February 2010 Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

Will Twitter launch an advertising service soon?…

February 25, 2010 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

Reports that Twitter would launch an official advertising platform within the next month or so have spread after comments made by Anamitra Banerji, the head of product management and monetization at Twitter, at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, which was reported in a story on Media Post.

However, in a cryptic clarification with Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld, Banerji said:

“Speculation = timing, imminence, details. Truth = thinking, planning, eventuality.”

The reason for the confusion appears to be the question put to Banerji, asking whether the company would “likely in the next month or so offer Twitter owned and operated ads”, to which Banerji replied “That’s right”. Banerji has noted that he said explicitly that the timing statement was completely inaccurate, and a post by conference moderator Seth Goldstein has included an apology to Twitter for anything inferred by his reference to a statement from back in November by Twitter COO Dick Costolo about advertising being in the works.

GigaOm has referred to a media source which suggested that the platform may launch at South by Southwest which beings on March 12, and that Twitter has been working with several launch partners from both traditional and new media, but plans are still tentative.

The fact that Twitter has been working on an advertising service for months isn’t a secret, but the reason interest is so high is that no-one is sure what form it will take, and most importantly, what affect it might have on user numbers if advertising annoys them. Twitter is probably more vulnerable than most to a backlash by users as those most productive members at the top of the power curve are still proportionally high social media and digital types amongst the celebs with huge follower numbers.

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: ad platform, anamitra banerji, official advertising, twitter advertising, twitter marketing

Google Buzz proves problems with single online identities

February 24, 2010 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

I’m assuming most people have been caught up in the huge amount of discussion around Google Buzz, the new social sharing and conversation tool from Google which surprised a lot of people by suddenly appearing as a full release within Gmail, and again by having some serious privacy problems at launch, which Google has had to work hard and fast to rectify.

But I think the launch of Google Buzz has simply highlighted the inherent problems with the move towards a single profile and identity for each internet user, whether that ends up being controlled by Google, Facebook, or an alternative service. Particularly as Google tested the system internally, where everyone had a Gmail account and several of the public problems just never arose.

1. Security: Almost everyone has encountered a scam or phishing attempt by email or a social network. There’s no way to eradicate these entirely, and a single identity which is then linked out to every other internet location would be a valuable prize for phishers. Seperate logins encourage you to use seperate passwords, so if one acocunt is compromised you’ll be able to alert people and still get on with most things – For example, my online email is backed up elsewhere, and contacts are replicated between Gmail and LinkedIn, so I could get the word out if problems occurred. Stalking also becomes a lot easier if everything is linked to one central location.

2. Embarrassing Content: This doesn’t have to just mean naughty pictures, although if you’re of legal age then I have no problem with you using the internet how you like. But it can also mean drunken photos and comments, or perhaps surprise presents or events being organised online which end up being discovered. The rule of thumb is to never publish anything online that you’d mind anyone seeing, even if it’s behind the thin veneer of a privacy setting, but we’d all still like to have some illusion of control over whether our boss discovers the pictures of our last night out, and we certainly wouldn’t want to ‘cross the streams’ and inadvertently shove it in front of him or her.

3. Different tools for different things, and added hassle: I’m a slight edge case here as I use several work accounts in addition to my own on a lot of networks, but even within my house, there is a shared computer which has at least two profiles used on the same site. Switching accounts suddenly becomes a real hassle – for instance, Youtube now automatically logs me in with my Google Profile, forcing me to log back out and then in again as Absolute Radio or OGS Labs.

4. Anonymity can be a good thing: Obviously this crosses over with the security and embarrassment issues, but not every anonymous person is a troll or 4Chan prankster. Take Wikileaks as an example of the positives that can come from anonymity.

5. Dependancy: Most people are combining email and social networks in varying amounts now, but if your email and social network ids are combined and potentially based in the cloud, any loss of access will leave you completely stuck. Or if your profile is removed for any reason, whether it’s a mistake or justified removal by whichever company controls all of your details…

But maybe there is a solution.

The people discussing Vendor Relationship Management hold the secret. Let me own some software – ideally Open Source, which is stored locally on my own devices, and then allows for the initial interaction with networks and service providers. And potentially have a mirror of certain elements of that software which is securely stored online somewhere that is also owned entirely by me. And that online element can then be differentiated into each of my personal and work profiles allowing me to quickly and easily switch between them, and not cross the identity streams. Companies would be able to access the particular information I wish to share with them, and use of that system would be a key part of digital education, which would implicitly educate people about privacy and sharing issues.

The only problem with this is who would store that info online – would you trust the Government of your country any more than Google, Facebook or Amazon?

Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: google buzz, logins, online identities, privacy, profiles, security, single sign in, vendor relationship management, vrm

The growth of Twitter – now 50 million messages per day

February 23, 2010 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

If you want evidence of the sheer amount of content and data being created by Twitter, look no further than the evidence provided by Twitter analytics team member Kevin Weil on the official Twitter blog.

In 2007, Twitter users were tweeting 5,000 times per day.

In 2008, Twitter users were tweeting 300,000 times per day.

In 2009 Twitter users were tweeting 2.5 million per day, and it grew 1400% to 35 million per day.

And in 2010? Twitter users are tweeting 50 million times per day, which works out at 600 tweets per second.

Kevin goes on to mention Tweet deliveries as a much higher metric, and also says that the team will make time to share more info on ways to measure and understand the information network.

50 million messages is an interesting figure considering the measurements of web-based Twitter usage are pinned at around 55 million, and several studies indicate there’s a high churn rate of new users and a high proportion of dormant accounts – it indicates those that ‘get’ Twitter tend to share a pretty high amount of information. Which isn’t unusual, considering the same curve correlates with the amount of bloggers regularly updating, for example.

It also reinforces why tweets are becoming integrated into search tools from Google, Bing and many more.

Filed Under: statistics, twitter Tagged With: content, information, metrics, tweets, tweets per day

Another round of spam phishing hits Twitter

February 22, 2010 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

Twitter has become one of the prime targets for phishing and spam attacks, due to both it’s huge growth in user numbers, but also the each with which messages can spread (partly due to the inherent weakness in using short urls).

The latest example is the BZPharma ‘LOL this is funny’ attack, as detailed by security firm Sophos. Messages include ‘Lol. this is me??’, ‘lol , this is funny’ and ‘Lol. this you??’, and include a link which looks like ‘http://example.com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login’ –

with the example.com element varying between a number of addresses.

There’s a handy Youtube video with details of the problem. Links are appearing in both private Direct Messages, and in public feeds – plus some third party services allow DMs to be made public, sharing the phishing attack more widely.

Click on the dodgy link and you’ll go to a fake Twitter login page, which replicates the Fail Whale when you attempt to login, and then redirects you back to the real Twitter page to make you believe your account hasn’t been hit. The same technique is also being used to phish Bebo accounts.

And after the first wave of attacks compromised accounts, there’s now a wave of spam selling herbal viagra, with messages including “Get bigger and have sex longer. go here”

So besides double-checking you’re on the real Twitter site before logging in, keep an eye on your sent messages for any clue your account has been compromised, and also watch out for messages being sent by even trusted friends.

You can also take a look at the full Sophos update on the attack.