Twitter is the third largest social network by most measures behind Facebook and MySpace. Most internet measurement services say that Twitter is the fastest-growing of the three with its pool of users still doubling over last year.
Twitter has used its popularity to raise money, despite the fact that it does not have a concrete plan to make money. Twitter was valued at over $250 million as it raised money earlier this year.
If Twitter has an Achilles Heel which is likely to effect users and put off investors, it is that the service is periodically down. Today, hackers took Twitter down again. This time a group called the Iranian Cyber Army took credit.
Attacks on the large social networks seem to be increasing. Hackers have been able to get into Facebook and MySpace and plan obscene messages that go from one user to another. This sort of activity probably puts off most advertisers who prefer to be in relatively controlled media environments.
Twitter appears to be more vulnerable that MySpace and Facebook, probably since it is devoted to real-time communications and this allows more opportunities for talented hackers to access its servers.
Twitter’s valuation may depend on its ability to protect its servers and keep its service online 99.9% of the time. Outages tend to put users off. There is a growing body of evidence that Twitter users often sign up and do not use the service regularly, so anything that upsets regular users simply erodes its utility and its value to venture capitalists or potential buyers.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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