What Twitter’s DoS Attack Can Teach Us

As has been reported in the media, both Facebook and Twitter were victims of a Denial-of-Service Attack on Thursday. While Facebook proved more robust to a DoS attack, media darling Twitter struggled to keep their popular message service online throughout the day. In the process, we learned a lot about a service many people use as a key marketing communication vehicle.

Twitter’s Capacity Isn’t Pacing Usage

While the number of outages has diminished over the past year, Twitter’s reliability can be spotty on big news days. It didn’t take much effort to overload Twitter (by comparison, Facebook remained online all day). If this has been a real attempt to keep the system down, meaning a full-frontal assault, Twitter would be lucky to yell for help.

As reported on Wired today, Twitter’s mainstream popularity will only stress the system further.

According to June ComScore numbers, Twitter has more than 44 million registered users and its user base has been growing rapidly for months as it becomes better known in the mainstream.

Twitter needs to launch a serious effort to increase capacity, if it expects to provide reliable service.

Companies Are Too Reliant on Twitter

Twitter is the hot social media property of the moment. Marketing executives from Fortune 500 companies to small start-up businesses in Albania have accounts. Both use Twitter as an unfiltered communication tool, mostly to market their products and services. Many are forgetting that when sizzle fizzles, you’re left with nothing but an empty feeling inside.

Emergency Communicators Can’t Rely Solely on Twitter

In a Denial-of-Service Attack, no one can use your service. When Twitter is offline, client applications that depend on the Twitter API cannot connect to the service, creating a complete Twitter blackout.

If this had been a day where your company or government agency needed to communicate life-saving information, quickly and reliably, you would have been in trouble if you built your e-comm plan only around Twitter.

Here are other articles I have written on this topic:

• 10 Day Tune Up for H1N1 – Day 7: Social Media Checklist
• Using Social Media to Promote Your Charity
• What to Do When 100,000 People on Facebook Hate You
• Would You See a Movie that a Facebook Friend Hated?
• Using Social Media in a Public Health Emergency
• Facebook Caves on Usage Agreement
• Executives Discover Online Reputation Management
• U.S. Military Establishes New Social Media Policy
• New Campaign for Will County Health Department
• Writing a Strategic Communications Plan: Evaluation