
While the battle of location based marketing is interesting, what does it mean in real world terms? Check out these 5 ways restaurants (small businesses) can offer location based deals. Practical ideas you can leverage today.
In Chicago restaurant goers tap into the location trend and help each other find up to date information on waitlists at popular restaurants. Using an iPhone app developed for the purpose, waiting times are crowdsourced and plotted on a map for all users of the app to see. Very clever!
The secret behind successful crowdsourcing is to a) make it useful for all involved and b) make it as easy and effortless as possible to contribute. Gowalla, one of Foursquare’s major competitors in the location based social media world, recently made it real easy to describe the place you are in using something called “Highlights”, like little “rewards” you can award the place you are in if you like it. Personally I prefer the Foursquare way of leaving text based “tips” and “to dos”. As these require a bit of effort from the visitors there may not be very many of them, but the ones that are there really add value. It is more useful to me to know which dish is great, rather than “this place has been awarded the real good food reward by 12 people” (exemplified by my recent visit to Siam Central: drunken noodles and tamarind duck, yum).
Last week lastminute.com released their “Plate of the nation” report, listing facts and figures and trends affecting eating out in the UK. I can’t find it available for download from the lastminute.com website, but do try and get hold of it as it makes for very interesting reading. The Independent has some of the information.
Larry at startingarestaurantblog.com reminds us that while the state of the economy definitely makes life as a restaurateur harder, it could be worse. And for some restaurateurs, it very much is.
Thinking about re-designing your restaurant website? Smashing Magazine recently presented a selection of appetizing restaurant websites that got their juices flowing.
On a similar note, Social Media Examiner lists the top 10 Facebook Pages and why they are successful. Some great ideas and practical advice on how to give your Facebook effort a boost.
Restaurant concepts come and go, here is one from down under that caught my eye: marrying a restaurant with art, with different photographers curating quarterly exhibitions. Great way to make your restaurant more of a “destination”, might this start a trend?
Are “foodies” going too far? Is there now a group of people taking food and restaurant visits to such extremes that it no longer is about enjoying good, honest food? Leave your opinion here: “Has the foodie backlash begun?”
Speaking of concepts and trends, have you ever wondered how trends in flavours and food grow and sometimes flood the market, becoming the one thing everybody talk about? Here is a clever explanation of restaurant trends in the guise of a job interview.
For fun:
I so wish Improv Everywhere would start a London branch. “How To Make Someone’s Day: High Five Escalator“.
Had only Facebook (and HTTP, and DNS, and IP, and networking, and…) been invented a wee bit earlier we could have had status updates from historical events and characters…
This is a cookery book to my liking: “Cooking for Geeks“. If any of my friends read this, Christmas is just around the corner!
That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from the virtues of low carbing to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).
