Twitter Gets Hacked (Again), Airlines and Twitter Join Forces, Facebook Expands Its Retail Presence, And More

Twitter Hacked Again: This Time Denial-of-Service

Twitter was hacked again Thursday and forced to shut down for hours.  They stated that they were “defending against a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers command scores of computers to access a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through”.

On a light-hearted note, most of us agree never to use the term “twacked” to refer to a Twitter hack.

Airline Twitter Deals: “Twares” and “Cheeps”

Monetizing their Twitter following, the major airlines are offering special discounts and cheap flights sometimes called “Twares” or ”Cheeps” to Twitter followers. These tweet specials are offered by airlines including JetBlue, Southwest, and United Airlines, with JetBlue having the greatest amount of followers.

Facebook Accepting Retail Storefronts

Many or most large retailers have a Facebook fan page, but Facebook is now officially accepting expanded retail presence on their platform.  Facebook now allows vendors to open storefronts, and this opens up Facebook to transaction fees and a new way to monetize the wide reach of its platform.  Sears, 1-800-Flowers, and the T-shirt company Threadless are on the cutting edge of this development.

Bing Keeps On Bing-ing: Bing’s Search Market Share Still On The Rise

Bing’s market share is up to 9.41% in July from 8.23% in June, and combining Yahoo and MSN they would be at 20.36%.

Google lost nearly a percent, leaving them with 77.54% of the search market.

Is Internet Marketing Green?

On a negative and somewhat daunting note concerning our industry, research has found that the internet tech which many intuitively think of as green is in bottom-line analysis harmful to the environment, according to a CNN article, mainly because of energy consumption:

• Research firm Gartner, estimates the manufacturing, use and disposal of information and communications technology generates about 2% of greenhouse gases – that’s a level similar to what the entire aviation industry produces.
• Hidden Cost of Spam:  Antivirus giant McAfee reports that bulk mail spam emails aren’t just annoying, but have an environmental cost:  The electricity required simply for the transmission of the trillions of annual spam emails is equal to the amount of electricity used to power 2,000,000+ homes while also producing the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 3,000,000+ cars.
• Bad to Worse: Studies estimate internet activity will produce 20% of the world’s greenhouse gases in the next decade.

If you’re interested in learning more about what Rocket Clicks can do for your pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, or law firm marketing, please check out our PPC services and SEO services or schedule a quick audit today. 

Sources:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/169831/twitter_still_struggling_to_recover_from_dos_attack.html

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Fly-on-the-Cheep-with-Twitter-52404847.html

http://www.examiner.com/x-13133-Columbia-Internet-Marketing-Examiner~y2009m8d4-Tweet-the-friendly-skies-for-a-cheap-Twitter-tware

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7a8825a-8129-11de-92e7-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/bing-gains-1-market-share-in-july-googles-share-goes-down/12254/

http://m.cnn.com/cnn/ne/science_tech/detail/329362