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Ivybridge_I7
Cyber-Crime Researcher OpSec
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join:2004-06-09
Daytona Beach, FL

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Ivybridge_I7

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"Twitter Crack" DDOS outrage shows addiction to social sites

Twitter outage spotlights 'addiction to social media crack'
Attack that hit Twitter, Facebook and Google left users adrift

By Sharon Gaudin
August 7, 2009 12:08 PM ET
»www.computerworld.com/s/ ··· 09-08-07

Computerworld - The attack that knocked Twitter offline and slowed access to Facebook Thursday morning offered a quick lesson in how dependent millions of people have become on social networking sites.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the microblogging site Twitter offline for about two hours yesterday morning. The same attack also hit Facebook and a few Google sites, but they didn't collapse as Twitter did. Facebook reported a slowdown and a spokesman for Google said that while Google search, Gmail and docs were unaffected, some users experienced problems with custom URL redirects in both the Google Blogger and the Google Sites wiki.

While security experts today are working to figure out who was behind the widespread attack, other analysts are calculating the effect the downtime had on social networking users.

While the level of damage varied from site to site, the online uproar over the attacks was palpable. When users couldn't get on Twitter, a lot of them immediately went to their Facebook pages to vent their frustrations about not being able to Twitter.

And the slow connections they suffered there just increased their frustrations.

"It was kind of shocking. It was a lights-out kind of moment," said Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and a blog of the same name. "Yesterday showed that people are addicted...to the social media crack. You shut this thing down and it shows you, by the way people reacted, that there's been a fundamental shift in the way people communicate. People have carved out time in their day, their hours, for this."

When Twitter went offline yesterday, 45 million users -- including a growing number of older users -- were affected. And they were vocal about their feelings about it. One Facebook user noted, "Suffering tweet withdrawal." Another posted, "Wanting Twitter - NOW."

Qualman said he's actually a bit happy that social networking hiccuped yesterday. Now, it'll be easier for him to explain to people just how important sites like Facebook and Twitter have become.

"Maybe it illuminates naysayers who think it's a fad with people talking about their cat rolling over," he added. "Hopefully, people will see that people are up in arms about this and that it's bigger than [they] thought.... If it had gone down and there was no news about it, then it would have shown that people don't care."

TearAbite
D'oh
join:2001-07-25
Rancho Cucamonga, CA

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TearAbite

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yah.. i actually went outside into the sunlight cuz 'der wuz nuthin else ta do

Kilroy
MVM
join:2002-11-21
Saint Paul, MN

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Twitter was down? Didn't even notice.

JohnInSJ
Premium Member
join:2003-09-22
Aptos, CA

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said by TearAbite:

yah.. i actually went outside into the sunlight cuz 'der wuz nuthin else ta do
Me too, but I have an HTC phone, so I couldn't see the screen in the sunlight... so I went back inside.

Dustyn
Premium Member
join:2003-02-26
Ontario, CAN

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....sun..light..?
Tyreman
join:2002-10-08
Cambridge, ON

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I didn't know the older generation is a growing user base
I sure don't use it but hey thats me.
Expand your moderator at work

Blue2
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join:2004-04-14
France

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Re: "Twitter Crack" DDOS outrage shows addiction to social sites

We're a society of news junkies and Twitter is just one example.

How many times a day do you check your mailbox (more than the once a day you check your slow mail mailbox?), or this forum, or use your mobile phone (convenient but not necessary). We're a bunch of addicts by all accounts, looking for an immediate "fix", and that's why there's a rush to push new legislation against texting with driving (a rule some train conductors should have heeded). The "drug" of preference, be it Facebook, this forum, texting, etc. is really irrelevant to the discussion.

And since it is DE FACTO the way our society now communicates, it's always the way the government now monitors changing public sentiment, going against their own advice: "As the Pentagon warns of the security risks posed by social networking sites, newly released government documents show the military also uses these Internet tools to monitor and react to coverage of high-profile events. »www.nytimes.com/aponline ··· r&st=cse

So belittling Twiiter is simply one junkie disdaining the "high" of another. Perhaps your fix is better, but that makes it no less an addiction and no worthier.

Anav
Sarcastic Llama? Naw, Just Acerbic
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join:2001-07-16
Dartmouth, NS

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The fact that stated author Erik Numbnuts was shocked by the response, leads me to believe he is an absolute moron and a sensationalist. Heck, I could have told him what the reaction would be and I took one class of psyche in University oh at least XX years ago. That guy really needs to get a life (or some sun as dustyn noted) with real people and out of the blog/pc world he is obviously addicted too himself. Heck I shut my 15 yr old off facebook for a week and her withdrawal symptoms and out of control anger started within 15 minutes.

As a side note, with news feeds and the like, its interesting to see kids refusing to go to individual SOURCE sites (truth - actual information) because they prefer to go to Facebook and get all their (now second hand information) current "facts" from friends. Very scary and shows how smart the facebook billionaires are in manipulating the youth of today in an ill disguised money making effort - effing brilliant but not without societal impact. We have not even discussed the privacy angle either......
huhh8
join:2009-07-31

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What did you expect. No oone has "human" friends anymore. Everyone's "fair weather" friends are online.

winsyrstrife
River City Bounce
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join:2002-04-30
Brooklyn, NY

winsyrstrife

Premium Member

said by huhh8:

What did you expect. No one has "human" friends anymore. Everyone's "fair weather" friends are online.
This is so true. Humans are traded back and forth (as "friends") online, like commodities...something vital is lost during the process . I wonder how many of these people would have no idea how to interact with the people they call friends online, if they met them face-to-face in the street.

EGeezer
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join:2002-08-04
Midwest

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I'd twit about the Facebook problem (or, more appropriately, Facebook about the twits), but I don't use either...

JohnInSJ
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join:2003-09-22
Aptos, CA

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Many of my face to face friends are also friends on the various social media places. Many of the people I would otherwise not get to see very often I "see" quite often via these sites, and it's quite nice.

Sure, it's great to sit down with someone over a beverage and shoot the breeze, but real life time constraints and distances make that pretty near impossible for everyone I know.

Besides, isn't this (BBR) just another form of social site? Naw, no worries, keep throwing those stones

CJ30
join:2000-07-18
USA

CJ30

Member

said by JohnInSJ:

Many of my face to face friends are also friends on the various social media places. Many of the people I would otherwise not get to see very often I "see" quite often via these sites, and it's quite nice.

Sure, it's great to sit down with someone over a beverage and shoot the breeze, but real life time constraints and distances make that pretty near impossible for everyone I know.

Besides, isn't this (BBR) just another form of social site? Naw, no worries, keep throwing those stones
I think that summed it up quite nicely. Well said.