Elizabeth Fish

A familiar face: Twitter's Fail Whale

Through most of today (6/8/09), social networking site Twitter went down on and off through the day due to a “denial-of-service” attack, most probably due to a hacker with a grudge.

Twitter was soon back on track with no major tragedies- except maybe the annoyance of it’s most devoted users that they couldn’t check new Tweets or update themselves- so all is well.

However, this is not the site’s first attack- less than 4 months ago, a young hacker known as Mikeyy infected many of Twitter’s member with a virus causing them to post dodgy Tweets. If the site is being attacked this frequently, alongside the infamous ‘Fail Whale’, what if Twitter eventually meets it’s match and is therefore shut down for good? I personally believe this could lead to consequences.

Now, if you don’t use Twitter or not a heavy user, it would not have much of an effect on life, it will in fact effect those in the Media industry or other professionals. For them, Twitter has been almost groundbreaking in how news has been discovered.

The first iconic image to appear of the NY plane crash in January. It was taken by Twitter user Janis Krums.

For example, on January 15th, a US plane crashed into the Hudson River in New York. People at their work desks rushed to the windows to see, then straight to Twitter to describe what they were seeing. One Tweet in particular grabbed the attention of the news media,  and that was Janis Krums‘, which contained the first picture of the crash. Without Twitter, this news would not have reached the news stands or our TV screens half as fast. Due to the speed this news appeared on Twitter, the standard of new media was raised.

Another such example would of been the protests surrounding Iran, in which people voiced their thoughts on the elections and events surrounding it, all linked by hash tag “#IranElection“. Such was the want for people to be allowed to voice their concerns, Twitter was even encouraged by a US government department to delay scheduled maintenance to the following day. Without Twitter’s very dominating role in these elections, protestors etc were empowered to voice themselves however they felt without much fear of suppression.

Now, it would be wrong to say Twitter is without it’s convictions. Twitter can be to blame for employees losing their jobs due to online outbursts, which in turn their employer then happened to read. Thus Twitter has to be used carefully if you want to keep your job or not be sued for being defamatory.

So, Twitter may be with it’s problems still, but we need to think of what has been achieved through the use of just 140 characters, whether it’s groundbreaking news at incredible speeds, or freedom of speech where it may not of been possible before.

If we were ever to loose Twitter, we may well be loosing more than just expressing ourselves on the internet.