Alright, so apparently hijacking Twitter trends isn’t a new idea. As I passed the link around to my previous post, I learned that this was already going on. However, I hadn’t seen an example of how its being done until today. The instances I have seen are just messages that contain all the keywords of the current trends in a single message. Unintelligible spam. Not sure why anyone would do that unless their account got compromised. Even though I wasn’t suggesting spam on that level, some people were reserved about helping me out because of this preexisting blight.

Another thing I learned was that URL compressing services flag your URL after awhile as being suspicious. I have no idea what the criteria is to warrant being flagged, but it happened to my links a couple times. They redirect you to their site and say the URL has been flagged for being shady and then let you click on through to the actual page. Maybe they scrape the Twitter timeline and look for their links? If a message containing one of their links is repeated past a certain threshold it gets flagged? I’m always thinking about the logic behind stuff like that. Usually the real answer is boring and unsophisticated, haha

I think this is a good example of why failure is important. I would have never learned these things unless I had tried out my idea. It was also really cool to see my friends jump in to action without any questions. I’m not calling you all sheep of course, but you were ready to help when I asked. Thanks peeps! *hugz*

While I haven’t heard anything from Twitter yet, I did get an interview for some contract work. That pretty much consumed my weekend - getting a portfolio together and all that. I’ve got a ton of resumes in the water and I’ve had a few bites here and there. Hopefully something will materialize in the next couple weeks.

On to the next adventure!

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