17-year-old Australian Boy, Japanese Developer Take Blame for Twitter Meltdown

A 17-year-old boy from Australia claims he inadvertently triggered a chain of events that led to thousands of people being affected by a Twitter security flaw yesterday. But it all may have been started by a Japanese developer a couple of hours earlier.

Pearce Delphin, or @zzap on Twitter, says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a piece of code with an onMouseOver JavaScript function, which caused a pop-up to appear when a user merely moves his mouse cursor over the message.

Very soon, the code was modified to do other sorts of things – perform auto retweets, open pornographic websites and generally create havoc on Twitter, which lasted a couple of hours until Twitter admins patched the vulnerability.

“I did it merely to see if it could be done … that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet. At the time of posting the tweet, I had no idea it was going to take off how it did. I just hadn’t even considered it,” Delphin told AFP via e-mail.

“I discovered a vulnerability, I didn’t create a self-replicating worm. As far as I know, that isn’t technically illegal,” Delphin said. He hopes he won’t get into trouble, but he very well could — the proper course of action in situations like these is reporting such a vulnerability to Twitter. Exposing a security flaw like he did, even inadvertently, is at the very least an error in judgment.

However, in this case, the flaw was so elementary and spread so fast that it’s hard to point at Delphin and consider him solely responsible for the damage it caused (which, according to Twitter, was not very big, despite the fact that the flaw was potentially extremely dangerous). Delphin, together with several others (for example, Scandinavian developer Magnus Holm) claims he merely modified the idea from another user who had used the code to make his tweets colored, meaning he was not the first to expose the flaw.

The “other user” was probably a Japanese developer. Masato Kinugawa said he reported the XSS vulnerability to Twitter on August 14, which was subsequently patched, but he later discovered that the vulnerability was exploitable again. He then created a Twitter account called RainbowTwtr, which he used to prove that the flaw could be used to create colored tweets.

This is in line with Twitter’s account of the incident. From Twitter’s official blog: “We discovered and patched this issue last month. However, a recent site update (unrelated to new Twitter) unknowingly resurfaced it.”

One thing about the entire incident causes concern: the vulnerability was too easy to exploit, and it spread amazingly fast. Twitter should take a good look at its security before an attack similar to this one causes a lot more damage.

---

Reviews: Twitter

More About: hack, security flaw, twitter, vulnerability

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Can Amplify.com Help You Find Great Content?

Most of us use the Internet every day. Whether for work, school or play, the Internet is woven into the very fabric of our lives. Although we spend so much of our time online, we rarely give much thought to what actually makes up the content of the Internet.

Let’s be clear, the Internet is really divided into three types of stuff: (1) terribly addictive, uncomfortably funny or tremendously valuable content, (2) average, run-of-the-mill, “I already knew that” -type content and finally (3) utter crap.

As a marketer, you’ve created content in all three buckets before (nobody bats 1.000…), and as a web surfer, you know that the Internet is almost 99.999% composed of bucket #3.

No, seriously, the Internet is almost completely filled with useless, boring content that probably only appealed to the one person that made it.

Not to be a downer, but I only harp on this fact to say that I had a dream. I had a dream that I lived in a world where the Internet was only filled with interesting, valuable and funny content.

Things that would make me look 100 times smarter than I am, and content that would make my potential customers flock to my accounts and talk to me for days about whatever I had shared.

Then one day, I was asked to review Amplify.com, and I thought my dreams had come true…

Ampli-Who Dot What?

On the surface, Amplify.com just seems like another site that wants you to share what you like (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) and connects you with friends who do the same. The front page graphic gives off a music site feel. I even thought it was a bit rock-star (like myself)… until I saw the water cooler in the middle of the crowd.

Amplify.com is as simple as the graphic on the front page suggests. They want you to share interesting things from the Internet with your peers, but only “water cooler-worthy” stuff. More on that in a second…

What Can It Do?

Like Twitter, But Longer

Amplify.com lets you microblog just like Twitter, but your limit is 500 characters. The days of showing restraint online are numbered.

Blog Via Email

You can post content (blogs, snippets, photos, etc.) to your Amplify stream via email. Amplify.com gives you a personal email address to send content to, which will automatically add that content to your stream. Unlike other sites with this feature, Amplify.com doesn’t make you memorize a 6,000-character email address. You have a short convenient address customized to your username. I consider that a victory for the little guy.

Find Content Based On Subject

Want to find all of the best content for social media? Easy. Just click “social media” and browse the best stuff. There are several categories to choose from and the content is sorted chronologically.

What’s The Main Event?

Ok, I’ll be honest; none of these features by themselves are impressive. You can do all of these things on Facebook without ditching your friends and setting up another profile (which we all LOVE to do… right?). Fortunately, Amplify.com redeems itself from a life of redundancy by adding one simple feature that can save the entire Internet. Interested? Let me explain.

Remember when I said that the Internet is 99% utter crap? That’s true, but if we’re really being honest, even the really good articles that we read are at least 30% filler (not this one, though J). It reminds me of a lesson I learned when I took a speed-reading class:

“There are plenty of good books to read, but more importantly, there are plenty of good chapters to read.”

Think about that. What if you could share a fantastic article without having to share the part that isn’t amazing? Amplify.com has the answer. They allow you to clip any section of any site and share only that section on Amplify.com, or one of the several social networks that you can post to automatically.

Find a great couple of paragraphs in a New York Times article? Great, only share that section. Find a blog with three great tips? Take the tips, leave the rest.

Amplify.com has given us a chance to trim the fat off of the Internet. Yes, my heart just fluttered.

Why I’m Not Doing A Cartwheel Right Now

Unfortunately, it’s not all butterflies and candy corn with Amplify.com. While bringing us one of the greatest tools online, they’ve also allowed some of the tools that kinda make the Internet suck in the first place.

The site needs a filtering option. I click on a popular topic and about half of the options are in a language that I can’t understand, and that’s bad news. Chronological order is OK, but if the section is called “popular topics,” I expect the links to be… you know… popular. That leads me to my real point.

Amplify.com is a great site, but it would be amazing with a ranking system. The problem with the Internet is that anyone can post anything on it and you have to sift through the junk to get to the goods. Amplify.com’s clip functionality is useless if I still have to sort through everyone’s junk to get to the best clips.

Allowing the site’s users not only to comment (they allow this already) but also to rank content would really “Amplify” the best clips and move the site to the “water cooler-talk” level that the front page suggests.

Final Thoughts

As with most dreams, my love affair with Amplify.com was slightly soured by having to sift through so many posts. As with any new site, there will be kinks along the way. And while there is a “Recommend” feature, it works more like a retweet than a content judgment system, which is what it would take for me to really like it.

Amplify.com has a bright future ahead of it, and the issues I see now seem more of the “growing pain” variety than the “death knell” variety. As of today, Amplify.com scores a 7 out of 10.

Have you used Amplify.com yet? What did you think about it? Do you know of another site with the “clip” functionality? Have a site that you’d like to see reviewed? Let us know in the box below!

10 Tips To Drive Twitter Traffic To Your Blog

Do you wanna drive Twitter traffic to your blog like it’s 5pm in Los Angeles?

Okay, I understand this post is not for everybody. I wanted to write it anyway because I’ve had a few people ask about my own experience, so I decided to share some of the things I do.

Twitter can become your blog’s best friend when it comes to traffic. I’m not suggesting that you use it for that purpose only but, if you run a blog and feel like you could be getting a little more love from it, perhaps you should adjust your strategy and integrate some of these tips.

There are some basics that we are going to skip, like having a good descriptive bio, link to your blog, take advantage of the real estate on the background, etc.

I promise you two things with this post:

• While I can’t promise specific results, I can tell you that if you follow this advice, you should be able to at least start moving the needle
• And I will not use the word “Viral” =)

We’ll start with the most basic items and build up to the juicy stuff…

1. Be Twitter-Friendly

This is a given so let’s get it out of the way first. Your blog needs to be Twitter-friendly, I mean at least having the Retweet button visible at the top of your post. The reason is that people will not go out of their way to tweet your post, unless you are Seth Godin (and if you are… thanks for reading my blog Seth).

2. Kick-Ass Headlines

The only piece that makes the 140 characters is your headline. It will make people click or ignore your Tweet in less than a second. Allow some extra time to craft an awesome headline that:

• Is descriptive – Don’t mislead people, you will piss them off
• Is short – You only have 140 characters and need to include your Twitter name, link and leave room for Retweets
• Gets people’s attention – Don’t be a smarty pants but write something fun, different, clever
• Includes keywords – Without sounding like a robot

Another thing that you should consider is that, as I said on my previous post “Social Media: So, Are Numbers Important Or Not?“, a percentage of those Retweets are done without even reading a single line of your post. People feel the need to share stuff but don’t have the time to read it all. Is this bad? Maybe that person didn’t even click on your link so you don’t get the traffic but let’s focus on the positive, at least you get expose to his/her network.

3. Repeated Tweets

You need to promote your own content. There is nothing wrong with it. Of course if you don’t do anything else on Twitter but promote yourself, you will not get any love. Again, you are not Seth Godin.

In this case I want you to kick it up a notch, remember we are talking about driving Twitter traffic to your blog. Tweet you content more than once. Depending on how much you Tweet in general, find a nice balance and try to post your own content 2 or 3 times on the same day your post goes live.

4. Tweet Previous Posts

You can’t do this on a daily basis but every now and then on a day that you are not publishing anything, Tweet one of your previous posts. Look for a popular post, one that has generated a good response in terms of traffic, comments, Retweets and clickthroughs. A post that has proven its performance.

In my experience, a good tool to measure the life of a post is PostRank. It allows you to visualize how a previous post can get a second air and bring in a nice amount of extra traffic.

5. Higher Activity

You decide how much time you spend on Twitter or social media in general, nobody can really tell you what is appropriate or what will give you better results. What I can tell you for personal experience is that being active on the days you publish posts can make a difference. Basically… show up.

There are different ways to be active on Twitter, I do 2 things:

• Before self-promoting your stuff, you should start the day by sharing other people’s content. I usually travel the blogosphere before I kick start the daily grind, that gives me some inspiration and helps me find stuff to post on Twitter. After sharing some good stuff and getting people’s attention, you can post your own
• During the day of the post, I take time to interact with people, reconnect or connect with new folks. Higher activity and interaction will result in an increase of RT’s and clickthroughs

6. Smart Scheduling

I should start this point by saying that I completely disagree with automatically sending blog posts to Twitter. I think you should have full control of when to send out a Tweet and hopefully get as much exposure as possible.

Some of the best times are said to be when people get to work, lunch time or the end of 9 to 5. Of course you also should consider timezones, if you Tweet at noon PST, you are hitting the east coast at 3pm. I’ll share the times that have given me good results but you should know that this could be different in your case. I post around 9 or 10am, then at 3pm and then at the end of the day, usually 5 or 6pm. I’m Pacific time.

Also remember, there are no rules. Experiment.

7. Who To Follow

One of the most important aspects of social media marketing is how your target market makes itself visible to your eyes, it’s just obvious. Identifying who is interested in what you have to offer or at least in what you are publishing is easier than ever. Twitter gives you the opportunity to follow those that are Retweeting your content. You tell me, what is more targeted than that?

So here is the scoop, after your post has been published and sent out to the Twittersphere, look for those people that have Retweeted it and follow them. If you do it in a timely manner, they are most likely to know exactly who you are, follow you back and who knows, maybe there is even room for some interaction. That is what I call quality following.

There are 2 ways to find these individuals:

• The visible Tweets are those who have credit the source by adding your Twitter name to their Tweet. You can find these folks right on your “Mentions”. Easy!
• Invisible Tweets on the other hand, are those that don’t include your name, they don’t show up on your mentions. You can find them by doing a search for the title of your post on Twitter Search. You can also use other tools like UberVu and even set up email alerts for this

8. Get Some Influence On Your Corner

The point here is to get exposure but also to get people to click through. A great way is to have one of those big names in your niche to retweet you, you know, an influencer. Not only you get huge exposure but you get to ride on their trust. Let me explain, these individuals are trusted sources, their followers consume what they share.

One of the things that help SocialMouths get on the map last year was a Retweet by Guy Kawasaki. Yes, a simple tweet took the post from 150 RT’s to almost 700 in a matter of days. It can be that powerful. In this case it was casual, I didn’t expect it or asked for it but you can totally make this happen by interacting with those leaders in your industry.

Start by sharing their content, comment on their blogs and initiate conversations on Twitter to get their attention. If you are dropping kick ass content on your blog, they will eventually notice you.

9. Reciprocity

This is important.

Reciprocity is huge. I promote you and you promote me. I’ve had people asked me directly to support each other, via email or DM, but most of the time reciprocity happens by establishing unspoken agreements. Creating relationships with other bloggers, even if they are in the same niche. I have several relationships based on this, we interact, promote each others content and sometimes even collaborate.

This is the kick start of your Twitter traffic every post you publish. Tier 1. You’re getting exposure on all their networks on a weekly basis without asking.

Make this happen organically.

10. Build Reputation

As I mentioned before, there are individuals that become trusted sources and people not only listen but click on their links all the time. You know they will not post trash. You need to become one of those individuals. Share stuff that is relevant to your network.

Becoming a trusted source of information takes time, I’m talking about the content you create and the one you share on Twitter from other people.

# 11 Is Yours…

There are many other ways to help increase your traffic from Twitter, I’m sure you have a couple of tips and, I’m asking you to share them with the rest of us. What’s your experience? What gives you results? Share in the comments section.

Also feel free to ask questions or… to disagree with me!

Happy twittering!

How to Use Facebook and Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Retail Shop

I’m always surprised at how few retail spaces take advantage of Twitter and Facebook (yes, there are exceptions). The costs are low, the risks are manageable and your customers are already using the platforms.

By engaging customers “where they live,” you can increase the foot traffic to your shop and grow your business.

Here are 5 steps to grow your retail business using Facebook and Twitter.

#1: Set Up Shop

“80 percent of success is just showing up.” – Woody Allen

This may sound obvious, but if you want to engage your customers and prospects on Twitter and Facebook, you have to be there.

On Twitter, this means creating an account for your business, but it also may mean creating an account for you or other people in your company. With few exceptions, people are more likely to follow a person rather than a business, and much more likely to engage with a person rather than a logo. By creating an account for both you and your business, you increase your chances for engaging your audience.

On Facebook, setting up shop means creating a business page and claiming your Facebook Place (more on that later). You should also have a Facebook profile for yourself that is linked to your page. Even if you’re a wallflower, this is good advice. Facebook provides more tools and functionality for pages that are linked to profiles.

#2: Build Your Audience

The first step to getting someone to visit your brick-and-mortar store may be to get them to visit your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.

Once you have your Twitter account and Facebook page set up, you should spend some time finding and building your audience on these platforms. Since many retail shops are “geographically challenged”—you can only do business with people within driving distance—finding local people is an essential first step.

For Twitter, I recommend visiting the advanced search. You can immediately limit your search to tweets within a geographic area, and refine it further by searching for specific terms. A chiropractor might search for “pain” within 15 miles of Austin, TX, a florist might search for “anniversary” within 5 miles of Scarborough, ME, and a restaurant might search for anyone within 10 miles of Huntington, NY, as everyone I know needs to eat to survive.

An advanced search will bring up all the recent tweets that meet your criteria with the handle and avatar of the person who tweeted. From the results page you can follow these people or click on their profile for more information. Since following a person creates a knee-jerk reaction for them to follow you back, a certain percentage of these people will become your followers.

On Facebook, businesses don’t “fan” people, but you can still find your audience. Using targeted Facebook ads, leveraging your personal profile and creating a compelling landing page are all ways to build your fan base on Facebook. Mari Smith lists 21 Creative Ways to Increase Your Facebook Fanbase and Ching Ya lists more at 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following.

#3: Create Content That Engages Your Audience

Just getting people to fan or follow you won’t bring them into your shop, however. You’ll need to create a steady stream of content to engage them. Whatever your business, you can create content that is compelling and relevant to your audience.

Own a restaurant? Post your lunch special to Facebook and Twitter, complete with a photo. As your fan base grows, you can ask them for suggestions on what they’d like to see as the daily special. Or run a contest on what to name your new sandwich where all the entries must be posted to your business page (which requires them to first fan your page).

Run an art supply store? Poll your audience on their favorite medium and why. Watercolors? Oil paint? Sculpture? (It’s amazing how much a simple question can energize a community.)

Are you the curator at the aquarium? Post a photo of a different fish every day with information about the fish and links back to your website where visitors can learn more and buy a day pass.

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie

You can take engagement to the next level by talking to or about a loyal customer.

On Twitter, it’s as simple as using their handle in a tweet. Maybe one of your most loyal customers participated in Tri for a Cure; if so, give her props. Or maybe you see that another customer is trying to sell his old truck on Twitter so you retweet his message. Little gestures go a long way.

On Facebook, you can tag someone in an update. Since Facebook has a broader audience base, it’s probable that your update will be seen by more people (friends), especially if the person feels compelled to thank you in a comment to your initial post.

It should go without saying, but let me say it anyway: if the main purpose of you tagging everyone is to drive traffic to your page or account, it will show and it will backfire. As Dale Carnegie also said, “Give honest, sincere appreciation.”

#4: Leverage Location-Based Apps

This article isn’t a primer on FourSquare and Gowalla or how you can leverage these location-based apps. There are plenty of great resources out there for that, including How to Drive More Customers to Your Local Business with Social Geotagging and Why Foursquare Drives Business.

However, it’s important to realize that a lot of people are using location-based apps, and often linking them to their Twitter or Facebook accounts. In other words, when they check into a place they’re letting all their friends know where they are, and that’s good for your business.

Since so many Foursquarers and Gowallites are on Twitter and Facebook, you can easily engage them once they’ve visited your place of business. You can visit your page on either of these websites to see who’s checked in recently and often find a quick link to their Facebook or Twitter account. From there you can reach out, let them know you saw their check-in, and just wanted to see if their meal, haircut, or ride on the carousel was to their liking, and if there’s anything else you can do.

Use this tactic with discretion, however. Some people may find this intrusive, even when they have opted to check in and share their location with the world.

You should also start investigating Facebook Places. At the time of this writing, there’s no ad platform on the new geo-location offering from Facebook. However, that will inevitably change, giving you the opportunity to offer discounts to shoppers who check in and share their activity with their Facebook network. Retail shops should make sure that they are listed in Facebook places so their customers can check in and share their experiences with others.

You might want to encourage the “check-in” behavior of your patrons by setting up tabletop displays with information on Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.

#5: Incentivize Your Audience to Visit

Building loyalty and connections with customers is a great long-term success strategy. However, there are plenty of ways to provide incentives for your online audience to make an in-person visit with a more immediate impact:

Create Facebook- or Twitter-only discounts or coupons that people print up and bring in. Make them good for one day only to generate more visits to your page and create a sense of urgency.

Last-minute cancellation? Blast out to your audience that you have a sudden opening that afternoon for anyone who needs a massage or mani/pedi.

Slow lunch? Announce a discount for anyone who walks in and mentions Twitter or Facebook while placing his/her order.

Announce a special event at your bar. If you roll out the mechanical bull on Wednesday night, make sure you announce it (maybe with pictures). Or if two bachelorette parties suddenly show up, a large portion of your audience may want to know. And is that Marelisa Gibson who just walked in the front door?

Now it’s your turn: what other ways have you used Twitter or Facebook to drive traffic to your own place of business? Leave your comments in the box below.

3 Real-Time Search Engines Discover Social Media Trends

Google and Yahoo transformed how we find information. But now social media is creating real-time content that requires special search engines.

As online publishing platforms and social networks have exploded in popularity, there is a new need to aggregate and search the dynamic “real-time” web.

New platforms hold much promise for marketers who want to understand trends and customer problems in real time. In this article I review three of the top real-time search engines (in no particular order), and each has a unique profile that fits certain use cases particularly well.

#1: OneRiot

OneRiot is the largest real-time web search engine today. It aggregates information about popular topics from Twitter and other social media sites.

OneRiot consolidates all these articles into one headline that you can click that leads you to a list of articles associated with a topic. This is a great way to see multiple articles on one topic all at once and in real time.

Instead of having to search different news sites looking for a hot topic, users can access OneRiot’s aggregated real-time information on the topic. Also, OneRiot does a good job of blending hot topics from different spheres. It has a balanced mix of entertainment news and hard news, but seems to concentrate more on entertainment news.

OneRiot has a bar on the right side of the page that breaks common topics into categories. If you’re looking for the latest news on trends or culture, politics or technology, you can easily find it.

Though OneRiot focuses on news organization sources and provides more reliable information, it lacks the personal touch from integrating commentary from individuals into the feed. This eliminates how the public is reacting to the news. OneRiot is great for lists of news articles related to the topic, but it’s important to get the public’s take on these articles as well.

The best way to use OneRiot for online marketing would be to use its search results about important topics. You could give your audience up-to-date information aggregated from multiple social networks. For instance, if you sell cars, linking to the OneRiot results page with the latest information about models you sell could be a great way to display feedback for people who own your cars.

By going to OneRiot, you can quickly see what the most frequently posted information is at the moment. Overall, OneRiot has the potential to be a great source for generating organic leads.

#2: Collecta

Collecta has more of a mainstream U.S. and international news focus, and does not offer the entertainment and lifestyle content that OneRiot integrates into its results. As a result, Collecta is a great source for people who want important news stories and like to view several sources to understand the breadth of angles on a topic.

The main page displays a general headline for each topic and then three suggested articles related to the topic. This makes it easy to read and gives it a professional, news-style approach. Also, Collecta does a great job of gathering recent social media updates from several sites such as WordPress, Digg and niche blogs; whereas OneRiot seems to pull most of its content from Twitter.

Though Collecta does a good job at pulling information from multiple sources, its user interface makes it somewhat difficult to see the information it’s pulling from Twitter and other social media sites. The first suggested article on the homepage is usually an article related to a popular topic, but the next two subheadlines are the newsfeeds for the various social media sites discussing the topic.

The best way to use Collecta for online marketing would be to scan a variety of social media sites updated with the latest information on your business and industry within seconds. Collecta maintains a newsfeed that is updated by the second with several personal and professional social media accounts listed. This is a great way for marketers to research how the public is responding to a topic in real time.

#3: 48ers

48ers focuses more on the collective reactions of individuals to news events in real time. The site is great if you’re searching for keywords and want to see what people are discussing about a certain topic. For example, during the eggs recall you could enter a search for “eggs” and see the discussion on all social media sites about eggs.

The tradeoff here is that if you aren’t aware of a particular topic, you don’t know to search for it to explore it further. Twitter and Google have both overcome this problem by adding trending results and searches. The main page of 48ers is set up almost like Google where you type in one word and review the results. The difference is that 48ers results are social media results, not news articles or irrelevant articles about eggs from last year.

This is a great source for viewing the most up-to-date information on a particular topic, but it isn’t great if you don’t know what everyone is already talking about. OneRiot and Collecta are superior to 48ers in this respect because they offer the functionality of 48ers while also offering suggested hot topics.

The best way to use this site for online marketing is to analyze a larger number of social media results on a particular topic and discover brand mentions or industry discussions. Results are being pulled by the second and you have a lot more content to work with compared to the suggested social media results from OneRiot and Collecta.

The Final Word

All three profiled real-time search engines offer benefits, and it’s not clear who will plug the holes in their service first and offer the most compelling real-time search offering.

These independent companies are also competing with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other larger companies that are offering some version of real-time search and actively seeking to improve them.

Have you used real-time search engines? Do you think they hold promise? Let me know your thoughts in the box below.

« Previous Page — Next Page »