Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Stavros, weblogging’s only Wonder Chicken and his rather interesting MetaFilter buddies have found a new use for our poor misused and overly worked Google — they’re using it to send “secret” messages to each other. Usually the kind of messages you don’t want your mama to see. Or my mama for that matter.
How does it work? Simply encode your message into a Google search string, making sure to include some reference that will guarantee that your friends weblog rises to something approximating the surface, and then click on your weblogging friend’s webpage in the results page. Bammo! Instant message — well instant if your friend is reading the referrers at the time.
Of course, an email is more sure and AOL IM is faster — but there’s something deliciously warped about Google Instant Messaging that appeals. It’s a weblogging thing.
Note: This only works if your intended targeted weblogger checks referrers (a referrer is a web link that leads to your page). However, since most people have also started using the Referrer Thingy, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Update: This is very tricky. You have to use the right combination of words to pull up the target weblog, and then you have to form your search string carefully to make sure you get at least one result back. See Advanced Search. Between this and googlewhacking, webloggers must be the most precise Google searchers in the world.
<edit />: Hey! I received a secret message:
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- burning bird hi shelley! is this flowbait?
Flow, baby. Flow.