This morning I was annoyed to find three spam messages in my Facebook inbox, all from friends (victims) and all containing a link to “areps.at”. I was smart enough to not open the messages at all, let alone click on the evil little links. My first thought was, am I the only one? I went straight to Twitter to investigate…
First I sent out a tweet asking if anyone else had experienced the same problem, but that was really unnecessary. My second step should have been my first, which was simply searching “facebook” in the Twitter search (that now sits conveniently in the right hand-side toolbar). In the results I saw that the most recent tweets that contained my keyword ALL related to the scam! My question was answered immediately, by complete strangers. Some tweets looked like this:
Just got one of those facebook phishing emails. didn’t click the link because it was from someone I hardly contact
This tweet confirmed that I was not the only one, but was not informative enough to really locate the source of the issue. The next type of tweet was much more helpful:
Areps.at, The New Facebook Phishing Scam! http://bit.ly/CsE62 #facebook #scam #phishing
Obviously this person was tweeting information to help others by a) linking to a reliable article about the scam b) using hashtags and relevant keywords so that their tweet could be found and easily recognized and c) including all pertinent information in a succinct and clear message.
Would I have found a similar degree of rapid and accurate information had I used Google search? Searching right now (about 3 hours later) with the term “facebook scam” gives me results that include a Mashable article about the scam, and a Washington Post article written 2 hours ago with warnings about the scam as well. But the feelings of camaraderie, commiseration and collaboration were missing…as well as the real-time updates. As I searched via Twitter there were up to 17 new updates every 5-10 seconds or so, proof that many other people were doing the exact same thing I was.
Google still serves a very important function and I use it everyday, much more than Twitter. But more and more often I find myself turning to Twitter for updates from communities. And even though Google claims to value relevance and current content, Twitter is the best source for data and trends happening “right now.”
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