The boys and girls at Google have finally provided Blogspot fans with an alternative to fighting comment spam without having to resort to the dreaded CAPTCHA’s (which stopped working many months ago).

Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we’ve integrated Google’s spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. [...]

Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the “false-positives”). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog. (Official Blogger Buzz)

This is a welcome development as CAPTCHA’s have proved to be more of a nuisance for readers of Bloggger blogs, and did little to thwart the rising tide of human spam.

Adopting this anti-spam feature also means that Blogspot fans will no longer have to outsource their comment sections to Intense Debate or Disqus, and instead keep all of their comments “in house.”

Other platforms like OnSugar have also adopted similar measures, and hopefully Google’s entrance can encourage other blog platforms to abandon the silly word puzzles completely (not to mention those silly quizes as well).

Every WordPress blogger who didn’t live under a rock recently has noticed that there have been many heated debates in the WordPress scene this year:

1. Canonical/Core plugins
2. WordCamp to only support GPL compliant events anymore
3. ThesisWP-gate
4. And those are only the first three fights which come to mind for 2010

And with yesterday’s switch from Cutline to Coraline on WP.com the debate has been revived once more. read more

Starting Thursday, Google Android users can download the beta version of the platforms TweetDeck application, the most popular 3rd-party Twitter app currently available.

The program will no doubt have issues as it’s not fully polished and TweetDeck is still relying on feedback from users. However what it does offer is integration with Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Foursquare in one single program.

Users can also view their own Twitter @replies with the “Me” column, while also viewing comments and likes from Facebook. You’ll also notice updated color-codes with a single blended column. read more

Facebook today revealed a new interface for browsing photos which provides larger photo thumbnails and a single page for photo viewing.

Users in the past could only view 20 photos at a time before clicking on a “next” button which helped keep down page load times, but required more clicking, while different photos sizes for each thumbnail left a less than desired output.

The new albums were in beta testing with select visitors for the last several weeks and now provides no pagination, just scroll down to the bottom of your photos and the new photos will automatically load.

The pictures you see on the new pages also feature  a standardized thumbnail size, leaving a more straightforward and clean output. read more

After some weeks ago we published a very detailed infographic about Twitter Statistics and Growth we thought that it was time to have a closer look at everyone’s favourite this time: Facebook stats.

Just like with Twitter the numbers are rather interesting: did you know that Facebook is more widespread in the United Kingdom than in the USA? Did you know that there is one Facebook applications for every 900 members and that there are almost twice as many developers as applications?

Huge thanks to Infographiclabs for this graphic.

In an attempt to make it easier for mobile outsiders to experience the twitterverse without becoming a member, Twitter has released a new feature that may broaden its appeal beyond its current user base.

We’ve always been big fans of trusty SMS messaging. In fact, sending a text was originally the only way users could tweet. This is why Tweets are 140 characters — they need to fit into a text message.

We value SMS because it’s simple, instant and universal. Recently, we’ve added a few new features to make Twitter even more useful with SMS.

Fast Follow. Anyone in the US can receive Tweets on their phone even if they haven’t signed up for Twitter. This is a simple way for people to get information they care about in real-time. For example, let’s say you want to get Tweets from New York City’s office of emergency management (@NotifyNYC). Just text ‘follow NotifyNYC’ to 40404 in the US. (Official Twitter Blog) read more

Despite the abundance of tweet buttons from various companies across the blogosphere, Twitter is possibly launching an official button this week, which could spell the end for companies like TweetMeme (a service many blog platforms use) in the not so distant future.

Twitter is launching an official Tweet Button for sharing articles on websites and counting how many times a URL has been shared, according to documents Mashable has obtained. The Tweet Button could launch as soon as this Thursday.

We’re still diving into the details, but from what we can tell, the Tweet Button is designed to be the most comprehensive counter of retweets and shares across Twitter’s network. It is a single line of code that can be added to any website. There are three versions of the button (110×20, 55×20, 55×63) with five different settings for customization. (Mashable)

Launching a twitter button makes sense, as it would help Twitter effectively compete against rival social networks like Facebook, (who has an official like button) as well as solidify their defenses against the oft rumored Google Me.

It will be interesting to see how third party companies adjust by adopting extra social networks like Facebook (something AddThis has previously done) or adopt extra features (i.e. displaying tweet avatars, analytics, etc.) to compete against Twitter.

Either way third party developers will probably not be thrilled with this news, as it would only heighten fears that Twitter is once again competing against developers in the twitterverse.

(Image via Mashable)

Update: Corrected article (Blog Herald uses Topsy, not Tweetmeme).

With The Social Network, a movie about Facebook debuting soon, it was only a matter of time before other enterprising studios jumped on the band wagon, the first is Comedy Central who have announced a new pilot for a TV talk show based around the world of social networks.

The show, which will star comedian Dwayne Perkins, will be called Dwaynebook, who performed in his own half-hour special on Comedy Central back in 2003.

According to Perkin’s manager Matt Schuler, the show will be along the lines of The Soup and Tosh.o. and Perkins already has ideas for sketches that will involve regular characters to the show, those characters like The Soup will be fictional staff for the show.

Perkins’s manager Matt Schuler (he’s also sharing executive production duties) compares the show to green-screen talk shows like The Soup and Tosh.0. read more

After announcing plans earlier to breathe some life into bbPress, the core WordPress.org team has announced that they are ceasing development of the blog platform in order to redouble their efforts on WP’s red headed step child.

For the first time in over 8 years, the core development team is not working on the next version of WordPress, but rather on an initiative that’s been dubbed “3.org.”

3.org is a very appropriately named project that is focused on building and polishing the surrounding elements of WordPress rather than on WordPress itself. Part of this initiative is the conversion of bbPress from a standalone platform into a neat little WordPress plugin. I’ve volunteered to lead that initiative, and wanted to take a moment to explain what that means for BuddyPress, bbPress, and what you can expect for the next few months. (Official BuddyPress Blog) read more

If you’re an avid blogger, you know about the fantastic benefits of blogging, such as community building, brand awareness, messaging and user engagement. In addition, blogging allows you to consistently publish valuable content that has the potential to rank for valuable keywords in Google, which can drive more traffic to your website. But if you do blog, you may not be using your blog as effectively as you could be. That would be a real bummer, right? With that thought, here are nine ways to make your blog work even harder for you. read more