Four Design Links: November 12, 2009
Here are Four Design Links that interested me this week. Hope you enjoy!
1. How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro
As a follow up to their coverage of social gaming scams, Tech Crunch posted this great article on the other dark side of social games: collecting your personal data and using it to spam (and scam some more).
An excerpt:
People on Facebook won’t pay for anything. They don’t have credit cards, they don’t want credit cards, and they are not interested in shopping. But you can trick them into doing one of three things:
- Download a toolbar: It could be spyware (such as Zango) or something more legitimate, such as Webfetti or Zwinkys.
- Give up their email address: You’ve won a “free” camera or perhaps you’ve been selected as a tester for a new Macbook Pro (which you get to keep at the end of the test). Just tell us where you want us to ship it.
- Give up their phone number: You took the IQ Quiz, so give us your phone number and we’ll tell you your score. Never mind that you’ll get billed $20 a month or perhaps be tricked into inviting 10 other friends to beat your score.
It’s worth a read to see what’s at stake for consumers and the kinds of things that happen any time a new platform comes along without enough regulation.
2. 4 Ways to Get Automatically Rejected by an Angel Investor
Okay, so we’re not all hoping to get picked up by Angel Investors, but I think there is some business wisdom to be had in this article. It certainly made me think of a few business plans and pitches I’d seen (and participated in) and how they could have been improved.
3. A List of Things That Music Fans Will Pay For (even if they can get your music for free)
If you are in the business of producing something people don’t have to pay for (e.g. practically anything digital or that can be digitized) it’s worth thinking about what you can offer (and sell) besides bits. The list from this post holds few suprises, but I do appreciate the last two entries:
Producing a custom product, something unique, is worth something to a fan. So is a narrative. A thing with a story is worth more than a thing without one.
4. What Happens to the Losing Team’s Championship Shirts?
Mental_floss answers the question: where does all that unfortunately-printed apparel go each year?
Until two years ago, much of it was destroyed (by league requirement). These days, rather than go to waste, it is distributed to needy families overseas. By agreement with the sports leagues, it cannot be used in the US. They don’t want to upset any fans!
| Tagged with: | Apparel, Business, Charity, Design Ethics, Facebook, Four Design Links, Music, Spam |
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