On August 6, 2009, the popular social networking website, Twitter was down for two hours. For those of you who are not familiar with the social networking website, Twitter is “a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices” (twitter.com/about, 2009). Twitter allows users to send a maximum of 140-character message called tweets to their followers who subscribe to receive updates from other users.
Last Thursday, August 6, 2009, Twitter and other popular social networking sites experienced a Denial-of-Service attack that left many users handicapped because they were unable to access their accounts. A Wall Street Journal article reported series of incidences and cases of disturbances that sprang from the inability of users to update their followers on their current status. The article even called the Twitter outrage “the unimaginable: life without Twitter” (Vascellaro, J. & Steel, E., 2009). The article reported cases such as a celebrity who was unable to update his 1.2 million followers of his whereabouts and how users around the globe were denied their freedom to broadcast their deepest thought for two full hours (Vascellaro, J. & Steel, E., 2009).
Just this morning, Twitter experienced another attack that left users without twitter again for almost thirty minutes. According to CNET, last week’s Denial-of-Service attack was aimed at a Georgian activist blogger that blogs about his political opinions on popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter amongst others (Mills, E., 2009). The attack was intended to silence the blogger from voicing his opinion but it backfired. The Georgian blogger was reported to be a 34-year old professor and a refugee from Abkhazia: a region of Georgia that declared their independence in 1991 after the break of Soviet Union (Marquardt, A. & Potter, N., 2009). The blogger’s intention was to unite fellow refugees since they are recognized by very few governments around the world (Marquardt, A. & Potter, N., 2009).
If you’re wondering, why is this important? Within the last few years, many people’s lives have become dependent on these social networking sites. Few years back, we got the bulk of our news from TV news channels but lately, social networking sites are the major source of the most current news. A couple of weeks ago, I was charting with a former colleague of mine on how our generation has become so dependent on social networking sites and he said, “When I read news, I have to read peoples comment in order to eliminate possible biases” (Decker, M., 2009). Is that not intriguing?
This generation is what some will call an Emerging Internet-Dependent Society due to people’s reliance on the Internet (Baker, N., 2008). The Internet connects people with similar interests, goals, believes, and culture together hence, a generation that cannot function without the Internet. It is therefore important for those people who have not joined the bandwagon to start now or else, you will be left out of the loop. Social networking is becoming the means to live life and get noticed in this generation.
References
Baker, N. (2008, September 13). Social Networking Sites: An Introspective on Concept-Dependent Social Phenomenon. Retrieved August 11, 2009 from, http://nmbaker.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/social-networking-sites-an-introspective-on-concept-dependent-social-phenomenon/
Decker, M. (2009, July 21). ICS 699 Seminar 9. Ball State University, Muncie Indiana.
Marquardt, A. & Potter, N. (2009, August 7). Twitter Down: It’s an Online Attack on One Political Blogger. Retrieved August 11, 2009 from, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=8278141&page=1
McCarthy, C. (2009, August 11). Another attack hits Twitter. Retrieved August 11, 2009 from, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10307542-36.html
Mills, E. (2009, August 6). Twitter, Facebook Attack Targeted One User. Retrieved August 11, 2009 from, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10305200-245.html?tag=mncol;txt
Steel, E. & Vascellaro, J. (2009, August 7). Twitter, a Service of Few Words and Many Followers, Goes Silent. Retrieved August 11, 2009 from, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124960455068513013.html
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