Once happy to prey only on newbies and the truly stupid, phishing mailers used to send poorly written, typo ridden messages that were easily sniffed out by Internet veterans. But not so much these days.

I got an e-mail recently that looked like it might have been legit. It claimed I had a Battle.net account which had its password recently changed. And if I didn’t initiate this change, I should contact Blizzard support to reclaim it.

Hello,

This is an automated notification regarding your Battle.net account. Some or all of your contact information was recently modified through the Account Management website.

*** If you made recent account changes, please disregard this automatic notification.

*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you log in to Account Management review your account settings.

If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for further assistance.

Billing & Account Services can be reached at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8AM-8PM Pacific Time) or at billing@blizzard.com.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives will typically lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Regards,

The Battle.net Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support
Online Privacy Policy

These sorts of mails are commonly triggered for security reasons, so it gave me pause. Did I have a Battle.net account? It was entirely possible. Could someone have hacked it? Certainly. Did the mail come to the e-mail address I would have used when creating such an account? Yes, in fact, it did – an account that until now had been mostly free of spam. And those do appear to be legitimate phone and e-mail support options (they’re banking that you’ll choose the easy method and just click the link).

So I did the smart thing and visited Blizzard support. But I did NOT use any of the links in the e-mail I received. E-mail links are easily diverted to addresses that look remarkably legit but are really fronts for data thieves. No, I typed in a search and found the verified Blizzard support page, which looked like this:

Do these folks make you feel warm inside? Maybe from the blood spilling from your entrails.

What do you think of this page? Does it look warm and inviting? Do the characters portrayed on it suggest that helpful support personnel are standing by, ready to help you through whatever problem you might be facing down?

No. The woman looks like she’s piercing your soul with her silvery eyes and considering whether you’d make a tasty snack for her pet serpent. The dude on the right looks like he’d be sneering at your Level 1 Dwarf except that he’s decided that you’re beneath his contempt and will roundly ignore you should you attempt to engage him in conversation.

Probably not what Blizzard was going for, unless their goal is to sacrifice customer service for reduced support volume.

Despite the icy virtual reception, I submitted my support request. I only asked whether I ever had an account with them attached to the e-mail address that received the notification mail. It took a follow-up to clear up the issue to my satisfaction. This is a common problem with support – they don’t actually read the message, they scan it for keywords and then cut and paste canned responses. Here’s what I got back:

Thank you for contacting Blizzard! My name is Charli and I am from Blizzard’s Account and Technical Services department. I have read through your e-mail and would be happy to assist you. We have recently seen an increase in phishing attempts which pose a real threat for account security. As a friendly reminder, many scams will ask you for your password, which is something Blizzard Entertainment will *NEVER* do.

You may wish to review the following links for more information on phishing emails:

     – Types of Account Thefts: http://us.battle.net/security/types.html

     – How to tell if the email you received is legitimate: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/30828

     – Information concerning email scams, examples of phishing emails, and what to do in the event you have received a phishing email can be found on the Customer Service Forum here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=965511383

Add a Battle.net authenticator to the account and receive an exclusive Corehound pet! Information about this security device can be found here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/BLIZZARDAUTH.

If you feel you may have responded to a phishing email, and are unable to access the account, please contact Account & Technical Services. With proper verification our representatives may be able to assist you in recovering the account. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.

Charli could be a guy or a girl, so I don’t know if it was the ice princess or that sneering dude who replied. To his or her credit, s/he did allude to the fact that it could be a phishing scam – but did not state what I actually wanted to know. A simple “The email address used to contact us is not and has never been registered to a Battle.net or World of Warcraft account” would have satisfied me. Which is what I eventually got, when I pressed for a more specific answer.

Since then, I have received several more “notifications” from the Society of Not Really Blizzard Phishers, including a notice of “Suspicious Activity – Account Locked” for my non-existent World of Warcraft account.

If there’s a silver lining here, apart from the fact that I avoided clicking what I can now see is a very suspicious link, is Blizzard’s concise white list messaging. I’ve written white list messages myself for various organizations in my roles as communications director and community manager, and this is a good one. Short, sweet and detailed:

Please be aware that if your email service or software utilizes restrictive junk or “spam” filters, you may not be able to receive important emails from our support department. This can often include critical account notices, password recovery, and billing confirmation. If such filters are in place, these messages may wind up in a junk folder, or even be deleted automatically.

To ensure you are able to receive support messages, please review the following options:

Do not use the “Spam”, “Junk”, or “Junk Mail” buttons to delete emails from Blizzard Entertainment. If this happens it may not only prevent you from getting important emails, but your mail service may start blocking ALL Blizzard Entertainment emails of any kind, for ALL its subscribers.

Check your “Junk Folder” or “Spam Folder” and make sure you do not see any official emails there. If you see any, be sure to mark them as “Not Junk” or “Not Spam” so that messages are not improperly filtered in the future.

Add our email addresses to your Address book or “Safe Sender” list:

• support@blizzard.com
• billing@blizzard.com
• wowtech@blizzard.com
• wowgm@blizzard.com
• *@blizzard.com

Following these steps should ensure that you receive all the messages from Blizzard Entertainment. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Now, if they could just convince us they really do want to have a dialog with their customers!

But it all started with this tweet, which at first glance seemed to be a random venting of frustration by a faceless social media plebe:

But this tweet seemed much more calculated after the events of the next few days.

Two days later, the online storefront was gone – apparently shut down and replaced with a short message:

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form. We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming. This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

GOG.com kept tweeting:

The news about the site remaining available for people to redownload their games was a tip off. Why would a company keep the site live for people to redownload past purchases if they had no new revenue coming in to pay the server bills?

That same day, rumors spread that the site shutdown was a hoax. And people were angry!

On September 20, the site message was updated:

First of all, we apologize everyone for the whole situation and closing GOG.com. We do understand the timing for taking down the site caused confusion and many users didn’t manage to download all their games. Unfortunately we had to close the service due to business and technical reasons. At the same time we guarantee that every user who bought any game on GOG.com will be able to download all their games with bonus materials, DRM-free and as many times as they need starting this Thursday. The official statement from GOG.com’s management concerning the ongoing events is planned on Wednesday.

The news was finally broken on Sept. 22 that the shutdown was a build up to the site launching out of beta. Anger still washed over the social media streams:

GOGcom apologized, but some feared too little, too late:

But the next day, it was business as usual – actually, more business than usual:

GOG.com seems to have generated the buzz it wanted and even earned back some customers’ trust with the addition of two popular classic games and a large sale on “favorites.” Time will tell if the stunt hurts them or served its intended purpose.

But as a social media manager who aims to understand customer needs and perspectives and strives for transparency in communications, I have to wonder if hoaxes and stunts that anger customers are ever a good risk.

Here’s how I might have handled it:

GOG.com is going down for maintenance. We’ll be shut for 5 days as we prepare to launch the new site with exciting new features!If you make a GOG purchase today, download it right away. If you don’t complete the DL you’ll have to wait til the site comes back on 9/23.

Don’t worry, your GOG.com purchases are safe! You’ll still be able to redownload everything you’ve ever bought! Big announcements coming!

Here are some new features you’ll enjoy when GOG.com comes back on 9/23: More news, community features, quick browse catalog and reminders! 

Feel free to speculate on the game news. We can’t confirm yet, but watch our Twitter on 9/22! We think you RPG fans will be pleased.

While the site is down, how about we give away a few copies of the mystery RPG. RT the following message for a chance to win!

GOG.com is back up. You may see hiccups as we continue to add servers and manage 5 days of pent-up demand. Tell us what you think!

I found both of these discussions fascinating – true highlights of the show despite the general lack of gaming content (my passion!). Fortunately, I recorded both from the front row with generally good results (there was a fidgety person next to me at the second panel who makes a few stray sounds early on, but she finally settled down).

Please note there is explicit language in the second panel (NOT safe for work, at least not without headphones!). I don’t recall any cursing in the first panel.

Becoming a Community Manager (1:01:23)

Panelists:
Jay Frechette, EA/Visceral Games
Jennifer Kye, Gameloft
Sam Houston, formerly with Perfect World and GamerDNA
Arne Meyer, Naughty Dog Studios
Collin Moore, formerly with Irrational Games
James Stevenson, Insomniac Games
Allison Thresher, Harmonix

Twittering for the Man (59:36)

Panelists:
Dan Amrich, Activision
Jeff Green, formerly EA
Larry Hryb, Microsoft
Jeff Rubenstein, Sony
A.J. Glasser, GamePro magazine (moderator)

Did these panels offer you any lessons you can apply to your job, either inside or outside of the games industry? We’d love to hear what you think.

TweetDeck for iPhone

Back in April, I deconstructed what I thought was wrong with TweetDeck. Now I only do this sort of exercise with products I think show real potential. I did the same on BusyGamerNews.com for the Nintendo Wii user interface and twice for the Xbox 360 (but never got around to the PS3).

I critique because I care.

It appears that someone at TweetDeck is listening. But they have their own ideas too. And it’s hard to tell whether it’s getting better or I’m just getting used to the ever-growing array of columns that stretch off the right side of my screen.

The big news is that TweetDeck is now available for iPhone. And it’s free. The column metaphor actually seems to work well with a touch screen where you can swipe to quickly flip columns. I currently trade off between TwitterFon (slightly old version since people dissed the latest update) and Twinkle (nice for community tweets though Seattle lately has been overrun by overly dramatic teens and tweens with iPod Touchs who feel the need to text for attention every 12 seconds or so!). I’ve also toyed with Twitterific but so far it hasn’t stuck.

TweetDeck for iPhone looks promising, though it is a little crash prone (not unusual with first gen iPhone apps). What might keep me coming back is this: Sync with my desktop TweetDeck. The way this works is that you either use the iPhone app or the newest PC version of TweetDeck to create a TweetDeck account (yes, another password to remember). You then login to the other version and it offers to sync your columns – to a point. The iPhone version doesn’t support Facebook (at least not yet) so that’s not carried over from your desktop. Nor are any secondary accounts you add. You have to manually add these in both places. And sync’ing doesn’t seem to work from the iPhone back to the desktop, though I could be wrong. I’m still testing this.

Wait, did you catch that? Multiple Twitter accounts are now supported – on both versions! Other new desktop app features include unlimited columns, trends for any column, reply all, YFrog support, spam reporting and smart filtering. Supposedly there’s a conversation window, which sounds great - but I couldn’t find it.

Still, all in all, TweekDeck continues to show promise. Just when I was about to go fishing for alternatives.

Facebook on Xbox 360

Normally I wouldn’t post gaming news to this site (that’s what BusyGamerNews.com is for) but the news flash that Facebook and Twitter are going to launch on Xbox 360 consoles this fall should interest everyone who works in social media and community.

The game is about to change (again). It’s one thing to tweet and post status updates from a mobile phone. Typically, you’re out in the world tapping in texts about your work, meals and entertainment. Usually with bleached out twitpics of food that hopefully tastes better than it looks. We’re all used to that.

Now, expect a lot more gaming chatter. Once this feature launches as part of a long overdue Xbox 360 dashboard update, people will post pictures and achievements from their games. Trash talk will go a lot wider. And scheduling for group play of games and other activities, such as movie watching via Netflix Instant Queue parties (also launching soon), will compete with tweetups and Facebook events for your attention.

If you make your living in social media and don’t play games, now is the time to start.

UPDATE: Nintendo announced that its portable, the Nintendo DSi, will be getting Facebook integration this summer. But it will be limited to uploading images taken with the DSi’s camera. So the only impact here will be an influx of crappy low-res pictures, many with special effects such as stamps applied using the DSi’s primitive photo editing tools. Still, more evidence that social media is going to become more gamer-centric.

This led me down the path of webmastering for awhile before I settled in at Microsoft, where I paired my love of creating content with developing technology-based solutions. There I actually wrote and helped launch the first HTML newsletter on Microsoft.com and quickly became the go-to person for e-newsletters.

Since then, I’ve become passionate about community, and newsletters are still a great tool for this. Your e-mail content shouldn’t just be a blast out to customers with a call to action (though this is important too). The best e-mail newsletters draw members in and make them feel part of the community of people who interact with your site or product.

When I was at HealthTalk, one of my first tasks was to overhaul electronic communications. Up until then, newsletters had been sporadic and focused just on getting members to sign up for webcasts. Alas, many of the networks became dormant for months at a time, so my job was to develop a format that engaged members regardless of how often they had new programs available to them.

My solution, ultimately, was to begin drawing these members in with questions and topics and then sharing back their answers, as you can see in this example from the Rheumatoid Arthritis network :

HealthTalk newsletter

These stories really grabbed readers and made them want to be a part of the network, even during periods when there wasn’t much other new content for them. I also lobbied the producers and business development folks I worked with to develop new sources of content, and eventually convinced the company’s founder to pilot a blog despite a fair amount of internal resistance. The blog was so successful that shortly after I left, they launched phase 2 of my proposal and added member advocate blogs to each of the active networks.

For the Big Fish Games Atlantis gaming community, my focus was a little different. There already existed a real-time chat engine in all of the online games, and I managed a team of remote moderators who interacted daily with players to facilitate fun and resolve problems. I replaced the ad-only “newsletter” with a longer, content-heavy publication and launched the 5 Questions column to profile a different Big Fish Games employee each month. The goal was to open a window into how the people at the company were actively working to improve the community and provide hints and, where possible, announcements of upcoming games and features.

This just happens to be the one where I was the subject:

Big Fish Games online community newsletter

In a future post I’ll tackle headline copywriting, a task I performed daily for several years and have some helpful insights to share.

This may be old news for some, but I hadn’t put my finger on why this was significant until that moment. Personally, I had long ago burned out on wading through tons of  blog and news RSS feeds just to find those rare stories that I deemed worthy of interest. The signal-to-noise ratio was out of control, and the articles and posts became increasingly time consuming to pore through every day. I felt chained to my feed aggregator and, when it ceased to be fun and necessary for work, I quit.

As I ramped my activity on social network sites these past few years, I re-discovered those interesting news nuggets but now married to community (i.e., the opportunity to comment, share, interact) and with a more personable conveyance. It’s one thing to simply read a news story, it’s another to see why your high school buddy or former colleague thinks it’s interesting.

And, as a bonus, posts are typically 140 characters or less, so they’re easy to scan and clear. If I have a complaint, it would be that I see the same stories again and again – even more so now that Facebook has become Twitter 2 and even accepts tweets directly in lieu of status updates. But then, sometimes it takes 2-3 exposures before I’m motivated to click that link or watch that video. It’s the same with advertising and marketing: It usually takes repeated exposure to a brand or ad message before the customer takes any action. With the exception of straight retweets, each time I see the same post there’s a new perspective added.

All I know is that I find my feeds much more interesting now that they are socially shared and editorialized, and I enjoy the work of keeping up with news and memes and whatever else is buzzing out on the Interwebs since I can do it with my friends.

Movable Type is an impressive blogging tool, and I’ve invested a lot into it. I love the promise of community features, though I haven’t had the time to keep up with all of the updates that would enable these (they have to be manually installed and sometimes reconfigured). Also, price is a consideration. When I last checked, the richer community tools were targeted at corporate clients who invest $10,000 or more into their site. Too rich for my little labor of love gaming site.

Last Friday I launched my effort to move our The Writer’s Bloc business site from a collection of standalone pages to a blog where we can post articles and musings on the industries we work in. I had set up Philanthropy Northwest on Wordpress a couple years back and, while the experience wasn’t problem free, I liked what I saw and thought it would be helpful to keep up with another blogging platform. 

My hosting provider, Westhost, offers a Web-based interface for easily installing WordPress with just a couple of clicks. That was easy! I even had to upgrade a dependent PHP app first, but even that took only a few extra seconds. WordPress then auto-detected that there was a newer version available than what my host installed, so I clicked a link and installed that too. I browsed and found a theme that I liked and spent a little time customizing it. I might move to something flashier later, but this works for now and already looks nicer than the old site. I then used the WordPress plug-in auto-install feature to add some social networking/sharing links, a CAPTCHA with a built-in audio playback for form protection from spammers, SEO options and more in-depth stats tracking including Google Analytics. I still need to improve my old contact form (which I hastily ported to a WordPress page),  but really that’s not bad for half a day’s work.

It’s early to wholeheartedly recommend WordPress, but thinking back to the months it took to get CAPTCHA working on Movable Type a few years back, I have to say that so far I’m impressed. When things calm down, I’ll spend a day upgrading Movable Type and see if it has gotten any better than the early v4 build I’m using.

So we have relaunched this site as a blog where we can tell you some of what we’re up to and share the unique insights we’ve uncovered to help you navigate the stormy waters of Web 2.0 and beyond.

Our clients include Microsoft (including Xbox and Office Live), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Philanthropy Northwest.

We are both former newspaper reporters, freelance writers and Internet pioneers with a diverse skillset and versatile range. We have written articles and reviews for various newspapers, magazines and Web sites including Microsoft.com, Xbox.com, ABCNews.com, O’Reilly, MacAddict, Internet Strategies, BBS Magazine, Faulkner Technical Reports, Internet Voyager and Orbit Video magazine. Prior to founding our own company, we built online communities for Big Fish Games and HealthTalk, produced marketing videos for Amazon Kindle, and planned and launched sites for Nickelodeon, Raleigh Diamondback bikes, Lettuce Entertain You restaurants, Redhook Brewery and F5 Networks.

In addition to our daily work, we write BusyGamerNews.com – a daily blog devoted to news, reviews and advocacy tuned to the needs of working gamers.

Contact The Writer’s Bloc