Blogging: Free or Moderated Comments?

I've just changed the settings of this blog, moving from free to moderated comments. It's impressive how many comments are coming from spammers and from people interested in optimizing their ranking in search engines (SEO). While this will imply a few more clicks from my side, I'll do all my best to approve each and every relevant comment as soon as possible.

To briefly extend the topic, I'd like to point to a few sites containing notable statistics on both legal an illicit use of communication channels:

• MessageLabs Intelligence - This website hosts the MessageLabs Intelligence report, which provides the latest threat trends to keep you informed regarding the ongoing fight against viruses, spam and other unwelcome content.
  
• Email Marketing Consumer Report - ContactLab presents the results of the latest research on the use of e-mail among Internet users. The study, in its European edition, describes and compares e-mail and newsletters habits and behaviour in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, highlighting similarities and differences between the different markets.

Email, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, etc.. are all good ways to improve brand awareness, generate leads and deliver marketing campaigns, but unfortunately sometimes they are used in a wrong manner. I hope that in the future there will be a way to counteract this phenomenon, but for now comments are moderated and spam filters on email accounts are in place! ;)

Luca