A Day Without Social Media...

When I arrived at work today, I did my usual "checking" -- what once was a simple e-mail check now includes the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, gmail, and of course my Outlook account. Trying to keep my passwords and log-in information has become quite tricky. But, I am very much NOT alone as the hip working world has now ventured into a land of social media where news is learned through Twitter's trending topics and people are able to communicate their company's message via what the experts call "a web presence."

However, this morning as I sipped my cup of coffee and opened up my tabbed browsers to read as much as possible at once, I was denied and denied again. No Twitter. No tweetdeck. No facebook. And, if I happened to use LiveJournal, I would have been denied access there, too.

So, what happens when you try to log in to these e-venues and you can't get in? How much communication is lost? How much money is lost from a lull in e-advertising? And, finally, what do you do with your newly acquired free time?

Today, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and a few other similar outlets were inaccessible for most of the morning and afternoon due to a "denial-of-service" attack. I'll admit, I thought it was just my computer at first and was baffled when both Twitter and Facebook were completely non respondent when I tried to log in. Brock thought my theories about a villain mounting a takeover of social media sounded like a conspiracy theory but it turns out I may not have been that far off.

According to the New York Times (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/twitter-overwhelmed-by-web-attack/?src=twt&twt=nytimes), a denial of service attack occurs when, "hackers direct a “botnet,” often made up of thousands of malware-infected home PCs, toward a target site in an effort to flood it with junk traffic. With the site overwhelmed, legitimate visitors cannot access the service."

This is not the first time that these sites have been targeted by malicious attempts to gain access to users' private information. Twitter was recently bombarded by phishing scams attempting to steal private documents from businesses using the site. I myself was a victim and was asked by Twitter to change my password as someone had tried to hack into my account.

So, as we become a nation more linked to the virtual world, what can we do to protect ourselves? Do we depend too much on the security and reliability of Internet websites? What other questions are we not asking that could make a difference?

As various organizations now fill up the gap in tweets with apologetic updates for not posting for multiple hours today, I am kind of thankful that my social media world was cut off for a time...I was actually able to get a whole lot done!