Without a doubt, Bit.ly is the biggest URL shortener service out there. And without question, what made them so popular is this one social network called… mmm..

what is it called again?.. Oh yeah, TWITTER.

Users who like to share links can really use services such as Bit.ly so that they can keep their messages under the 140 character limit. So it’s good news to know that Bit.ly just announced (on Monday) their new partnerships with Verisign, Websense and Sophos.

The goal of these new partners is to ensure that spam and other types of malicious software stay off the Bit.ly network. The presence of spammy and malicious links is a major problem that Bit.ly is hoping to solve. That grey area of not knowing where you’ll end up after clicking on a link shared through Twitter is just where spammers, phishers and scammers like to be.

Bit.ly’s new parterns are planning to solve that problem in three different ways:

Verisign’s iDefense service will screen IP addresses, domains and URLs based on its reputation database, to find those that “host exploits, malicious code, command and control servers, drop sites and other nefarious activity,” according to Bit.ly general manager Andrew Cohen.

WebSense’s ThreatSeeker Cloud will analyze the content on pages linked to through Bit.ly in real-time to identify and block “spammy URLs, malicious content and phishing sites.”

Meanwhile, Sophos rounds out the equation by analyzing the behavior of potential spammers to “go[] beyond blacklists, to proactively detect spam and malware.”

All I can say is YAY!

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

URL Shorteners and SPAM

Last week I reached out to my friends over at Twitter for some advice. I was asking them what to do with my profile. Unfortunately I didn’t take a screenshot of my old profile to be able to show you what it looked like, but I’ll attempt to describe it here:

- My avatar was the icon/logo I use here on my blog. 

- The background in my profile was a tile setup of my little lifesaver image with a black background (this was my old avatar). 

That was pretty much it. 

I had been watching my Twitter feed and seeing some discussions here and there regarding the proper way to build a good Twitter account. Being that I was feeling a little in the dark about it since I’m only now starting to really use Twitter the way it’s supposed to be used (I think.. no really, I am!), I thought I’d ask the group of peeps whose Tweets I’m following what they thought I should do. I put out the following Tweet:

Question: Should I change my twitter to my real name and use a real photo? Why? Appreciate your feedback and will link to u on a blog post.

Here are some of the answers I received:

WhiskeyChick: I would do it. Your reach is still relatively small on here so making the switch is better earlier than later.

… then she sent one more: Besides, Real photos and names take you away from the awkward meetings like “Hi, aren’t you ladiesman500?”

IssaHines: If you have a lot of followers it may confuse people especially if you’ve been on twitter for a long time. If not go for it.

tysoncrosbie: http://tinyurl.com/dg7e6w My thoughts on having a photo of yourself.

SearchBuzz: -Yes – i would like to do the same. Why? Well, first time I met you I didn’t even recognize you without your life preserver on?

palisade14: On @twhirl your real name appears below your handle. Consider @leelefever | @commoncraft ’s approach too.

imnotadoctor: Stash it! (I’m hoping he was referring to putting up a photo I have with a mustache… I hope )

I appreciate the advice and after taking all of it under consideration, I started the changing process with my Twitter account. My first step was to upload a real photo of me, and then to change my Twitter profile page. After that, I received a little more feedback from some closer friends and will be making a few more tweaks here and there, but overall I think I’m moving in the right direction. Here are some lessons I learned during this process:

1 – It’s okay to use an avatar and not your real name on Twitter (duh!). However, if you want to network in the real world, then you should try to just have your name there somewhere. In my case, I chose to display my real name within my profile page, but continue to use “seosurvivor” as my username. 

2 – It’s important to have consistency with your avatar, especially while building up your account. I also seemed to have received an overwhelming amount of feedback pointing towards making my Twitter avatar a real photo of myself rather than the logo image since it wasn’t very personable. Since I changed my avatar to my actual photo, I have started to lean towards finding a middle ground. I’ll be spending some time on Photoshop tomorrow trying to come up with a real photo that also incorporates the seosurvivor life raft.

3 – It’s helpful to develop your Twitter profile page with something creative. Feel free to edit the background and make it your own. See mine for example.

That’s it for now. I’m looking forward to connecting with you on Twitter, so get in there and follow me!

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Improving my Twitter profile