Twitter

Security is something that social networking sites have to be constantly on their guard against. With so many members connected in a large chain, sites like Facebook and Twitter are the ideal platform for spammers who want to reach as large an audience as possible.

Recently users of Facebook and Twitter, the two largest social networking sites, with millions of members worldwide, have been expressing concerns about the security of their accounts because of the activity of spammers. The users in question have been made aware of their own accounts spamming their contacts with offers for free iPads.

Twitter is currently taking steps to reinforce the security of the affected members, releasing a statement saying:

If you’ve received a message promising you a new iPad, not only is there no iPad, but also your friends have been hacked.

Facebook users are also being affected. The message that many are receiving off compromised accounts contain the following text:

u have to check out this website its glitchin right now and sending out ipads to everyone for free!

The message also provides a link to a website known as better-gifts.net which then directs users to websites of other companies, but there are certainly no free iPads on offer.

It is important that social networking websites are in position to deal with situations that crop up in the life of its users that make affect their membership on such sites. Of course, the major event that such sites ought to be looking at regarding their policies is death. The death of users leaves their membership of social networking sites in limbo and policies need to be in place in order to determine what is to be done with accounts left by the deceased.

Twitter has just announced its new policy regarding such situations. The social media giant has followed other sites like Facebook in determining that family members should not be given access to any accounts left behind by the deceased. Neither will the site make public any information that has not already been made public by the user themselves prior to their death.

It will be possible to delete the Twitter account of the deceased with the provision of certain information by email, fax or post. Contact details of the person closing the account ought to be given alongside the username of the account or profile page link. A link to a news article or public obituary is also to be provided.

The latest statistics for Twitter reveal that the site is now used by 93m people throughout the world. The figures, from comScore, do not include visitors who might be accessing the microblogging site through third-party software.

All the same, this represents a doubling of users compared to June 2009. The fastest growth is being seen in Latin America and Asia Pacific. The latter has most users overall, 25.1m compared to 22.5m in Europe and 24.9m in North America.

North American growth is actually the slowest, although there was still a 22 per cent improvement on last year. Compare that to Latin America, which now has 15.4m users – a 305 per cent increase. Asia Pacific is up 243 per cent.

Around 10.9 per cent of UK web users access the site. The highest percentage of users is seen in Indonesia, where 20.8 per cent visit. That is followed by Brazil with 20.5 per cent.

In terms of smartphone users – a common way of accessing Twitter – 8.3 per cent of smartphone users in the US use the site, while 5.7 per cent of UK smartphone users do so.

Like blogging a few years ago, Twitter is often sneered at by people, saying that it’s merely a way for people to tell the world the boring minutiae of their daily lives. While it’s easy to write off the microblogging site as featuring nothing of worth, the fact that it’s recently seen its 20 billionth update surely tells you something.

The 20 billionth tweet itself is meaningless in isolation, as it was part of a wider conversation. A graphic designer in Tokyo said:

“So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.”

The fact that it was a Japanese user who posted the 20 billionth tweet is significant, because the site is seeing huge growth in that country over the last year. It is now thought that around 12 per cent of tweets originate there. Only the US produces more.

You can say a lot more in 140 characters in Japan, of course, which might help. The greatest ever density of Twitter updates was seen during the Japan v Denmark World Cup match when there were 3,283 tweets per second.

Two months ago, Twitter saw its 15 billionth tweet and five months before that, its 10 billionth. It had taken four years to reach that point, but now there are around 300,000 users signing up daily.

The cast of Britain’s longest-running and most popular soap opera, Coronation Street, have allegedly been told that they are not to use Twitter while on set. It’s said that a letter has been sent to each of the actors emphasising the importance of not giving away information about the soap on Twitter or other social networking sites. It is thought that a major storyline for later in the year was given away by a recent tweet from someone involved in the show.

A Sunday Mirror report says the letter reads:

“Please consider the set a mobile and tweet-free zone.”

Reports say that after that, the letter goes on to point out that comments and images on such sites are accessible to the public and that disciplinary action could be taken against actors who published anything that might lead to the soap being seen in a negative light.

Antony Cotton, who plays Sean Tully in the show, used Twitter to state that nobody was banned from the micro-blogging site. Other keen users are Shobna Gulati (Sunita Alahan), Craig Gazey (Graeme Proctor) and Katherine Kelly (Becky McDonald).