Category → Twitter
Despite DDoS, Twitter Still Rules
The social networking world was turned upside down yesterday when Twitter and Facebook were victims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack making the service difficult to access yesterday. This attack is nothing new as many sites have been attacked in this manner. The buzz around technology related sites this morning is that the attack was really targeting one individual because of his stand on the Georgia versus Russia situation. With many social networking sites having a connection to Twitter, the attack was far reaching. There are many places such as Friendfeed, Facebook, blogs and other sites that will pull Twitter posts to their sites. In fact this very page shows my Twitter posts on the right side of this page.
To clarify what a DDoS attack is and how it works I will try to explain. A malicious person will find open computers around the world and upload a “bot”, or a program that runs automatically at set times. This person will upload these bots onto other computers as they find them open. These bots will ping a site continuously from many different victim computers sort of like what happens when you are access a web site. These attempts to reach the site are at such a high volume that it takes up all of their bandwidth preventing legitimate users from being able to access the site. When I say bandwidth, I am referring to a sort of a pipeline and its size. The larger the size of pipeline, the more data that can be sent through the pipe. If all the contents of the pipe are being consumed, then nothing else is left for anyone else.
Twitter still rules the social networking world despite what you may hear from other sites. The reason I say this is because if you actually go to Friendfeed, you will find that at least 50% of the traffic on there started by a Twitter post. Of course from there, people will comment on Friendfeed. The same can be said for Facebook because most of the traffic that I see are originally posted as Twitter. Most of these sites have their own features that are very useful but again they depend on the traffic that is generated by Twitter. With each news story that comes out putting down Twitter, they continue to grow. In fact their growth is exponential with each story that comes out. This is probably a result of people’s desire to follow the crowd. In fact just this morning I un-followed 500 people/bots/strangers. I will admit that I love the ability to get news from Twitter in real time even before it is on the news. I can find out when a roll over accident is on the freeway before it is even broadcast on television.
So unless someone can come up with a tool that is so easy to use through short messaging system (SMS) they will continue to rule. With smart phones becoming more prevalent people can update a news story directly from the site. Instantly millions of people will know within minutes. In some cases these posts actually result in the media’s attention instead of the other way around. Having Twitter is empowering to the individual. As it has been seen recently, there were individuals in Iran that were posting to the world the violence that was going on. These Twitter posts were fed into many social networking sites and also to the news media. In fact every major news entity in the United States has a Twitter page. I know some people that use them just to follow news sites so that when something happens, they get a message to their phones. It is inevitable that at some point a new technology will come out and unseat Twitter as the major social tool but for now they remain on top. I will continue to follow these technologies and see new breakthrough tools as they develop.
Twitter “OFF”
I have been one of the greatest advocates of using Twitter. I use them every day for two years and loving it. Lately they have been getting on my nerves to a point that I am yelling at them. One of the major attractions to using Twitter is the ability to update via short messaging service (SMS), or text. It is so convenient to send a text message and know that it is updating my Twitter page, my Facebook page, and my personal web site all at the same time.
From my cell phone I can send a text message “on” or “off” to turn notifications on or off to my cell phone. This way if I have to be in a meeting I can just send “off” and the notifications stop until I turn them back on. Lately I have been sending “off” and it has not been taking effect right away. In fact in some cases it does not take effect for more than four hours. This is completely unacceptable. Even putting my phone on vibrate does not help when I am getting continuous flows of messages when I am in a meeting.
Another thing that it does is keeps me from getting the messages from those that I do want to talk to. When I am in a meeting for an hour and a half and I come out with 20+ Twitter messages on my phone, I tend to ignore them. When someone in my family sends me a text message it gets ignored because of the endless messages coming in after I told it to stop. A couple nights ago it was doing this and I got so mad that I sent “off” over and over and over again where I probably sent “off 20+ times. The messages kept coming. When I got up for work in the morning I had 40+ messages from Twitter and most of them were my “off” confirmations that I sent telling it to stop.
It does not take a rocket scientist to see this would get old fast. Tonight it is doing it again. I have already sent “off” a dozen times and I am STILL getting messages. Am I the only one that is having this problem? Unlike many people I use the “on” and “off” commands regularly because I have to work or sleep. I leave my phone on 24 hours a day because most people I talk to call me on it. If there is an emergency, that is the number that people will likely call me on so turning off the phone when I go to bed is not an option.
I just submitted a troubleshooting request with Twitter to see if they can find out what is going on. I hate to cancel my service but if this is what it comes to then I guess I have no choice. I am approaching 7,000 Twitter messages at this time so I use them quite heavily. Twitter, fix this problem!
I went ahead and re-opened my Facebook account as it gives me more control over the content unlike Friendfeed. I left all the other social networking sites closed. Of all the sites that I really do love to use, I would say Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. The rain is moving back in today and I love it. I should have been raised in Seattle because it can never rain too much for me. I just found that many of my church members including the Pastor is on Twitter as well. I already had them on Facebook and they use it pretty heavily.
Looks like Obama made a comment yesterday that said something about you being able to put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. Everyone is saying it was aimed at Sarah Palin and I do believe it was though you could make the argument that since he paused before saying it, that it was a spontaneous thought with no calculation behind it. They fired back and said that McCain had made a similar statement in 2007 when referencing Mrs. Clinton. And the drama continues. There is a reason that I usually turn the TV volume down the moment theys begin discussing politics. Oh well, it is the same thing over and over again. I will certainly be glad when it is over as you know that it will continue after the election regardless of who wins.
I have been attending a class at work and it has two more days. It is called Item Unique Identification (IUID). This is an initiative to assign a unique identification number to every piece of equipment that is either $5,000 or more. Other items can be added if the program manager deems it necessary to keep track of them. They used our government identification cards called the common access cards (CAC) as an example of how each of us has an unique number and no other person has this number. This is reminiscent of Revelation chapter 13, versus 15-18. I know this is not what it is but sure does give you the creeps. The government has put this program into place that all items acquired by the government will have these scannable marks beginning 1 Jaunuary 2004. What gives me the creeps is that never before in history has there been the technology for Revelation 13:15-18 to make sense. The point being is that the technology is here. The next two days of this class we will be doing practical application. I must say this overview class that I went to was easily the most boring class I have ever been to. Razor blades should be issued upon entry for those that just want to end the pain 
. Other than this and school there has not been too much going on.
Social Networking and SMS
As most of you know, I am an Internet junkie and love to play with social networks minus Myspace. No matter how much I try, I just cannot get into Myspace. I have grown to love Twitter because of its short messaging system (SMS) capability. It is really nice to be mobile and get text messages to my phone. I can be out mobile and just send a text message to 40404 and it shows up on my Twitter page. I wish Facebook would include T-Mobile in their mobile service. I have been with T-Mobile since 2000 when it was Voicestream. I really like Facebook but I wish they would wake up and realize that T-Mobile is NOT a small mobile service. They are one of the major carriers and should be included in their mobile accounts. I have been happy with their service and have no intentions of changing after eight years.
Facebook and Twitter go well together. If I am out somewhere and post a Twitter message, it automatically updates my Facebook status and shows on the Facebook feed. There are many programs similar to Twitter like Pownce, or Jaiku but I stick with Twitter because of the SMS. I do not understand why they all do not include SMS. Yes, I can go to their mobile page and log in to check the page but that is too much trouble. Having SMS, allows me to get a message sent “to” me as opposed to having to go search for it. I can be in a meeting at work, and get a message right to my phone. This is where putting the phone on silent really helps 
. If they did not have any other features, SMS should be included. Using mobile web is nice but not that convenient.
I think Pownce has a lot of potential but until they get SMS, they will never get a large following like Twitter does. Myspace has finally included SMS but it is rediculous. They send you an SMS message telling you that you have a new Myspace message. Then you have to log into Myspace to check your message. What a waste! If i am in a meeting and do not have a computer nearby or do not want to pay extra for the mobile web, then I do not know the what or who the message is from. If I am in a meeting, then I have to be discreet when checking my messages. You cannot be very discreet while logging on to the web.
If you are like me and want to stay connected when I am away from home, you will love these toys. I must say that my favorite is the Twitter/Facebook combination. So far I think they are light years ahead of the others. Without question MySpace is the worst. It is the AOL of social networking. They will not allow access through other forums and even their SMS is only one way and does nothing more than tell you that you have some information on their website. Their pages are geared toward teens with hormone overload. Every page has some girl wearing scantily clad outfits with some provocative comment. I will admit that one thing that really bothers me about Facebook is the way it automatically requests you to send new applications to all of your friends by default. When I get those, I always say no.
I am curious to see how this is going to hold up in the long run. To my knowledge Twitter has no means of generating income so as much as I love it, I am not sure what their long term strategy is but for now it is just a lot of fun. Oh…one more thing. I know Microsoft Vista gets a lot of heat for many reasons but one thing that I love about it is the tagging features. For those that have come to love Flickr and its tagging and searching capability, you would love the fact that Microsoft has included this into Vista. Lets hope this becomes standard and open to other standards. I like having the ability to tag my photos and have this information embedded into the file itself making it search able. If you are like me and have thousands of photos on your computer, it is nice to be able to search through them. The new Office 2007 has the tagging capability as well even if you use the old Windows XP.
If people ever find out about these features and start to use them, it would make their lives a lot easier. How nice to be able to find a single photo out of a library of 10,000. I guess I have rambled long enough so I will get this sent.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, SMS, MySpace, T-Mobile, AOL, Microsoft, Vista, Office 2007, tagging Flickr,