Twitter vs Facebook. One of my last post was trying to explain the similitude and the differences between the two.
On thursday august 6th, the two famous Social Networks were attacked, which left Twitter down for a few hours and it slowed down Facebook.
The aggression was described by Biz Stone (Twitter’s cofounder) as “massively coordinated”. (http://blog.twitter.com).
DDos Attack:
This attack type is called DDoS (Distributed Denial of Services). It saturates the connection of a site. The hackers uses many computers to fake multiple connections to a site and increase the number of connection demands to saturate its access.
This kind of attack can be perform by one hacker or hundreds of them if they are in cahoots.
Twitter is down.
Twitter is Down:
In 2007, when I first started using Twitter, it was possible to experience connection problems due to the rapidly increase of user volume. Twitter was down almost every night for a short period during peak time.
Users got used to seeing the “big whale”. When it showed up it told us that Twitter was overloaded. We knew we were using/testing a new way of communicating and we accepted the problems that came with it.
Today, twitter is still a startup. The company consists of only 40 employees, which is not a lot in comparison to the millions of users, especially when an attack such as this arrises.
There are currently 17 million users. Twitter is projecting 25 million users by the end of 2009 and 350 million users in 2011.Facebook say that they have 250 million users, making Twitter numbers realistic.
Making Internet Users Aware:
Government has to find a way to protect the Internet from attack.
Internet and computer-users need to be better educated, and be aware of spam, viruses. The majority of users do not know what a spam email is, and does not verify what they intentionally or unintentionally download onto their computer.
It is easy and very simple to start educating people today to better protect their computers from invasion. Start in School, every single kid should be trained to know what to do with spam and fake email invitations that unsuspectingly download viruses.
Companies like Microsoft, with Windows, the most used operating system, should be responsible and condemned for all the door they leave open in their OS to viruses.
If today hackers can use a network of computer without the authorization of its owner to perform an attack, the responsibility should be put on the OS and not on the user.
Our economic system in the future is going to depend on the success of of companies which are today startups. If we all protect companies like Twitter or Facebook (and why not Skribit and socialguides.com), we may build a better economic future for our nations.
Thoughts:
Despite what was said after the attack, I am not sure that Facebook was confronting the same problem or attacked the same way as Twitter. Not being able to get information and organize their day Twitter users felt “lost” the morning of the attack.
I think the slow down of facebook was due to the number of twitter users who found refuge on facebook trying to re-connect with their friends/followers.
The past few months, some of my facebook friends started following me on Twitter.
When are my Twitter followers going to start being my facebook friends?
Are you friend with me or a follower? Tell me who you are.
