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New Trend: Web 2.0-controlled malware?

Security researchers at Symantec recently uncovered a backdoor trojan whose spread is being dictated by commands hosted in Google Groups, Google's online discussion forums. The backdoor trojan, named Trojan.Grups, appears to be the first ever malware to use an online newsgroup as the "command and control" center for botnet communications. It's certainly the first time that Google Groups specifically has been compromised in this way. This new discovery points to what appears to be the latest trend in what you could call "Web 2.0 malware," that is, nasty computer programs that don't just spread in social networks, but actually use the infrastructure of the social networks themselves to do the spreading.

Traditionally, political participation has always been highly correlated with income and education. According to a new report (PDF), this is still holds true for those who participate in political activities online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, online users with a higher income are still far more likely to participate in political activities online than those with lower incomes. At the same time, though, the Pew study also sees some hints that new forms of civic engagement through social media services could soon change this pattern.

Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age. An even smaller number of boomers (9.9%) thinks that Internet advertising is focused on their demographic. With regards to social networks, most boomers also think that these sites are not focused on people their age.

In wake of the news of the FriendFeed acquisition by Facebook, we're faced with the real possibility that FriendFeed.com will be shut down for good. According to the press release, "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being..." In other words, it's only a matter of time before the site is gone for good. What is the FriendFeed community to do?

At one time, FriendFeed clones like Lifestream.fm and Socialthing! looked like promising alternatives, but neither of them offered the same rich and innovative features that FriendFeed does - the very features which made FriendFeed the standout service that it is today. However, there is one service that may have an opportunity to capitalize on the FriendFeed exodus: social media aggregator Streamy.

Is it easier to talk to your online buddies than your friends out there in the "real world?" Do you feel like you know more about what's happening in the lives of your Facebook and MySpace friends than with those who don't have accounts or don't bother to update them? According to a recent UK MySpace study of over 16,000 social network users, these sorts of feelings are common among today's younger generation. The study revealed that a good portion of this group admits to feeling more comfortable sharing and communicating with friends online than they do when logged out of cyberspace.

Does having too many friends in online social networks make radical, innovative thinking harder to develop and foster group-think instead? That's the conclusion of one scientist contributing to a recent issue of Science magazine, but we're not so sure.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, director of the Information + Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore, argues that "the over-abundance of connections through which information travels reduces diversity and keeps radical ideas from taking hold."

Universal McCann has released a new report that looks at the state of social media today. Apparently, this trend is showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, it's still growing. From posting photos to writing blogs, the desire to share has become a universal phenomenon. However, the latest report shows that internet users are beginning to now center their digital life around social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, choosing to share their content within these sites instead of on services with a single focus, like Blogger or Flickr.

The future of search almost certainly involves social networks, social graphs, or social filtering in some capacity. Companies will live or die by whether they get the "social" part right: creating the right level of intimacy, trust, reliability, social connectedness, and accuracy in their results listings. Of course, this specifically means that their user experience must at least meet or, preferably, exceed that of Google's.

To achieve this, we must first stop arguing over the different flavors of search.

Last month, Facebook finally announced that they would allow users to pick out custom usernames for use in vanity URLs that read www.facebook.com/username. At the time, users were advised to "choose wisely" because the username they selected would be stuck with them for life. That didn't stop some Facebook users from picking out names that were clearly meant as jokes, though, including the guy who decided to go with "rickroll" and the other fellow who just kept pressing the letter "a." We're not sure if those folks are now having regrets about their choices, but if so, they'll be happy to know they now have the option to select a username yet again. But only once, says Facebook.

FriendFeed has recently launched a search feature, and so Facebook search must be coming soon.

Real-time Web search (of streams of activities) is a hot topic right now. Everyone, including Google and Microsoft, recognizes the value of using trusted contacts as filters. What was once called social search is now called real-time search, but this time it will really happen. First, it will be applied to streams and then to the Web in general.

What we are about to get is a Social Relevancy Rank. Whenever you search streams of activity, the results will be ordered not chronologically but by how relevant each is to you based on your social graph. That is, people who matter more to you will bubble up. How does this work? Well, there will be a formula, just as there is a formula for Page Rank.