As the hack-prone Twitter website was again rendered unusable by a serious security flaw today Twitter users were quick to vent their anger and frustration…on Twitter itself.
With terms such as Twitter got hacked and Security Flaw still trending at the time this post is being written it seems that the microblogging service can’t even fail without users tweeting its demise.
According to Google search results terms relating to the hack began to be tweeted soon after the attack went live this morning. Tweets peaked around 1 o’clock GMT and returned to normal levels following Twitter’s release of a patch at 3 o’clock.
Twitter’s service blog post which reported the patch recorded nearly 6,000 retweets in seven hours, up from 16 for the company’s previous post on monday. Similarly the link monitoring company Backtype.com reports that the blog post received over 10 million impressions in seven hours via Twitter alone. While the social media blog Mashable recorded nearly 20,000 retweets of its article on the issue, which resulted in over 14 million click from Twitter (their previous article recorded just over 500 retweets).
While these figures may seem somewhat ironic they do point to the increasing dependence and only hint at the power one successful, and simple, security breach can have on the lives of thousands of users.