I’m fluent in two different languages, Chinese and English. Tim Finin’s recent blog post on “China predicted to have 60,000,000 bloggers by year’s end” got me to think about the benefits of being bilingual (or multi-lingual) on the Internet.
Frank Ahrens at Washington Post asks the question, “Why do you blog?” He received many interesting responds. One blogger expresses that blogging is the only way for him/her to make friends. Some other believes that blogging is engaged democracy — creating an end-run around power publication, in that the people with the most power control what is heard.
Of course, not everyone thinks blogging is a such great invention. One person replied, “28.7 million blogs translates to almost 28.7 million illiterate fools with a digital soapbox who cannot manage to correctly spell the word ‘definitely,’ even with the help of a spellchecker.”
I asked myself, “Why do I blog?”
Pranam Kolari, a UMBC doctoral student, has discovered nearly 75 percent of blog updates that registered with weblogs.com are bogus (more technical details). So why do people spam blog ping servers?
The motivation behind splogs is the same as that for any other form of spam - it comes down to money.
Sploggers set up sites with filler content and keyword-based advertisements. Their goal is to entice, coerce or con people into coming to their sites, where it is hoped viewers will click on profit-producing ads, offer up their credit card numbers or be redirected to other shady sites.
With hundreds of millions of people online every day, a very small percentage of careless clicks can translate into big profits for splogs.
I wish there are ways to prevent spams. The sad truth is that there is no effective way to do so. People love making money, especially easy money. The Internet is the place to conduct such business. Whenever a new communication medium, e.g., forums, discussion groups, email, and blogs, becomes popular, people will try to exploit it to make profits.
Spams are like weeds. You kills them at one place, they grow back at the other.
