Archive for March 11, 2010

Only 21% of Twitter users are ‘true Twitter users’ according to a new report from Barracuda Networks, does that mean that everyone else a) got bored or b) are hackers?

A true Twitter User as someone who has three main attributes:

·         Has at least 10 followers

·         Follows at least 10 people

·         Has tweeted at least 10 times

The Twitter growth rate spiked at 21.17% in April 2009 due to what is known as the ‘Twitter Red Carpet Era’.

This falls between November 2008 and April 2009 and is the period of time during which a handful of ‘celebrities’ – including 27 of the top 50 and 48 of the top 100 most followed Twitter users – joined.

In the beginning of 2008, Twitter was growing approximately 0.31% per month. By November 2008, that growth increased to 1.95% per month.

After December 2008, Twitter’s growth exploded from nearly two percent per month, and rising to approximately three-to-four percent per month, before finally peaking at nearly 20% per month in April 2009.

At the end of the ‘Twitter Red Carpet Era,’ growth appears to have normalized, dropping back to 0.34% by December 2009.

Barracuda’s 2009 Annual Report, Twitter’s Red Carpet Era – Celebrities and Criminals’, reveals data from three areas: Twitter trends and tracking, Web threats and trends, and email spam and viruses.

The report drills down into 2009’s fastest growing social networking application Twitter, and reviews growth drivers, usage trends and the overall Twitter crime rate.

Barracuda Labs analyzed more than 19 million Twitter accounts, both legitimate and malicious, for frequency and content of tweets, user-to-user interactions, and each account’s overall activity level.

The report also revealed that  49% of Twitter users, and 48 of the top 100 most followed Twitter users, joined during the Twitter Red Carpet Era[2], indicating the significant impact celebrities have on the social networking landscape as they bring their real-world fans over to Twitter.

During the Twitter Red Carpet Era, the Twitter Crime Rate increased 66%  and continued to escalate reaching 12% in October 2009, indicating one in eight accounts created was deemed to be malicious, suspicious or otherwise misused and subsequently suspended.

Social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook provide a perfect opportunity for attackers to find their victims, leveraging what users assume to be a ‘safe’ environment. Attackers employ various techniques to build up their follower list, poison trending topic threads, or initiate other campaigns which can increase the visibility of their tweets, and therefore draw users in to suspicious sites, malicious downloads or other malevolent activity.

As social networks continue to gain momentum – and millions of users – there is no doubt that criminals will look to create more sophisticated and serious social engineering attacks against unsuspecting users.