Kerstin Baker-Ash

Twitter - Denial of Service Attack

Forget the fail whale, fail cat, or any other fail creature Twitter has rolled out to explain surges in Twitter traffic - it's a large scale Denial of Service attack. What's a DoS? Yeah, I didn't really know either. According to Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge on the planet):

...it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. 

Basically, it's a huge effort by a basement nerd and his/her posse to eat up the allocated space of a website so that service slows down or dies completely. For Twitter addicts out there, this DoS might manifest itself in refreshing twitter.com every minute, or treating Facebook like their own private Twitter party. I even posted my first status update to Facebook for the first time in eight months this morning (it's my wedding anniversary, sue me).

Twitter now joins a rather illustrious list of DoS victims, including Mikhail Saakashvili, Pirate Bay and the Irish Government. I sure hope these DoS-ers (tossers?) don't live in the UK - it's against the law and carries a maximum of ten years in prison. Ouch.

Celebrate Your Twitterversary!

Ever scratched your head in a conversation, thinking back to your first taste of Twitter? I always knew when I joined... approximately. After hearing about the service so much during virtually every session at SES New York 2008, I jumped on the bandwagon. I was hesitant at first, went through a stage of protecting my Twitter stream, and opened it up again only recently. Approaching my first Twitterversary, I wanted to let you all in on the secret so you can buy yourself a cupcake and calculate the time you've wasted enjoyed using Twitter.

Go to http://twitter.com/users/show/yourusernamehere.xml It's that simple. The first date you'll see is the date you joined - mine was the third day of SES New York, at approximately 3pm (I'm on London time normally, so that's what it shows). Simples!

A big thanks to Kate Morris for the lightbulb moment. 

I'm a Twitter Admin?

A nice lunchtime chuckle - I'm apparently seeing pages I might not really be supposed to because I'm an admin on Twitter...

You're All Wrong About Twitter

Ok. Enough already. Seriously. You're all wrong about Twitter. And you're all right.

I'm really bored of people trying to define Twitter. You follow too many people. You follow too few people. You don't RT enough. You don't engage in conversation enough. You RT too often. Your stream is full of @replies. Come on - putting a sticker of definition on most things web related is going to stir some controversy at least, and hey - we all do it for extra followers, right?

So stop for just a second. Why do you use Twitter? Where do you find the value? If you're going on about how varied your TweetDeck is or how engaged you are with your followers, you've got it wrong. You use it because you see value in it. Period. Full stop. Fin. Trying to foist your opinion upon how others use it verges on the insanely egotistical (yes, I get the irony here).

Why I use Twitter (and why you should ignore why I use Twitter):

• It's entertaining - where else can you read random thoughts from Ando and Matt Parkman (Heroes)?
• I don't follow people so that they'll follow me back. Seriously. I don't care if you follow me back. I'm listening to you because I like/respect/admire/love you and am interested in what you have to say. Nothing more. 
• I don't follow back people just because they follow me. You want me to follow you back? Great! You've bought me a drink at the bar, now start the conversation.
• If you auto-DM me, I will unfollow you. No, I don't want to read your beginners guide to Twitter - I've been using it for a while kthxbai. 
• I see value in following what people are up to, but find it slightly creepy that I have to introduce myself by my Twitter name when I meet you IRL. I'm still struggling with the concept of online informing real life and vice versa (since about 1995). I'll get there. 
• I enjoy it. I don't see the point of doing anything unless you truly get enjoyment out of it. Life is rather boring otherwise. 

In the end, it's a jumble, unflowing and disconnected - pretty much how I experience (and rather enjoy) Twitter. It's pretty much the Latin equivalent of sum quod sum, or Twitter quod Twitter. Define it for yourself, and don't try to dictate how other people interact. It is what it is, and it is what you believe it is.

Why I Unprotected My Twitter Stream

It's all well and good providing a walled garden for yourself. Venting, putting feelers out for a new job and interacting with friends all seems like a great idea to do behind a lock, but it gets in the way of making new connections.

I've protected my Twitter feed for several months now. The reasons were varied; I was conscientious that clients would get a peek at some of the conversations I was having (not that they were anything above G-rated), I wanted to focus more on getting traffic to my blog instead of my microblog, and I needed to be aware of any kickback (real or perceived) from some of my personal views was now out there. I felt that my Twitter account, as a microblog, could provide a bit more of a personal view - rather than here on this blog where I kept a lot held back.

The drawback to this is that any time I followed someone, they were immediately met with "This Person Protects Their Updates." Not great for personal branding or engaging in community. Sure, if you're a very well known person who has an established name for yourself, this isn't a problem. You can filter people out without feeling like you're losing out on the chance to engage with people in the industry. I have a big desire to build relationships with people in the SEM industry, and felt like I couldn't do that protecting my Twitter stream.

Then, there was the naïve belief that a bunch of people were really, really rude. I'd send @replies to people, and get nothing back, even when the tweet was helpful or interesting (in my opinion, obviously). I'm embarrassed to admit that I only recently realized that if people weren't following me, my @replies were stuck behind my walled garden; I apologize unreservedly to the people who I'd pegged to be rude, egotistical and pretty pleased with themselves. If it's any consolation, I stewed privately rather than tweet about it in my garden. That having been said, I think a lot of people would agree that good Twitter etiquette suggests that you reply to @replies (ok, unless you're @wilw or @barackobama or @stephenfry with gazillions of followers and no realistic expectation of a response), even if it's just @bakerash thanks. Margaret Mason has a very entertaining post about this on The Morning News.

So here we are today - why I finally decided to unprotect my Twitter stream. Broken record time - engagement, relationship, community. If it means exposing myself a bit more, then I'm cool about that. Let's talk.

Social Media and Tragedy: Hysteria, Hype or Helpful?

I want to begin this post by offering my heartfelt sympathy and thoughts to those affected by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.  There are no words, there is no fix-it phrase or mantra.

I try to engage in social media.  I have accounts across the spectrum; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a heckuva lot more.  When an earthquake hit Sichuan Province in China, the Twitterverse erupted in a steady stream of information sharing and updates from those in the affected areas.  Last night, I rather accidentally read the first of many updates from Jason Calacanis about news of a terrorist attack in Mumbai.  Other news began to trickle in, and I flicked between the Beeb, CNN and Al Jazeera at home to get updates.  At one point, CNN told its viewers to check Twitter out for latest news and updates.

Okay, so has Twitter (and the wider social media universe) been helpful?  While some of the news coming out of Mumbai has been helpful - Aditya Sengupta being particularly helpful by updating maps and the list of injured and deceased as well as an aggregated feed of information from the aptly named account MumbaiAttacks - a lot of it seems to be hysterical chatter and bandwagon jumping.  How much of it is genuinely useful to you?  I can't say that much of it is to me.

For breaking news, Twitter is great.  It's the first place I heard about the Mumbai attacks, the Sichuan earthquake.  URL-shortening links from CNN or any other media outlet and tweeting it seems to be clogging the feeds of a lot of people today. The platform is designed for rapid-fire response, but I would venture a theory: the people who are then made aware of the situation are going to get their news elsewhere.  They're going to read the viewpoint that's important and relevant to them (i.e. Canadians wanting updates on the status of fellow Canadians might go to the Toronto Star, people wanting updates on the Chabad House attacked by the terrorists might go to VosIzNeias, and British people might go to the BBC).  The information on those sites, as much as we love to use hashtags, is far more organized and readable than a random mashup of TinyURLs and advice to stop Tweeting updates because the terrorists might be watching.

The Telegraph breathlessly announced that last night, the social media came of age.  Wait a second.  Did someone not say this about the earthquake in Sichuan, the cyclone in Myanmar or the arrest of an American in Cairo?  It's a great medium and feel free to call me old school here, but let's take a breath.  While print newspapers might be taking a last, raspy gasp of air, traditional media outlets are alive and kicking.  They integrate social media, alongside real, trained journalists (okay, maybe Faux News doesn't count here).  I'll eat my shoe (and it's a big one) if social media overtakes television or the internet as the place where people get their updates - it's simply far too disorganised to become a viable option for the masses.

Maybe it's time we stop thinking we're as important as we want to be or perceive we are in the social media sphere and give a thought to the people who are caught up in this tragedy of unimaginable proportions.  I'll venture a tweet here - please be with them, support them and help them as they deal with this attack.  It's happened, and I sure as goodness can't do anything about it from where I'm sitting.  Pray, meditate, contemplate, reflect.  Peace be with them.

Ninja Fail Cat?

Tired of seeing the Fail Whale? How about some droll Fail Clouds, a Terrance and Phillip Fail Bomb (a good thing, in my opinion), a forlorn-looking Fail Bird or even an Edward Scissorhands Ninja Fail Cat?

I like it; it suggests that many different types of engineers are working on getting Twitter back to normal, each playing an integral role in restoring my service.

Ah, well - it was an attempt to be a bit more lighthearted. Me = Ninja Fail Cat!

Fail Whale: The Ongoing Twitter Saga

Now that there's a fan club and merchandise available to purchase, the Fail Whale has become a bit of a pop culture icon for regular Twitter users.

At least now, they're trying to give themselves time limits on how long the service is going to be out for:

The only problem with setting time limits on service outage/maintenance upgrades is unfulfilled expectations. As it stands now, it's been much more than 10 minutes, which must frustrate the hilarious Lisa Nova to no end:

Since Twitter has reportedly raised $15 million in VC funding, what are they spending it on? Monetization theories? More $10 stock photo purchases? Twitter's ongoing problems only serve to push users to Twitter-esque clones, which are okay, but not as simple, easy and connected as Twitter. It's a shame, because it's something that needs to be taken care of before more people jump the whale.