According to Twitter, it was hacked and 250K accounts were affected, so they received emails from the company to change their password. This is not the first time this has happened, but this time it was a real hack, rather than a blend of real hacks and “false alarm” blast of emails like last time. Way to start off our weekends, Twitter. Who knows if you’ll even get the email from Twitter about it, I know that I filter all of those things out. You can read all of the details about the hack and the company response here. I find it really confusing when anything like this happens, because it feels like companies try to diminish the perception of the impact of the situation. Fact of the matter is, its users are seeing sad tweets from their friends about how they got hacked. I even had one person tell me that they felt like they weren’t cool enough because they didn’t get hacked. Instead, or in addition to, just go change your password. We’re all cool enough to get hacked. The number, 250K affected, seems a bit too tidy to me, and I’m not saying that Twitter is lying, I’m just saying that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Twitter also suggests this course of action, which is way too much for most people’s brains to process on a Friday: We also echo the advisory from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and security experts to encourage users to disable Java on their computers in their browsers. Sure, OK. Happy Tweeting (Maybe)! While you’re at it, change all of your passwords for everything. It’s a good thing to do once in a while, especially if you use the same one for every single site you log into. [Photo credit: Flickr]
Just Go Change Your Twitter Password Now
Twitter Sends Out Emails To 250K Users Who ‘May’ Have Been Compromised, Says Hack Was Not Related To Yesterday’s Outage
Twitter is sending out emails to 250,000 users it says may have had their accounts compromised in the last week as the site experienced “unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data.” Twitter tells TechCrunch that this is “not related” to the widespread, but intermittent, outage the site saw yesterday.
As Mobile Devs Get More Sophisticated, Flurry Adds Crash, User Acquisition Analytics
San Francisco’s Flurry initially got its reach through offering a basic package of analytics that more than 95,000 different developers snapped up.
But as the iOS and Android ecosystems have matured, app makers are getting more sophisticated. The biggest ones often juggle 30 to 40 ad networks and marketing channels, and need to understand which ones perform the best.
Gigya Says Its Social Tools Reach 1.5B Users Each Month, Making ‘Tens Of Millions’ In Annual Sales
“Social infrastructure” provider Gigya released some data this morning that highlights its growth over the past year. The biggest number? The 1.5 billion unique users reached by Gigya’s tools each month, up from 1 billion a year ago.
To have that kind of reach, Gigya presumably needs big clients, and the company says new customers added last year include Wal-Mart, DirectTV, RedBox, Beats Electronics, Pacific Sunwear, American Heart Association, Jelly Belly, Barneys New York, Bad Boy Marketing Group, Adidas, Food Network, AlItalia, and Lush Cosmetics. The company says it now has 650 clients total, including 50 percent of the comScore’s top 100 US web properties.
InfoArmy Retreats After Crowdsourced Research Business Goes Through The Floor. All Reports Now Free
InfoArmy — a startup built on the “Data 2.0″ concept of crowdsourced competitive intelligence — has today sent out a letter, printed in full below, to its researchers informing them that it is pulling the plug on its current business model after failing to find enough sales for the research reports, and being unable to sustain the quality of the work that was being produced. As a result, it will be offering reports on its site free of charge and will no longer be paying researchers for their contributions, as it tries to figure out what to do next.
Path Settles With FTC Over Privacy Row, Will Pay $800K And Establish New Privacy Program Including Outside Audits
Path’s 2012 included a major hiccup when it was discovered in February last year that the app uploaded user address books in their entirety to its servers. The company quickly responded by deleting the data and apologizing for the transgression, but the damage was done: The FTC levied charges against the startup, and today the government body has announced the results of those proceedings in the form of a settlement.
Wishpond Launches Eight Twitter Marketing Apps That Borrow Their Look From Twitter
Wishpond is launching a set of eight new apps that bring the startup’s social marketing campaigns to Twitter.
The apps allow businesses to promoted different contests and offers from the Twitter account, such as Photo and Caption contests. I talked to CEO Ali Tajsekandar about the new tools, and it sounds like one of the biggest selling points is the way tehc ontests seem like a natural extension of a business’ Twitter account. Normally, if you’re promoting a contest or offer on Twitter, your followers would have to follow a link to an outside website, which Tajsekandar said can be a jarring experience.
One Week In, Vine Could Be Twice As Big As Socialcam
According to KeyHole analytics, Vine is twice as popular as the next biggest video-sharing app on Twitter, SocialCam, even after being removed from Apple’s featured section after a slight porn incident.
Almost half of the videos on Twitter in the last week came from Vine — approximately 243,000 of them, to be more specific. The next app with video links on Twitter was Socialcam, with 120,000 video links on the world’s briefest social network.
Scene Kids Cry As Streaming Site Stickam Shuts Down
Since 2005, Stickam has been a haven for misfit youth, emo bands, and anyone else in need of a live-streaming video blog channel to share their lives. But at midnight tonight, Stickam will shut down forever. Though it didn’t give a reason, it said “We are very sad to announce Stickam will be closing down” implying it may have simply run out of steam as competitors like YouTube took the spotlight.
Social Ad Tech Platform Glow Raises $1.3M Seed To Expand Into U.S., Beef Up Senior Exec Team
Glow Digital Media, a social ad tech platform that sells services to Facebook advertisers to grow their marketing ROI, has closed a $1.3 million seed funding round. Investors in the round include Project A Ventures and Avonmore Developments. The U.K. startup said it has used the funding to expand into the U.S. — opening a new regional HQ in Los Angeles and hiring four new senior execs.
