sweet
On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Steve Simon <st...@quintile.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
