So, in a threaded comment-ango on Friendfeed today, I noticed an odd comment by a Friendfeedster that seemed out of place.  So out of place, it almost smelled … blog spammy.  Sure enough, someone (Hutch Carpenter) mentioned that this comment was popping up in all kinds of places by the same person, and perhaps this was an example of FriendFeed spam  (I’m not linking to them because after a bit of searching, this individual clearly is not a spammer).  However, even if what I saw *wasn’t* FriendFeed spam, you can be sure there are some examples of a few ballsy individuals who are willing to try it.

The topic has been rumoured, and brought up somewhat by ReadWriteWeb about a week ago (although it really wasn’t spam at all), and it got me wondering: how vulnerable is FriendFeed to spam?

As opposed to, say, for example, Twitter, that is.

At its current state, I’d say, very the threat potential exists, if not for bots, then for manual spamming at least.  The reason why, I believe, is because while its possible to block individuals based on their specific *root* actions — submitting a post, twittering, Digging, bookmarking, or a generic “share something” via FriendFeed natively — there is still a lot of room for abuse on the *commenting* end.

So, while the intellectual debate around a potential algorithm for banning potential FriendFeed spammers is currently vibrant (and so wonderously geeky), it is still lacking.

That’s because one of FriendFeed’s greatest strengths — its ability to allow people to comment on someone’s sharecule (smallest indivisible item of sharing, naturally!) — creates the potential for massive spamming, in so far as it creates fairly large “targets” of attention.

And so far, there is no easy way to “block” them, other than to copy their name / handle, search for their profile, and then block them.  Now, while it would be fairly easy to construct a solution to this in the form of a drop down next to a commenters name (to block them), my concern is that FriendFeed’s commenting structure invites the potential for spammers in a way that, say, Twitter, cannot.

Twitter, for all its structural foibles, is set up in such a way that it is not easy to identify active conversations between large groups of Twitters to insert your spammy message.  You can follow individuals, who in turn might have tons of followers, to be sure, but there’s no way “popular” twitterers, at any one time, will be having huge and meaningful conversations with lots of Twitterers all at the same time.

FriendFeed is in its infancy, and while there are probably technical solutions to Spam, i do wonder about its innate susceptibility to spam, in the same way that guestbooks or blog comments are vulnerable to spam — insofar that *conversations* will be easy to spot, and even easier to inject one’s non-solicited message (read: spam).