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Is a major social network denial-of-service attack underway?

Twitter is down. LiveJournal has been down, although it appears to be back up. Facebook users are experiencing problems too. What's going on?

In Twitter's case, the culprit has been confirmed as a denial-of-service attack. A note on the Twitter status page states "we are defending against a denial-of-service attack". There is no word yet on the cause of the LiveJournal and Facebook issues that have been reported. Needless to say, the fact that three popular social networking services are all having a bad morning hints at the possibility that the most important parts of the social internets are under siege.

by Patricio Robles 06 August 2009 16:46pm 7 comments

Choosing a platform: seven considerations for developers

It's a good to be an independent developer. The number and variety of development platforms on which to build has exploded over the past several years. From the iPhone to Salesforce to Facebook, opportunity knocks at every turn.

But if you're an independent developer, choosing which platform to develop for can be a difficult task. Many developers today decide to develop for the platforms that seem to offer the quickest path to riches.

by Patricio Robles 05 August 2009 11:48am 0 comments

20 + mind-blowing social media statistics

Social media remains the hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as this particular online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an astronomical rate. But I’ve pulled together some interesting (and hopefully useful) data for a couple of the bigger players in the market...

by Jake Hird 31 July 2009 10:00am 20 comments

Southern Comfort goes all in on web advertising

What difference do relaxed advertising policies online offer for liquor brands? A lot. Online, alcohol companies can attach themselves to content and audiences that have been elusive in traditional spaces. And for a company like Southern Comfort, that means getting rid of traditional ad spend entirely.

Relaxed search policies and new ad formats are helping liquor brands move beyond display advertising online. And it also helps that spending online is proving to be a cost cutting method.

by Meghan Keane 30 July 2009 18:08pm 0 comments

1-800-Flowers.com brings online retail to Facebook

In the world of brick and mortar retail, if you had to list one key to success, it'd probably be the good old "location, location, location".

Online, where anyone can set up shop, location works a bit differently. Some swear that a highly-generic domain name is the equivalent of a retail space on Fifth Avenue. Others strive to make sure they're visible to consumers through organic and paid search.

by Patricio Robles 30 July 2009 09:33am 13 comments

Social media: myth versus reality

The nature of the internet economy has given myth new importance in the digital age. One need only look at the field of SEO to see just how prominent (and destructive) myth can be.

Social media has a lot in common with SEO and one area where that's especially true is in the number of social media myths that have become entrenched. From the belief that social media ROI can't be measured to the idea that your business can thrive if you get to the right influencers, social media myths run rampant today.

by Patricio Robles 27 July 2009 12:59pm 15 comments

The Friendster Lesson: Being first to market isn't always best

Did faulty servers kill Friendster? Discussions of Friendster may sound like ghosts from social networking's past, but the site's founder Jonathan Abrams is back in the news today, telling the LA Times today that Friendster got too big too fast, and attributes his company's downfall to poor functionality resulting from exponential growth.

Abrams, who's now working on start-up Socializr, says that MySpace was able to eat Friendster's lunch because of better targeting and reliability:

"They opened it up to minors, which hadn't even occurred to me for the legal and safety reasons... the real reason that Friendster got supplanted by MySpace in the U.S. was that MySpace's website just worked and Friendster's didn't."

While dependability is key to a website's success, Abrams is still missing the big picture on what makes social networks stick around online.

by Meghan Keane 24 July 2009 00:18am 3 comments

Twitter fears Facebook. As it should.

TechCrunch's been airing Twitter's (not so) dirty laundry all week. Courtesy of a hacker, TechCrunch has gotten hold of 300 confidential Twitter documents, and yesterday they released notes from a set of executive meetings that laid out the company's upcoming strategy plans.

What did we learn? That Twitter is scared of Facebook. As it should be.

by Meghan Keane 17 July 2009 16:47pm 7 comments

PPC arbitrage Facebook-style

Facebook, which just announced that it had reached the 250m user mark, continues in its quest to build a sustainable business. Currently, Facebook's self-serve PPC ad platform accounts for the largest share of the company's revenue.

In an effort to grow that chunk of revenue, Facebook is adding on to its self-serve ad platform to meet the needs of developers and I think this could open up a potential arbitrage opportunity for savvy developers.

by Patricio Robles 16 July 2009 08:59am 0 comments

Real-time, red herring: why real-time on the consumer internet isn't the real deal

The buzz in the consumer internet right now is real-time. Twitter and Facebook have put the spotlight on real-time but now tech giants like Google and Microsoft are giving real-time the time of day.

Where is this all leading? Is real-time the most important thing taking place on the internet today as some believe or is it the next overhyped web fad?

by Patricio Robles 13 July 2009 12:30pm 0 comments