Twitter has been hit by a series of security issues lately. The latest was a hack of 33 Twitter accounts that saw fake message posted on the Twitter accounts of popular Twitter users including Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez (pictured on the right) and Facebook. You can see some of the hacked account images here on Flickr.



In short Twitter style here are three of the security issues Twitter is facing.

• People are giving out their passwords to use third-party tools.
  
• Phising attacks are trying to get people to click on links that take them to websites that try and steal their Twitter passwords.
  
• Twitter was hacked and 33 major Twitter accounts were made to post fake tweets.
  

Twitter recently addressed all three of these issues in two posts: one called Monday Morning Madness and one called Gone Phising.



Twitter says they do plan to add OAuth which will help with people that want to register for third-party Twitter apps and tools. This won’t stop phising attempts and it wouldn’t have stopped the hack.



They have discussed the ongoing Twitter phising attempts. Phising may be a real big problem for microblogging sites going forward as there is always a certain level of trust involved when people are sharing links.



The issue where Twitter itself was hacked and fake tweets were posted to Twitter accounts is a more serious issue and it involved a hack of the tools used by the Twitter support team. Since the hack included President-elect Barack Obamas Twitter (although his wasn’t the sole account attacked) it does raise the possibility that Twitter could ask the FBI to help them pursue the hackers.



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Source: JMcIntosh

Facebook was a traffic monster over the holidays. The BBC reports that Hitwise says Facebook accounted for one in every 22 online visits on Christmas Day. They were the second most popular website after Google on Christmas Day.

Robin Goad from Hitwise said a lot of that extra traffic was down to people using social networking sites get in touch with friends and family over the holidays instead of more traditional phone calls or cards.



He said: “Christmas is always a busy time for social networking sites, but the increase this year was higher than expected.



“After the boom of these sites in the last couple of years growth is now slowing down.



“But these figures prove they’re becoming central to people for keeping in touch with loved ones.”

Perhaps, Facebook is becoming somewhat of an alternative to electronic greeting cards. They probably won’t be able to sustain the traffic intensity as the holidays fade away.



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Source: JMcIntosh

Gawker’s Consumerist blog has been sold to nonprofit Consumers Union. Gawker Media’s Hollywood gossip blog Defamer is also up for sale. The Gawker blog network has been steadily shrinking since last year. There’s no official word on how much Consumerist was sold for but Peter Kafka at Media Memo says he’s been told mid-six figures.

Denton wouldn’t comment on the sale of Consumerist, an advocacy site with attitude that he put on the block last month. And he would only confirm that Defamer, his attempt to break into Hollywood coverage, is for sale.



But I’m told that Consumerist may have fetched something in the “mid-six figure range,” and that a logical buyer for Defamer would be BuzzNet, the pop culture blog network that picked up Denton’s Idolator music site earlier this year.

Consumerist never seemed like the kind of blog that could attract lots of advertising so it seems appropriate that it was sold to the company behind the subscription Consumer Reports publication. Some commenting on a Consumerist post about the sale sound concerned the Consumerist blog itself could go subscription but Consumer Reports has a number of blogs on its website (see here) that are available free to the public so Consumerist is probably safe from subscriber fees for now.



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Source: JMcIntosh

As Paris Lemon points out there’s a bitchmeme on Techmeme right now started here by Loic Le Meur about using Twitter authority as a way to reduce the number of results in a Twitter search. Since it has been suggested it will likely soon be created by someone using the Twitter API if it hasn’t already been created. Technorati uses authority on its search to show only posts from blogs that have a certain number of inbound links.



Critics of a Twitter authority search say including only Twitterers that have large numbers of followers is unfair and that it will cause people to try and obtain more followers by following more people. It would also tend to favor people who have been on Twitter longer and tend to have more followers. There are a few of other ideas being suggested as alternatives - some can be found in the comments on TechCrunch’s post. They are:

Provide a way to limit search results to only tweets that have been responsed to or re-tweeted.

Allow people to search only tweets from people that they follow.



Twitter’s search tool already has a few ways (see also search operators) to reduce the number of tweets in a search. You can search a specific person’s tweets and you can return only tweets that contain a link. You can also limit searches to tweets by people near a specific place. You can limit the results to tweets only from certain dates. It’s clear these tools aren’t enough and the Twitter search engine needs more advanced filtering. The more ways available for users to search tweets the better.



Posted in Twitter



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Source: JMcIntosh

It’s that time of year when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) starts tracking Santa Claus and his reindeer as they get close to their big night delivering presents all over the Globe. Santa Claus actually uses more advanced technology than NORAD so NORAD probably needs the extra time to make sure they don’t lose sight of Santa on Christmas Eve. The NORAD Santa tracker website has already begun a Christmas Eve countdown and has some features up for kids.



NORAD also has a Twitter profile up. It’s being run by an energetic Twittering Elf named Bitz. The name of NORAD’s Santa Twitter is @noradsanta.



Posted in Twitter



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Source: JMcIntosh