Twiogle: the Perfect Spam Storm
Posted on May 26, 2009
I generally try to keep my head above the churning mire that is twitter data harvesting “startup” domains, but this one compelled me to the point of *gasp* updating my own website.
Twiogle is a search engine that displays both Google and Twitter search side by site. This seems like an interesting idea, allowing for some context to be given from the outside world to the sometimes impenetrable wall of abbreviations and nonsense on twitter. I have used side by side search engines in the past, and besides the slight loss in screen real estate, I found them to deliver on what they promised.
There is a problem with Twiogle though. It is a spam machine. Hooked into the search itself is a corporate twitter account that tweets every search entered on Twiogle’s website as it happens. As you might guess there are a lot of searches going on at any given moment, and that number promises to skyrocket if one of the trendy “tech news” blogs (which might as well just be official Facebook and twitter mouthpieces at this point) picks up the story. Besides just cluttering twitter search results up with nonsensical posts, Twiogle is now the perfect spam machine. I can make Twiogle say anything I want it to. Even more irritatingly it just drops a link back to the homepage, not to the query listed. But using my new zombie account I can post negative things about anyone I want, filling a rival company’s brand name twitter search results with disparaging remarks or lies, sneaking embarrassing secrets into my friends name searches or anything else I can think of. I don’t even have to go through the trouble of making a fake twitter account!
In addition to spamming anyone you want without fear of reprisal, Twiogle is also spamming twitter itself. Once “trending topics” and search hit the sidebar of twitter proper people have been pimping paper-thin meme attempts and have been jumping on trend bandwagons like the ground had suddenly turned to molten rock. It takes nothing short of a herculean effort to actually get a trend into the sidebar, thanks to the parasitic and disgusting practice of “retweeting,” something that inspires about one new twitter vestigial organ startup a week, and inspires tech blog posters to write “5 Tips You Must Know About Retweeting!” posts that should be titled “How to Hook your Crappy Wagon to a Fading Star.” Twiogle is creating it’s own buzz though, by using the search results of unwitting users and book-ending them with “Twiogled:” and a link back to the Twiogle homepage. This ensures that the more people search the more their brand name appears.
What is the point though? Why create this bizarre spam engine to just aggregate search results from elsewhere? For its Google results Twiogle is using the Google Custom Search, which can be connected to an AdSense account. Ad clicks in those results for connected accounts means revenue for the account owner. Even just a temporary appearance in the trending topics on twitter could be self perpetuating in this case, leading to more visits by curious searchers, more searches, more tweets, reinforcement of the “trend” and more potential clicks on ads.
I don’t know if the site was really made to be an evil spam juggernaut, but as it stands now it has real potential. Twitter isn’t “serious business” and probably never will be, but it would be nice if things like this could be stifled.
UPDATE: As you can tell from the comments below, the wheels are in motion and the stream of tweets has stopped. Crisis averted, good work everyone.
Twiogle owner
On May 26, 2009 at 21:18
I can make it stop auto posting twiogle’s.
I just thought it was an interesting idea is all.
Twiogle owner
On May 26, 2009 at 21:20
oh yeah, I originally had the link go to the search query but I found out later that it was againts adsense TOS so I had to take it down.
bradlby
On May 26, 2009 at 21:30
It would probably be best to change the behavior of the twitter account to something less noisy. As I said, there is some value in comparing twitter search results with “real world” results via Google, but that twitter echo account is just ripe for exploitation.
Twiogle Owner
On May 26, 2009 at 21:38
hrmm, maybe I should post on twitter the most searched phrase of the day? that would be better…
bradlby
On May 26, 2009 at 21:43
That would be interesting, something that has a throttle, but still keeps track of what are searching for. You could probably move that real time list of searches to somewhere on the Twiogle domain itself if you wanted to keep it, so people might not be so tempted to mess around with it.
Twiogle Search
On May 28, 2009 at 01:37
sooo…take a look at Twiogle.com now…its PURE ajax and I am thinking I will only spam twitter.com/twiogle with an update every hour of the most popular query of that hour.