The attack on Twitter last week wreaked so much havoc on the micro-blogging site that the outage is now referred to as a Twitpocalypse. Even the smiling whale page announcing “Twitter is over capacity” wasn’t visible because log-in was impossible for two hours. The DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks knocked the micro-blogging service offline on Thursday and reduced service levels for a much longer period. The twitter meltdown raised questions concerning security in the digital age and how it’s a bad idea to rely on a closed, singular service provider – imagine only having one email service!
Proponents of [...]

I’ve been accused of Twitter bashing on both my blogs and columns. To which I have to admit, there is some truth to that, but as I’ve tried to explain many times, it isn’t because I have anything against it as a communications platform, or that I don’t think, as a business, it will ever make anything close to the astronomical numbers people are punting around. No, what I don’t like about it personally is that it is yet one more brick in the wall being erected to block human communication. To which you answer, it’s a great communication tool. [...]

Wired editor Chris Anderson recently told a German newspaper that he used Twitter to help him navigate the news rather than looking at sources. The point he made is an evolution of his media consumption habits that he discussed back in 2005.

Social media expert Chris Brogan shares an interesting observation – he noticed that USA Today looks kind of like an offline version of a micro-blog. He marveled at the paper’s ability to scale down to essential, quick data points, and says he’s been motivated to possibly re-design his site based on USA Today’s example. It may seem odd getting new ideas from such an “archaic” thing such as a newspaper, but it goes to show – you never know where inspiration will strike.
Brogan explains:
If you squint, and remove your “purist” filter, USAToday looks like a microblog. The paper has little [...]