July 06, 2009

Twitter falls under a gorilla attack

Twitter is increasingly the medium of choice for PR pros and pranksters alike. Can it survive the onslaught of attacks from flacks and hacks?

There were two big news stories about Twitter over the weekend, and I'm not sure which was more disturbing.

The first was an inexplicably long piece in the New York Times about how the Web --- but especially social media -- has changed how PR people operate. (Apparently, the Times had run out things to say about Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.)

[ More great ideas from the world of social networking: A reality TV show based on Twitter. Get Cringely's take on this development | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

Bottom line? No only do newspapers, magazines, and other traditional media outlets have big signs saying "stinky" on their backs, even oh-so-hip blogs like TechCrunch and GigaOm have caught a bad case of the PR cooties.

The real action: obsessive tweeters. It seems flacks hope to skip right over people who might ask pesky questions about their clients and spread the manure -- er, I mean, the good word -- directly among the people themselves.

The real influentials are people with large Twitter followings, which also happens to largely coincide with folks who have a vested interest (and possibly also investments) in helping Web 2.0 startups succeed.

Per the Times:

Gone are the days when snaring attention for start-ups in the Valley meant mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on technology Web sites and blogs. Now P.R. gurus court influential voices on the social Web to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets -- a transformation that analysts and practitioners say is likely to permanently change the role of P.R. in the business world, and particularly in Silicon Valley.

So it's not how good a product or company is that matters, or even how good its sales pitch is; it's how many of the Twitterati they can pull over to their camp through any means possible.

Which brings us to disturbing story number deux: the increasing number of attacks on Twitter. This past weekend brought yet another, but this was the first one I've seen attached directly to a moneymaking scheme.

White Paper

D2D Virtual Tape Library Replication Primer

This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.

Download now »

White Paper

An Alternative to Virtualization for Datacenter Cost Savings

Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.

Download now »

White Paper

Why Your Firewall, VPN, and IEEE 802.11i Aren't Enough to Protect Your Network

The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.

Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation

Download now »

White Paper

Bringing the Edge to the Data Center

Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.

Download now »
tcapun 6-Jul-09 12:54pm
1 reply
Twitter(n): a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets.


Tweets(n): mindless bleets propagated through electronic media to one's list of sycophants.


Sycophant(n): a servile person who, acting in his or her own self-interest, attempts to win favor by flattering one or more influential persons.


Google(n): the number of sycophants calculated to be available for tweeting in the known universe.
jspurr01 6-Jul-09 6:05pm
1 reply
Hmmm ... I think you might mean googol? ... but there must be a humorous link to google in there somewhere ...
tcapun 8-Jul-09 3:50pm
Bingo. If you do in fact Google that definition:
"the number of sycophants calculated to be available for tweeting in the known universe"
you will actually get this page that we are on:
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/twitter-falls-under-gorilla-attack-258"

because chortle upon lol while rof'ing etc.
Google is the number one self tweeter in the known universe.

Subtle aside: I considered using "Google(v):" instead but finally weighed it as too obvious.

Thank you for being wide awake in the sea of sleeping humanoids.
Carl Street 6-Jul-09 1:32pm
Oh TCA, you are such a Pun Gent... :)
jud1956 6-Jul-09 3:50pm
Wouldn't it more properly be termed a guerilla attack, an act of war by insurgents, as opposed to an outburst by an out of control ape..."When the gatekeepers for information are the folks who fall for some monkey business about a primate's privates, it's time to worry." Even with all the business attention that Twitter is receiving, it is still just another toy to amuse short attention spans.
davemac 6-Jul-09 4:38pm
Re-reading note to self: take no more dares from Cringely
Phansigar 7-Jul-09 3:52am
Jud, see comments by tcapun and Carl Street. Cringe, just so you know, another of your semi-puns, about "monkey business": gorillas aren't monkeys. They're anthropoid apes, along with chimps, bonobos, and gibbons.
Producer 7-Jul-09 6:26am
Nothing really new here in the NY Times piece - "influence the influencers" has been around since the early days of Apple and Regis McKenna. The "next great thing" PR self-promoters (they, and only they, see the way, the truth and the light) want you to believe they are the gatekeepers. Perhaps they are perceived as such by naive NY Times reporters (all of their experienced staff has been fired or laid off - the paper is now written by children -remember, Jayson Blair was one of their stars until exposed as a fraud) but much of PR is still based on industry-standard concepts - which are content and context. The main subject of the Times piece appears to have been fired from her "Sex-in-the-City" PR agency job - one suspects that she couldn't write a press release or effectively pitch a story, rather than just schmooze and plan parties. Social media is just a big digital echo chamber - if you've seen one post, you've seen them all. Uniformed opinions rule the day. OK if you have lots of time to waste (such as students or worker bees), or need to be "trendy" - that is, until the next gimmick comes along. If Steve Jobs is still around - maybe he'll introduce the iJobs social messaging for the iPhone - he can send us medical updates.
CodeZombie 7-Jul-09 8:35am
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. As far as I can tell they're all nothing but big wastes of time that will sooner or later end up going the way of the dinosaur. I had a MySpace page and a Facebook page but got rid of both of them because neither was worth the time or the effort. And I never saw the point in Twitter because I really don't care that you're going to bathroom right at this very moment or that you think Ashton whats-his-name is the cutest guy on the planet. No wonder it seems like we're getting closer and closer to making the movie "Idiocracy" a reality and it will probably be a lot less than 500 years.

Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Robert X. Cringely: Notes from the Trenches Newsletter

The one-stop resource center for IT professionals.

©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.