A Facebook executive has confirmed that the recent downtime issues and Denial of Service Attacks on Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube, Google and Blogger were all part of the Russia-Georgia crisis and were targeted at silencing one man from reporting.
A blogger, based in the Republic of Georgia, with username Cyxymu, was the victim of a simultaneous attack on the bloggers personal Social Networking accounts, according to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly. The claim reinforces reports that social networking sites are being dragged into the Georgia-Russia crisis for allowing users to report on the issues.

Max Kelly told CNet. “It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”

Google, whose infrastructure protect its sites from being taken down by the recent activity are quoted as saying:
“We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.”

The internet is a portal for free speech and allows bloggers to share their opinions without restriction of content. Political propaganda and crisis information is freely available to view and publish on the internet without political censorship, but this obviously poses a threat to political activists. Are we seeing the start of a new wave of Cyber Warfare and will social networking sites need to offer more hardened security to protect against such attacks?

Article by Creative SEO – Search engine consultant

Twitter has now been down for nearly 3 hours, a denial of service attack has been blamed for the downtime and the Twitter team are still battling to bring the site back online. Twitter services appear to be running again, so if you use an API or desktop Twitter application you should be able to start Tweeting again. We are currently using Tweet Deck with no downtime.

The issue has caused waves all over the internet, Facebook reportedly slowed right down with some users receiving error messages when trying to view there profiles. Other social network displayed error messages as social user’s flooded servers. One report even acknowledged that work productivity was up as a result of the downtime.

The Twitter website is still down and we will keep you informed of the issue as we find out more details.

Well this is turning out to be a very strange day, Twitter is currently down as a result of a denial of service attack. The team are currently fighting the issue as we speak. So there are millions of bored Twitter users with nothing better to do, where do they all go, Facebook!!

One problem with this tactic, Facebook is grinding under the pressure and yes you guessed it, its up and down more times than a yoyo at a pro yoyo convention. Facebook is struggling under the pressure and we have been receiving reports of error pages and very slow loading content.

Wow it goes to show how amazing powerful Twitter is!! We will keep you informed as we find out more.

Twitter is down, yes you heard correctly, Twitter services and the main website are experiencing serious downtime issues. It’s been over an hour and the site is still not coming up. The last time Twitter experienced this level of downtime was back in 2007 and 2008, at that time it was a regular occurrence so what is the problem?

Twitter has just acknowledged the problem on the Twitter Status Blog but shockingly they do not know what is causing the problem.

“Site is down. We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.”

We will keep you updated of any changes in the service, Let’s hope it’s nothing serious.

In the mean time I’m going to call my sponsor, I’m going cold turkey. My names Creative SEO and I’m a “Twitterholic!”

UPDATE: Twitter is currently fighting against a denial of service attack, more details as they come!

Cofounder, Biz Stone wants to make Twitter more user friendly, to appeal to a larger audience and to become a valuable business tool. The whole point of updating the homepage was to give new users the ability to understand the concept. So why is the new design so minimal?



Everyone is baffled by the changes; the new design looks great and suits the brand, but surely a more “new user” friendly approach would have ensured an increased level of user growth? Let’s face it a lot of people just don’t get Twitter, “why would I want to talk about my cat or tell people that I’ve hung out the washing?” The problem is Twitter is so much more than this, it’s a powerful social network and communication tool, a real time information portal.

“Defining a “tweet” for the uninitiated and explaining how to create an account doesn’t resonate with everyone. “Why would I want to do that?” is a common reaction. However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?” Biz Stone.

Twitter has approached the new homepage not as a place to share updates about the lives of the users, but as a real-time information and search portal. This I think is a work of genius, yes the concept and use of Twitter is still hard to explain to a new user but the data that is being accrued by Twitter users is priceless. Real time topic and opinion based news and information which can be shared within the community. No wonder Google is looking to broker a deal with Twitter.

I still think it’s a shame that Twitter did not embrace both areas, a more user friendly approach, with user guides etc. Would have been a nice touch. But let’s face it, Twitter can’t really do much wrong at the moment.

Article by Creative SEO – Search Engine Optimisation