22 December, 2005 - 11:49am

A recent analysis of the blogosphere by UMBC eBiquity Research Group at the University of Maryland found that 75% of pings from blogs are actually from "splogs" or spam blogs, which they say constitute 50% of all blogs! (Pings are messages sent from blog and publishing tools to a centralized network service, a Ping Server, providing notification of newly published posts or content. "Spings", or ping spam, are pings that are sent from a splog. A major issue recently has been these unjustified pings, or spings).

In the blogosphere, it's often difficult for blog publishers to keep up with the spam in comments and trackbacks. The result is that many bloggers have turned them off, thereby destroying the ability to have a two-way conversation. An effective answer for this is not more government regulations like "CAN-SPAM Act" type legislation applied to blogs. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of great organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the US has for the time being held back from applying the same rules online that they do to traditional media (see the November 17 FEC ruling).

Rather, an interim solution is technology like sxore, our identity and reputation system for bloggers. In the longer term what's needed is the widespread deployment and adoption of Identity 2.0-related technologies that provide a user-centric means for authenticating and managing real-world identities online.