A seemingly coincidental occurrence is TWITTER getting hacked. The first time was based based on the idea of probability and the second was based on domain redirection. So, begs the question. WHY TWITTER? Why not Facebook or My Space or any other social networking site that people use and have gained mass popularity? Is it easy of exploitation or is it fame and popularity? Twitter has garnered mass following and publicity and has stayed in the news for a wide variety of reasons, including a few rather unique uses including Political Campaigns, Emergency Response, Campus Communication, Cultural Conversations. So, WHY TWITTER?
The answer probably lies in the following Twitter has. Personally I used twitter for a very short time and then discontinued my use mainly because I didn’t find it interesting and secondarily because it’s security was compromised once before. However, to me it was always remained an intriguing social tool. Think of it, Twitter does not have much in it, in terms of it’s interface. It is a simple to use and quick to setup tool. It’s purpose is simple as it enables a user to share thoughts or ideas in simple streams of text. A lot like broadcast sms, except its online. Has Twitter’s popularity become the reason for it to become prone to internet attacks? I am no web expert, however a little analytic research from Alexa’s web ranking system gave me a slighter clearer picture. The statics below show how popular Twitter is and with whom it is popular.
First lets start with a comparison of Social Networking sites and look where Twitter stands:
Facebook ranks first, followed by Twitter and then MySpace and Orkut. So technically it does fit the profile of a popular mass communication site with a target audience in millions. ***
Next come the demographics of usage as seen below based on audience age, education, gender and location of usage***
Next comes a geographic survey of Twitter audience, of where Twitter gets it’s maximum audience from***
If the above information is to go by, then your classic Twitter user is either a young college goer in the USA or India or middle aged people with a little daytime to spare. This also forms the largest base of people who under a wide variety of surveys will show as being those most interested in online activities and entertainment.
Simply put, Twitter gets hacked why? Because the people who use it enjoy online communities and are predominately U.S based, which doesn’t come out as a surprise given that the most recent hack was done for the purpose of targeting internet audience from the United States.
*** = The information herewith is sourced from Alexa Rankings and Verzion 7 is merely quoting publicly available information. Verzion7 takes no responsibility for the statistics that are presented.
