[9fans] mark shaney again...

[steve@quintile.net (Steve Simon)]

thought this might bring a wry smile to some:

Fake Tweets by 'Socialbot' Fool Hundreds of Followers,
New Scientist, (03/24/11), Jim Giles

Three socialbots recently integrated themselves into a group of
Twitter users, gained more than 250 followers, and received more than
240 responses to the tweets they sent over a two-week period as part
of Socialbots 2011, a competition designed to test whether bots can be
used to change the structure of a social network.  The bots were
rewarded for the number of followers they obtained and the number of
responses their tweets resulted in.  The socialbots analyzed tweets
sent by members of the network who shared a particular interest and
then created a suitable response.  The best-peforming bot gained more
than 100 followers and generated about 200 responses.  Socialbots 2011
organizer Tim Hwang says the bots were "able to heavily shape and
distort the structure of the network.  We could use these bots in the
future to encourage social participation or support for humanitarian
causes." Hwang has already planned the next socialbot project.  "We're
going to survey and identify two sites of 5,000-person unconnected
Twitter communities, and over a six- to 12-month period use waves of
bots to thread and rivet those clusters together into a directly
connected social bridge between those two formerly independent
groups," he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928045.100-fake-tweets-by-socialbot-fool-hundreds-of-followers.html

-Steve