Is Ping.fm a Lame Data-Mining Op? Or is it Just Annoying?

go away pingfmSomeone seriously has to cut the noise around here. I signed up for the Ping.fm Beta because, well, I love signing up for betas for no particular reason.

Right off the bat I knew this service was totally pointless. Why would I want to post the same message to 5 or 6 different social networks at the same time? So my friends that are also on one, two or six of the same networks hear me like a broken record? I knew it was dumb, but thinking that — just maybe — someday it could be useful, I signed up, with no intention to actually use it (I’ve done similar thing with Digg, Yelp, GrandCentral and more — signing up early and not really using until I trusted the service.

ping.fm is a scam
ping.fm is a scam

It hasn’t been an hour, though, and I am trying to close my Ping.fm account, but there is no apparent way to opt-out once you sign up (though I did change my account e-mail to no@than.ks). Unfortunately, it’s already too late — they immediately spammed my Pownce and Twitter account with the messages above. THEN, I read their Terms of Service (I know, I shoulda known better) and realized that this was the operation of two kids who likely were more interested in purging people’s data from multiple social websites than actually providing a useful service.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with throwing myself out on the Internet in all transparency and am fully aware of the risks therein. But I hate to see myself and my friends get not only spammed (by each other) but also punked by signing up for a seemingly legitimate service (see Mashable‘s review today). Before we get into the small print, let’s just look at the “company” behind Ping.fm.

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SXSW Takeaways Part I: Fleet Foxes, The Pigeon Detectives

Picked up on LOTS of good bands, ideas — even concepts — at SXSW. I attended the music conference previously but this was the first year that I was there for an entire week, focused especially on the Interactive conference.

I’m still going through my notes, but I can drop a couple faves off the bat. I went to Filter’s Showdown at Cedar Street on Friday in hopes of checking out The Wombats and Lightspeed Champion but walked away with an earful of The Pigeon Detectives (already big in the UK, natch) — live, they took the whole Hives/Strokes/Art Brut thing to new levels. LA peeps — they’re playing Spaceland tonight (St. Patty’s Day).

In a week filled with encouraging rock and roll, I found myself totally blown away by the gentler sounds of Fleet Foxes from Washington state. Listen below:

LAist Anon Protest Video Gets 10k++ Diggs

Zach shot this at yesterday’s Anonymous protest across from the Church of Scientology on his Flip camera. Immediately after uploading it to YouTube (and before he even posted it to LAist), it was Dugg and is currently on its way to the Top 10 most popular Diggs of the year. The video itself is a testament to right-place/right-time, brevity and the the fact that you can play it straight from Digg. The content kinda gave me chills the first time I saw it. Way to go, Zach! Also gotta give credit to whomever submitted the Digg as the headline (“This is how police SHOULD react to protesters”) is perfect for Digg.