So, just logged into Facebook this afternoon and was greeted with a lonely ’1′ in my inbox so I clicked on it interested to see who was writing to me and saw that it was a group message – warning signs go off in my head when I see group messages and then only one link in the message to ‘fbstarter.com’ – I left it alone.

Then checking on some other sites I see people are getting this around the world and TechCrunch even wrote an article on it, read here. 

Basically want happens is that you click on the link and it loads it but it loads a site that isn’t Facebook but looks exactly like the Facebook login, if you happen to enter your details there you’d better go quickly to the proper Facebook site and login and change your password quickly as all your friends have probably been spammed already!

These type of attacks on Social Media sites is definitely becoming more and more popular!

There has been a lot of press lately regarding the huge strides Twitter has been making around the world, example of Opera getting online and featuring it on her show plus the recent race between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to get to 1million followers. But now a report has been released from Nielsen indicating that most people who join Twitter don’t come to it, in fact they say that an amazing 60% of people don’t come back.

Just from my own personal experience with Twitter:

I first heard about it quite a while back but only registered sometime towards the end of last year. Once I was registered I was like ‘Now What?’ and I left it and didn’t come back for another 3 months, after that time I had read up more about it and find some people I wanted to follow and started to actually make some tweets and gain some followers.

So now lots and lots of people are registering and trying to find communities to become a part of and not quite sure what to do. I know lots of people who are on Facebook but either can’t get access to it because of work policies or just don’t bother, do people then say that Facebook doesn’t have this retention rate?

I’m actually glad because I’m finding lately on Twitter that there are lots of bots going around trying to gain followers and also the ‘I follow you so now you follow me’ people who simply decide to follow 100,000 people and hope that at least 80% of those will follow them back. Surprisingly people do which is a pain!

Twitter is a very useful tool but you just need to give it time, get used to it and make sure you follow some people you actually know and who follow you back to get you started.

You can follow me here.

This past week has been quite an interesting week, the four co-founds of ThePirateBay were found guilty in Sweden and sentenced to 1 year jail time and more than $3million in fines for copyright infringement.  Basically all PirateBay did was index the torrents that could be used to download the feature film of TV Program, how ever if you run a search on Google for ‘Wolverine Torrent‘ you will also find results linking you to torrents which will download the game.

So now surely if PirateBay can be prosecuted Google will also now be open for prosecutions? I certainly think so and look forward to it, I don’t think there is anything wrong in providing the indexes to these file locations and certainly the music industry is looking in the wrong place.

A report from  BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don’t. Now this is very intersting and again I agree with, one of the only reasons people will download songs be it legel or illegal is because its easy. If I can download the song I want at the click of the button I’ll do it, but the music/film industry can’t sort out the ‘rights’ issues and therefore doesn’t make this very easy to do. 

If iTunes or Amazon was globally available I think it would put a big dent in online piracy but the film/music industries are too thick headed to see this. Pity…

On a last note, Nokia South Africa opens its own music store tomorrow offering songs at R10 a song which isn’t too bad.

Wow,  News24 have certainly played out of their boots in making an awesome little widget with up to date results from the 2009 SA elections.

Currently the ANC is just below the 2/3 majority, hopefully they don’t get it. 

View the widget below:

Wow, Nando’s is well known for its brilliant ads targeting relevant issues in South Africa and always walking the line with what is allowed and what isn’t. In its latest advert where it doesn’t necessarily indicate who exactly its targeting as they only mention him by his frst name, Julius, we all really know who it is targeting.

Now we all know who its targeting and in what for me is the 2nd scary response from the ANC, Malema warns Nando’s to retract the adverts all face a mobilising of force’s against it. This coming after Zuma is sueing Zapiro for his comics… Will we in a couple of months time see government take control of the media and stop free speach? The way the leaders of the ANC are acting it certainly looks like it!

I wonder how they dealt with criticism at school or do they only now threaten anyone who publically criticises them? Seems to me we have a bunch of ‘boys’ running this country who become very inmature when criticised, maybe their mom’s should have spanked them more when they were young!

Wow, Britain’s Got Talent seems to work well with You Tube followers and this week proved no exception. On Monday morning most of us would have never ever heard of her - a 47 year old from Scotland who has never been kissed but by Tuesday most of us who frequent the online world reguarly would have.

Simon and the other judges didn’t seem to give her much chance when she came on the stage and did a little jiggle of her hips, even the crowd were rolling their eyes but then she started to sing ‘I Dreamed a dream’ from the musical Les Miserables and wow she almost immediatly got a standing ovation. This was a voice you would hear at musicals not from some old lady… Even Simon had a big unbelieving grin on his face!

Since Monday the video has been viewed 47million times and is on its way to becoming the fastest virally spread video, see graph here:

You Tube seems to have disabled the ability to embed the video so click here to view it. Graph courtesy from Mashable.com

The last big act that spread virally was from Paul when he sung Nessun Dorma, click here.

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) currently has 912,624 followers, 3 days ago he only had 850,000 and he challenged Twitter users that if he reached 1million users before CNN or (@cnnbrk) who has 945,903 followers now, that he’ll “ding dong ditch” the billionaire Ted Turner who is the founder of CNN. Video clip here:

The very next day Larry King gets involved threw down the challenge with these words: “Do you know how big we are? Do you know what CNN is?!”

King promises to take on any challenge from Kutcher and will even try get him and Turner in on his show, video below:

@EA or Electronic Arts then tweeted out that for the millionth user they will put into The Sims 3 and that the follower will receive every game that EA makes this year. Nice publicity stint by EA to join in on this coverage…

The final interesting bit about all of this is that the CNN account (@cnnbrk) isn’t even owned or run by CNN but rather by a James Cox – CNN how ever has now acquired this account from James for an undisclosed amount, read here for more.

Think I may unfollow @aplusk and watch it closely to drive be the millionth!

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to spend the day out on a beautiful wine farm near Somerset West for the Coke Zero Fest which was headlined by Snow Patrol and Oasis.

And it was a rocking day!

Snow Patrol are absolutely amazing and its the third time I’ve seen them live (once at the O2 dome in London and the other at the V Festival at Chelmsford) how ever Oasis were disappointing and I don’t think I’ll pay money to see them again live. They rated themselves too much and didn’t really give anything into their songs, they are surely at the end of their run and its only their name thats carrying them now.

The South African bands also rocked with my favourites been The Dirty Skirts, Zebra and Giraffe, Cassette and Aking weren’t too bad.

Next year I’ll have to make sure I get into VIP as I heard Matt Damon was at the concert, anyway I hope if you were in the area that you managed to go!

Wow, I came across this video earlier of author John Perkins who wrote ‘Confessions of a Economic Hitman‘ and I think I’m definitely going to be buying this book.

It is amazing to see how corrupt our world is, be it here in South Africa or in the United States. The temptation that people fall for is unreal. Take a look at the first part below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8&hl=en&fs=1&border=1]