Twitter has been hit by a series of security issues lately. The latest was a hack of 33 Twitter accounts that saw fake message posted on the Twitter accounts of popular Twitter users including Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez (pictured on the right) and Facebook. You can see some of the hacked account images here on Flickr.
In short Twitter style here are three of the security issues Twitter is facing.
People are giving out their passwords to use third-party tools.
Phising attacks are trying to get people to click on links that take them to websites that try and steal their Twitter passwords.
Twitter was hacked and 33 major Twitter accounts were made to post fake tweets.
Twitter says they do plan to add OAuth which will help with people that want to register for third-party Twitter apps and tools. This won't stop phising attempts and it wouldn't have stopped the hack.
They have discussed the ongoing Twitter phising attempts. Phising may be a real big problem for microblogging sites going forward as there is always a certain level of trust involved when people are sharing links.
The issue where Twitter itself was hacked and fake tweets were posted to Twitter accounts is a more serious issue and it involved a hack of the tools used by the Twitter support team. Since the hack included President-elect Barack Obamas Twitter (although his wasn't the sole account attacked) it does raise the possibility that Twitter could ask the FBI to help them pursue the hackers.
Facebook was a traffic monster over the holidays. The BBC reports that Hitwise says Facebook accounted for one in every 22 online visits on Christmas Day. They were the second most popular website after Google on Christmas Day.
Robin Goad from Hitwise said a lot of that extra traffic was down to people using social networking sites get in touch with friends and family over the holidays instead of more traditional phone calls or cards.
He said: "Christmas is always a busy time for social networking sites, but the increase this year was higher than expected.
"After the boom of these sites in the last couple of years growth is now slowing down.
"But these figures prove they're becoming central to people for keeping in touch with loved ones."
Perhaps, Facebook is becoming somewhat of an alternative to electronic greeting cards. They probably won't be able to sustain the traffic intensity as the holidays fade away.
Gawker's Consumerist blog has been sold to nonprofit Consumers Union. Gawker Media's Hollywood gossip blog Defamer is also up for sale. The Gawker blog network has been steadily shrinking since last year. There's no official word on how much Consumerist was sold for but Peter Kafka at Media Memo says he's been told mid-six figures.
Denton wouldn't comment on the sale of Consumerist, an advocacy site with attitude that he put on the block last month. And he would only confirm that Defamer, his attempt to break into Hollywood coverage, is for sale.
But I'm told that Consumerist may have fetched something in the "mid-six figure range," and that a logical buyer for Defamer would be BuzzNet, the pop culture blog network that picked up Denton's Idolator music site earlier this year.
Consumerist never seemed like the kind of blog that could attract lots of advertising so it seems appropriate that it was sold to the company behind the subscription Consumer Reports publication. Some commenting on a Consumerist post about the sale sound concerned the Consumerist blog itself could go subscription but Consumer Reports has a number of blogs on its website (see here) that are available free to the public so Consumerist is probably safe from subscriber fees for now.
As Paris Lemon points out there's a bitchmeme on Techmeme right now started here by Loic Le Meur about using Twitter authority as a way to reduce the number of results in a Twitter search. Since it has been suggested it will likely soon be created by someone using the Twitter API if it hasn't already been created. Technorati uses authority on its search to show only posts from blogs that have a certain number of inbound links.
Critics of a Twitter authority search say including only Twitterers that have large numbers of followers is unfair and that it will cause people to try and obtain more followers by following more people. It would also tend to favor people who have been on Twitter longer and tend to have more followers. There are a few of other ideas being suggested as alternatives - some can be found in the comments on TechCrunch's post. They are:
Provide a way to limit search results to only tweets that have been responsed to or re-tweeted.
Allow people to search only tweets from people that they follow.
Twitter's search tool already has a few ways (see also search operators) to reduce the number of tweets in a search. You can search a specific person's tweets and you can return only tweets that contain a link. You can also limit searches to tweets by people near a specific place. You can limit the results to tweets only from certain dates. It's clear these tools aren't enough and the Twitter search engine needs more advanced filtering. The more ways available for users to search tweets the better.
It's that time of year when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) starts tracking Santa Claus and his reindeer as they get close to their big night delivering presents all over the Globe. Santa Claus actually uses more advanced technology than NORAD so NORAD probably needs the extra time to make sure they don't lose sight of Santa on Christmas Eve. The NORAD Santa tracker website has already begun a Christmas Eve countdown and has some features up for kids.
NORAD also has a Twitter profile up. It's being run by an energetic Twittering Elf named Bitz. The name of NORAD's Santa Twitter is @noradsanta.
VentureBeat reports that two-month-old StockTwits has raised a round of funding. The company makes it easy to track discussion of individual stocks on Twitter.
Basically, StockTwits is a sort of social hub for people who want the most up-to-date information on the stock market. You sign up for the site, and any tweet (a Twitter message) that you send out will show up on the site's homepage, provided the tweet has a dollar sign next to a stock symbol. So if you were to tweet "I think you fools are undervaluing $AAPL," that message will show up on the homepage and all the other StockTwit users will see it. They can respond and start following you on Twitter - if you’re good, they might tell their Twitter followers to follow you as well. This way, the site serves a clearinghouse for sharing news articles, investment strategies and other helpful information.
StockTwits also provides information for individual stocks including the latest quote and the most recent tweets. For example, here is StockTwits' page for Google. PaidContent writes that the funding round was $800,000.
There has already been at least one successful business venture that relied on Twitter's API. That is Summize which was sold to Twitter and became Twitter search. Summize was able to sell itself to Twitter but future Twitter-based services will likely have to find success in other ways.
Here's a video that provides an introduction to StockTwits.
Mediaweek reports that Conde Nast is shutting a network of uknown blogs that included Elastic Waist, Product Fiend and Daily Bedpost. A lack of promotion is likely the reason few had heard of these blogs.
The little-known blogs were created by Susan Kaplow, whose title is director of syndication and development and who works under vp of editorial operations Rick Levine and editorial director Tom Wallace.
Launched in the fall of 2007, the network's three bare-bones sites are fueled by a tiny staff and network of freelancers. The sites have an independent, informal look and feel; Product Fiend is a skincare site offering news and tips under headings like Lip Schtick and Zit Zapper. Elastic Waist is devoted to weight-related obsessions, and the third, Daily Bedpost, is a sex blog. They were originally billed as being separate from the company's magazines, but all three display prominently links to Conde Nast's Glamour, Allure and Self. A copyright line identifies the blogs as being part of Conde Nast.
"This blog network was a valued experiment," Kaplow wrote in an email supplied by a company spokesperson. "It was growing and doing well at syndication but we can no longer continue to support it in this environment."
This was definitely a blog network that few had heard of. A lot of the Conde Nast publications now have blogs but this little network was unrelated to those blogs. Conde Nast has also shuttered a social network for girls at Flip.com. The domain now forwards over to teenvogue.com. There will be lots of little blog networks and social networks that were run as experiments closing as media companies can't bear the costs during this recession.
A puppy cam that shows Shiba Inu puppies sleeping - and sometimes playing - has generated over 18 million views reports NBC. Some places are calling it the most watched video of all time but that's incorrect. There are plenty of music videos on YouTube that already have three to five times the views of the Shiba Inu puppy cam. Still 18 million is significant and all it took was a live video feed of six baby Shiba Inu puppies. Maybe it is that people are looking for something to cheer them at a time when the economy is not doing well. Or they are simply bored at work. The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam can be found here on Ustream.tv. There are lot of other puppy cams on the Internet and there are sure to be more now because of the success of the Shiba Inu cam.
The New York Times has an article about how a few YouTubers using YouTube's partner program are generating six-figure incomes. It isn't surprising considering the huge number of views some of the top YouTubers are generating. Michael Buckley - who covers celebrities on his What the Buck Show - has garnered over 100 million views. Making videos has become a full-time job for him.
For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.
Mr. Buckley quit his day job in September after his online profits had greatly surpassed his salary as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show "is silly," he said, but it has helped him escape his credit-card debt.
Mr. Buckley, 33, was the part-time host of a weekly show on a Connecticut public access channel in the summer of 2006 when his cousin started posting snippets of the show on YouTube. The comical rants about celebrities attracted online viewers, and before long Mr. Buckley was tailoring his segments, called "What the Buck?" for the Web. Mr. Buckley knew that the show was "only going to go so far on public access."
"But on YouTube," he said, "I've had 100 million views. It's crazy."
Michael Buckley isn't alone in covering celebrities on YouTube. He has competition from Maria Sansone at Poptub and many others. That said Buck's energetic style may be hard to beat. Other YouTubers mentioned in the Times story include Cory Williams at smpfilmes - he made the Mean Kitty song - and LisaNova, who parodies Sarah Palin and makes other humorous videos. There is money to be made in videos but the path to success is not going to be easy and those planning to launch new YouTube channels should expect plenty of competition.
An apparently fake Twitter account claiming to be Kanye West came to the attention of Kanye West during Stephen Colbert's plot to knock Kanye West from the #1 slot on iTunes. Kanye West noticed a tweet related to Operate Humble Kanye on the @kanyewest Twitter account and said that's not me on his blog. Rolling Stone reports the @kanyewest Twitter has been removed.
The Kanye West Twitter page has since been taken down. With past Twitters like "and I just keep doing my thing…putting out G.O.O.D. music and cultivating my craft" and thanking America for electing Barack Obama, the page had all the makings of another stump for which West could shout from, except for one major detail: It wasn't updated nearly enough for it to actually belong to West, who posts upwards of ten times a day on his blog.
The fake Kanye is gone but why isn't the real Kanye twittering. Some of his posts are tweet-sized anyway. One would think he could at a minimum at least hook his blog feed up to Twitter.
Tens of days ago, The New York Times decided to expand its coverage of personal technology. Gadgetwise is one of the first products of that decision. A new personal-tech blog, Gadgetwise is currently organized around four product categories (digital photography, home entertainment, mobile technology and personal computing), each with a dedicated contributor.
Gadgetwise's mission is to help make people smarter about, well, gadgets–both the gadgets they're thinking about buying and the gadgets they already have. Every day, the blog will feature product news, analysis of tech-industry issues that affect consumers, and a growing database of tips, tricks and hacks that help people get the most out of their hardware and software.
We'll be adding more features to Gadgetwise in the coming weeks, but we wanted to get the conversation started sooner rather than later. Poke around, take a read and let us know what you think.
And thanks for coming to check us out.
The Blog Herald says the new blog has five writers which is a significant number to put towards a single blog. It may have five writers but it is only averaging 26.8 posts per week as of this writing (according to Google Reader). That's far below Engadget and Gizmodo which each have over 200 posts per week. Also noteworthy is that the Times is going to the trouble to brand a blog named Gadgetwise without owning the gadgetwise.com domain.
YouTube recently announced some changes that includes stricter standards for mature content and methods for preventing users from gaming YouTube with false descriptions or thumbnails. The point Youtubers seem most upset with is the thumbnails.
Improved thumbnails - To make sure your thumbnail represents your video, your choices will now be selected algorithmically. You'll still have three thumbnails to choose from, but they will no longer be auto-generated from the 25/50/75 points in the video index.
Youtuber Philip DeFrance posted this in the comments. He sounds unhappy with the quality of the randomly assigned shots.
Shhhhh VP be quiet. Let YouTube keep shooting themselves in the foot. It makes them feel like they are improving the website. Why let users make sure there is a steady but related center shot, when they can provide 3 perfectly good blurry possible center shots randomly?!!
Venetian Princess was also unhappy with the changes. She posted this comment.
I understand that you are trying to avoid situations where people abuse the system and game the thumbnails, however this new process is an extreme misfortune to partners. Thumbnails help us brand our content, just like a cover to a cd or DVD. I have spoken to many other partners and all of us are very disappointed with this announcement. Many of us do vlogs or music videos, and we are more than likely going to end up with an unattractive thumbnail mid-sentence with the subject's mouth wide open, a goofy face, or motion blur that no one will want to click on. Even with three options, that is simply not enough. Video thumbnails play a key-role in whether people choose to watch our videos or not. We as partners should have the right to ensure that our thumbnail image is interesting and choose what we want to creatively represent our content, as long as it goes with the video. Many other video sharing platforms such as Revver and Vimeo offer at least 15 thumbnail options. Ifilm, Spike.com, and Vimeo even offer the ability to upload our own choice
of thumbnail. Perhaps you might want to think about offering this as a feature exclusively to partners, so that we can still optimize branding. Even a slider that would allow us to pick any frame from the entire video would be very beneficial. I ask you to please consider these options. The new system is a
huge disappointment as far as branding goes. I'm really hoping you will hear our side on this. Thanks
Youtubers may be unhappy but YouTube users may be pleased that an image that has nothing to do with the video can no longer be used to represent the video. YouTube probably should find a happy medium here and find a way for YouTubers - who don't abuse the privilege - to select their own thumbnail if it is consistent with the video clip itself.
Pownce has been acquired by Six Apart and will be shut down on December 15th. Here is the email that went to Pownce members.
We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,
2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not
be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce
Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew
The Pownce page on sixapart.com talks about the Pownce team now working for Six Apart and tries to interest Pownce users in Six Apart's Vox blogging service.
Pownce was a microblogging and file-sharing service started by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver and Daniel Burka that at one time was thought to have a shot at being popular before Twitter pulled away from the pack with the bulk of the microblogging traffic. Plenty of other Twitter rivals and alternatives still exist including identi.ca, Plurk, Jaiku, Kwippy and Rejaw.
CBS has launched a new blog called the Political Hotsheet. The first post talks about transitioning to the new blogs from two other blogs CBS used to cover the election. Now they sound focused on covering the new Obama administration.
For the past fifteen months, CBS News and CBSNews.com have been delivering all the campaign and political news, developments, and analysis on our Horserace and From The Road blogs.
The Horserace is over, and the time for governing is about to begin for a new president and a new congress. Today we're launching the Political Hotsheet, a new blog which will combine the best Washington reporting, analysis and observations from the correspondents and producers at CBS News and CBSNews.com, and partners like the Washington Post and Politico. We'll also point you to the must-read stories across the Web. The Hotsheet will bring it all together in one place.
From the transition to the incoming president's first 100 Days in office and beyond, we'll keep you up on the very latest happenings in what’s about to become one of the busiest and most closely-watched towns in the world. Hotsheet will chronicle the news from the White House, Congress and all the institutions in Washington during these historic and uncharted days.
There will still be plenty of interest in politics even though the election is over. However, it won't be quite the traffic monster it was in October and November of this year. CBS News is going from two political blogs to just the one. You should be able to watch traffic to political blogs like Huffingtonpost.com, politico.com and hotair.com fall steadily from their Fall election peaks on charts like this one.
This is ad was running on Salon today and linked to the Salon Media Twitter. Salon's had the twitter account since late October. In the ad Salon asks "Do You Tweet?" They also say "We do. All day long."
Raw Story is another example of a news outlet pushing its Twitter. They currently have a a button on rawstory.com promoting their Twitter account which is @rawstory.
It's an indication of how important Twitter has become to news organizations. More and more people are receiving news updates on Twitter so major media outlets -- and even some blogs that might be a little late to the party - are now actively promoting their twitters to try and increase subscribers.
You can find more twittering news services here on the Twitter Fan Wiki.
Twitter has been hit by a series of security issues lately. The latest was a hack of 33 Twitter accounts that saw fake message posted on the Twitter accounts of popular Twitter users including Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez (pictured on the right) and Facebook. You can see some of the hacked account images 
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