WebProNews

Google Gives Webmaster Advice for User-Generated Content Sites

Google has made some recommendations for "best practices" for sites that allow users to create their own sites. They give the examples of their own Google Sites and Blogger. So in other words, if you run some type of site that allows users to make their own pages, you may want to pay attention.

YouTube A Breeding Ground For Ponzi Schemes

Google might be struggling to make money off YouTube, but pyramid schemers are apparently doing just fine. They’re doing so well, the Better Business Bureau has issued an alert warning of “little Bernie Madoffs” running all around the video site Call it user-generated scamming. . A search for “cash gifting” on YouTube brings back over 25,000 videos and, at the rate they were going last week, the videos have been viewed over 60 million times.

Spammers Take Scripts To User-Generated Sites

The number of websites blocked for hosting malicious content rose by 197 percent in March, according to MessageLabs, the highest number since October 2008. Experts credit the spike to a sharp increase in web-based and email-borne images with injected scripts like JavaScript and VBScript.

Google Maps Blends UGC Into Search Results

The search results traditionally provided by Google Maps might best be described as "straightforward."  They were fine so long as users already had a good idea of what they were looking for; they were rather less useful for browsing.  But the blending of user-generated content into the results should change all that.

World Net Daily Cries Foul On Wikipedia

As always, consider the source. In this case, consider the source considering another source. (If you want to be a stickler, you can include me in that consideration, a source considering a source considering another source. Ah, academics.) World Net Daily reports changes made to Wikipedia’s entry on Barack Obama regarding his citizenship issues were deleted within minutes, and users were banned after trying again.

Evil Twitter Clones

Perhaps it’s a sign that the site is reaching more mainstream popularity levels, but Twitter is fast becoming a haven for spammers. Accounts include semi-naked girls with just one link to an affiliate site to brands that use the service for nothing more sending direct messages to other users with a sales link.

BusinessWeek Misses the Point on UGC

BusinessWeek magazine has a piece about user-generated content and how it’s old and busted now — people really want professional content, apparently.

Social Media: You Built it; Now What?

Web developers and designers for huge companies and niche sites alike are all jumping on the social media bandwagon, realizing that social networking, user-generated content, video-sharing and Widgets are more than just ways to kill time in the office; they can be incredibly effective in growing and increasing audience engagement.

Facebook Islam Row Highlights Free Speech Issues

Historically, in the brick-and-mortar world, we've had courts to settle disputes. Online, there are terms of service agreements and invisible judges determining, usually at the behest of the loudest and largest mob, who is guilty of crossing the line between conscious protest and hate speech.

Here's Your 15 Minutes And Your DMCA Notice

It didn't take long for user-generated content to translate to user-generated profit. But as the giants have their weird litigious and incestuous thing going on both in the courtroom and in the boardroom, YouTube users aren't just getting the shaft, they're getting mud kicked in their faces.