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Twitter and Facebook, Hacked!

On February 1, Twitter let its users know in a blog post that the social network had been hacked and around 250,000 user accounts had had their information compromised. The hackers were reportedly able to access user names, passwords, and e-mail addresses, and those who were affected by this incident have been e-mailed by Twitter and instructed to reset their passwords to prevent any further tampering with their Twitter accounts. There had been evidence that there may had been a breach up to a week prior, but the company did not know the extent of the security snafu until the day it posted the announcement that the site had been hacked.

Considering Twitter boasts more than 200 million users, a compromise of 250,000 accounts is relatively a small percentage, but the company made sure to remind users of ways to help ensure that one’s accounts wouldn’t be compromised again in the future, such as using strong passwords, refraining from using the same password for multiple accounts, and disabling Java. The Twitter hack came only a few weeks after the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were reportedly compromised by Chinese hackers, though Twitter did not suggest that their cyberassault was perpetrated by the same people.

Shocking social network users even further was the announcement on February 15 that stated that Facebook had been the victim of a ‘sophisticated attack’, which apparently had taken place in January when some Facebook employees visited a website that installed harmful malware on their computers. Again, the perpetrators are unknown and are not suggested to necessarily be related to the Chinese hackers that compromised the news websites or the hackers who had gotten through to Twitter. Also, unlike the Twitter hack, Facebook has reported that no user information such as e-mails or passwords was released in its attack.

With this many attacks on major websites and social networks, it’s hard not to wonder how truly secure one’s information is. Many websites have home addresses, phone numbers, and credit card information logged into databases, and clearly even the largest social networks are not immune to the effects of sophisticated hacking. While there haven’t yet been any major incidents where massive amounts of information gathered from hacked websites and social networks were stolen and abused yet, it sure seems to be that things are pointing in that direction.

Considering how much trust is given to these websites and how much potentially damaging information these sites and social networks contain, the fear of being hacked in the future might be something worth worrying about. Facebook and Twitter, however, have made statements that they are working rigorously to prevent further compromises, Facebook stating that they are working with law enforcement officials and other people in the industry to help prevent future attacks.

Tracking This Year’s Flu Season with Social Media

This year’s flu season in the United States – which we are currently in the middle of – is, frankly, a little bit more horrible than usual. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has confirmed that we have exceeded epidemic levels of influenza in the country, particularly regarding deaths, which one expert stated might eventually reach a death toll of up to 36,000 people. Between December 3, 2012 and January 12, 2013, there were 5,643 deaths from the flu and from pneumonia, according to the CDC.

This is certainly the worst flu season the country has seen since the swine flu outbreak of 2009. Initially, the CDC reported that flu activity was low early on in what normally would be considered flu season. This announcement, unfortunately, may have led to many people skipping out on their seasonal flu vaccinations; this in turn may have led to the disastrous flu season that has commenced since then.

In the world we live in today, where many of us are consumed by electronics, social networking, and the Internet as a whole, it is no surprise that people are finding ways to use the Internet and social networking to track and document this devastating flu season. One such instance is Google Flu Trends, a website launched by Google that allows visitors to view a map of the country (as well as other countries) and even check out how much flu activity there is on a state-by-state basis. These numbers are generated in real-time through Google searches related to the flu, based on the principle that there are more flu-related searches during flu season, alongside figures presented from the CDC.

In a similar vein, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to track flu activity through those that are complaining about flu symptoms on Twitter; using special filters, it attempts to find posts with people discussing that they have the flu, rather than reactionary posts about the flu. Though these methods presented through Twitter and Google may not yet have the accuracy of the CDC reports, they do provide immediacy. The CDC releases weekly information regarding the flu, but the information is generally about two weeks old by the time they post their reports online.

Google Flu Trends and the Twitter filter are ways that social networking and the Internet can fill the gaps created by the long time that it typically takes for the CDC to post their statistics. There have been other projects recently that do similar things, such as ‘Sick Weather,’ a project that pulls from Facebook and Twitter to map certain contagious diseases. While there are obvious instances where certain important demographics are underrepresented, if not excluded (children and the elderly, in particular), these projects are all an interesting gateway to the future and how contagious diseases might be prevented or controlled using social networking technology in the future.

Vine: Twitter’s Entry into Video Social Networking

An odd trend in recent years with social networks is to base new social networking ideas off of existing ones. For instance, when MySpace relaunched as Myspace, it was immediately compared to other social networks, referred to as LinkedIn for musicians with a layout resembling Pinterest. With the large amount of major social networks that are prevalent in this day and age, it’s tough not compare new services to the old ones, especially considering how often multiple social networks do the same thing (see Facebook and Google Plus or Facebook Poke and Snapchat, as have been discussed in previous blog posts).

The newest popular venture into social networking is Vine, which of course is already being referred to as ‘the Instagram of video’. The new social network was launched by Twitter last Thursday and it allows its users to post six-second video clips without sound that operate similarly to animated GIFs. The social network has simple connectivity to smartphones and the Vine mobile app operates quite easily; all one has to do is touch the screen to record and let go to stop.

This isn’t the first time that something has been pitched as ‘the Instagram of video,’ as networks such as Viddy, Color, Socialcam, and Cinegram – which was seeing a recent surge in popularity until Vine was launched – have tried to do the same thing. Yet tech critics are skeptical that Vine is going to become the same kind of social phenomenon that Instagram has become. For one, part of the appeal of Instagram is its ability to shift pictures into looking more interesting, as if a photo taken with a cameraphone was taken by someone with an actual camera and photography skills. Vine simply records video, removes the sound, and makes it easy to share.

The fact that Vine has Twitter behind it is going to be positive for it in the long run, but that’s only if Vine actually manages to catch on in the first place. One common problem with these video social networks – and a similar one that Snapchat and other networks have faced recently – is the posting of lewd and pornographic content. Because of the enormous amount of user-generated pornographic content that has already been posted on Vine, the mobile app was recently removed from the ‘Editor’s Choice’ section in the iPhone App Store.

Vine’s removal from the metaphorical front page of the iPhone does not bode well for it and neither does the fact that many offensive comments are already being posted in response to video posts on the service. Vine is already doing what it can to reduce pornographic content labeled with obvious hashtags, but posts about violence, urination, and other potentially offensive material are often harder to track down, and if they aren’t technically violating the terms of use, it’s hard to say what the moderators of Vine can even do about it. The ‘Instagram of video’? Maybe not so much.

Top 5 Tools for Successful Twitter Marketing

If you’re having trouble deciding which is more important – the quantity of your Twitter following or the depth of your relationships with your followers – rest assured that both are of equal value.

Now that your mind is uncluttered and free of question, it’s best to concentrate on how you can enhance both aspects of your Twitter account to ensure the most oomph for your efforts.

Below you’ll find five indispensible resources to establish successful Twitter marketing, thanks to SocialMediaExaminer.com, which zoom in on the following key areas:

• Generating new followers
• Managing your newly established following surplus
• Transforming shallow relationships into deeper, more connected ones

 1. Blast Follow
A must-have Twitter application, Blast Follow is a remarkable resource for e-commerce entrepreneurs who could use a helping hand in accomplishing the necessary grunt work to locate others in their industry. With just a single click, users can generate a seemingly endless list of followers.

So, how can such a near impossible task become so simplified? Quite easily in fact. The concept is based on a societal norm – the law of reciprocity – which states that it’s in the nature of humans to desire reciprocation (whether a friend or stranger) of actions.

This concept takes on a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ appeal and, in this case, Twitter users seem to adhere to a loyalty to that says ‘you follow me; it’s only fair that I follow you.’

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Share Your Content with the Push of a ‘Tweet Button’

One of the most remarkable aspects of social networking sites—and the internet in general—is the ever-increasing amount of interconnectivity between various sites and services. From RSS feeds that bring personalized news information straight to the never-ending web of social media outlets, there is an incessant drive to keep people connected. No site is as committed to this trend of continuous updates than Twitter, and they have recently made this easier than ever for their users with an official “tweet button.”

Twitter developed the button as a way for internet users to count how many times an article has been retweeted and to give readers an easy means of propagating information. Up until the release of the button, which Mashable.com originally reported on last week, TweetMeme had been the sharing service of choice for Twitter users, with about 750 million retweets per day. The company will now be teaming up with Twitter to improve the functionality of the button and troubleshoot some of the inevitable problems that will arise following its debut.

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Enhance Your ‘Tweets’ with Twitter Audio Messaging

Twitter emerged as a new-age social network (a peculiar concept in itself as social media is still considered a modern technology) in 2006 with a bold and enlightening concept of mini-blogging – 140 characters or less, to be exact.

Today, Twitter’s booming popularity has inspired the development of new avenues to enhance social interaction among users, including the sharing of music files. However, Twitter’s most recent advancement allows tweeters to share audio files.

So, whether your fancy is to make the punch line of a joke more vibrant, an apology more sincere or even sing happy birthday to a friend, Twitter is now the place to be seen and heard!

Check out these five different outlets, thanks to Mashable.com, to capture audio messaging on your next Twitter post.

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Six Social Media Mistakes to Avoid and How to Correct Miscalculation

While many self-starting individuals and businesses have excelled using social media to promote their enterprise, others have witnessed little or no success with interactive media and are left puzzled as to why.

What most people don’t realize is that their lack of success with social media might be attributed to their own actions. Below you’ll find six common social media mistakes, courtesy of SocialMediaExaminer.com, along with simple solutions to get back on the road to success.

Mistake: Making the Wrong Connections
Many new business owners are misguided by their elementary entrepreneurial intuition, which tells them that the larger the spectrum of consumers the better the chance of sales. While reaching out to the masses is important, the key to establishing connections with potential customers is to focus on your target consumer – i.e. the demographic that your product/service was intended for.

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Social Media Offers Politicians a New Means to Reach Constituencies

Politicians have been devising ways to communicate with the public and reach out to their constituencies since the inception of the democratic system. And while each form of new media has given legislators more opportunities to communicate their manifold messages, the communiqué has often been filtered through reporters and the discourse has been decidedly one-sided. Social media, unlike any previous innovation, has fundamentally changed the way voters glean information about public officials. Not only do candidates now have unbridled access to the electorate, but social media also offers voters a way to voice their opinions in an open forum.

Traditionally, a candidate needed to take out ad space in order to deliver a message that wasn’t filtered through a journalist, and aside from an op-ed piece, there was little opportunity for conversation or to gauge the public response. With social media, however, there is no intermediary or barriers of communication. Politicians now have the capacity to justify why they voted for a piece of legislation, elected a certain cabinet member or any other decision in their own words—and voters have the chance to respond. (more…)

iePlexus Social Media News Brief: April 30,2010

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iePlexus Social Media News Brief: April 28, 2010

iePlexus has the latest headlines in the social media world in today’s Social Media News Brief… (more…)