Twitter service has been disrupted or hacked three times this year due to security breaches. The title of Mashable author Ben Parr’s December 18th post on the most recent Twitter attack says it all, “Twitter Hacked: What A Black Eye”. Immediately following the most recent security incident, negative sentiment regarding Twitter security breaches was echoed in both traditional media and blogs alike. In a quote from a New York Times article by Jenna Wortham entitled “Online Attack Silences Twitter for Much of the Day“, Kaspersky Lab malware researcher Stefan Tanase concludes “. . . .Twitter has a long history of security-related issues, and this really shows that they are not very mature in this area yet.” With out a doubt, Twitter and its investors have a security problem on their hands but what does it mean for mortal bloggers and Twitter users such as you and I? Is our personal information at risk?
To answer the question, you have to ask “What do you have at risk?” In the most basic terms, the only information that normal users provide Twitter is an email address and password. To the extent that the email address / password combination you use is the same as your online banking accounts, you do have some considerable security risk. However, if you use a unique password for Twitter, you really have nothing to worry about if that information gets compromised during a security breach. Depending on how you use Twitter, however, you can have more on the line.
Online Brand and Traffic
Corporations and power users who are serious about online marketing have put significant time investments into Twitter as it allows them to connect with both customers and potential customers in a more meaningful way. If you’ve read Hannah‘s post on “Building Brand Through Socialization” you will likely concur that breakdowns in the Twitter security infrastructure could impact your brand. Furthermore, we have consistently seen Twitter based traffic climb into the top 5 referrer sources for blogs we manage at Orangecast. Thus, service outages on Twitter can drastically impact blogs and eCommerce sites that depend on the micro-blogging site to generate traffic meaningful to their revenue model.
Business Models and Cost
I’ll admit that my background with Microsoft really causes me to look at Twitter more as an API or Applications Programming Interface than an application. After all, I never use the Twitter site because it is flat out terrible. Still, I do use TweetDeck, TweetAddr’s search component, and streams produced by TweetBlender on a daily basis. If you are in the software business with a product that relies on Twitter’s API, you could have customer experience issues and support cost spikes due to outages in Twitter. In other words, Twitter security breaches could have a direct impact at the cost center level.
Twitter Security Summary
If you are in senior management at Twitter, an investor, or a software company highly reliant on Twitter’s API, Twitter’s security problems do present a significant issue for you. For the rest of us, the gloom and doom in the media about Twitter’s security and related outages really are not that significant of an issue. My advice to anyone concerned about Twitter security is to make a unique password and don’t respond to phishing attempt emails that ask you to login to Twitter to see something. If you are an ISV dependent on Twitter’s API, then you should budget for some “growing pains” in your support model.
The founders at Twitter have surrounded themselves by some of the top startup talent in Bay Area. You can rest assured that they will get through these security glitches and make the service more robust. In the mean time, Tweet away and don’t perceive ”their problems” as “your problems” or think that your personal information is at risk. Twitter is here to stay and you want to ride the Twitter wave despite the pains associated with their their growth and popularity.
