Twitter is failing despite bright minds and millennials

Image Credits: REUTERS

By Nash David /  01 Nov 2016 , 15:33

The market today is dominated by millennials. They have short attention spans. If there’s an industry report out there, it would highlight changing consumer patterns that in a big way justified the rise of social media networks such as Twitter. 140 characters, no nonsense. Makes perfect sense.

Ideally, if these reports did make sense, and Twitter appealed to the current demographic profile online, it should’ve been a runaway success. But reality is very different. Facebook seems to rule the social media world. Even Instagram, despite being late entrant with a focus on visual expression is more successful than Twitter.  So what is it, that didn’t work with Twitter?

Twitter and Facebook on the stock market are poles apart. Image: Google Finance

Reports could be bollocks

That’s a quick way to analyse the developments. Research folks come up with reports that present a case for a immense business potential and opportunity. Twitter began at a time when consumers still used the text messaging service on mobile devices. Data consumption blew to proportions beyond expectations. Till the day we could very comfortably say that SMS is dead. Services such as WhatsApp and other OTT services clearly have surpassed SMS in terms of use. The primary reason is telcos continued to charge on SMS per message. In the age of the Internet, there’s no real reason to use it, unless you’re one of those weight-loss businesses who needs to spam 200 users daily. But then, you’d probably exploit the FUP on SMS anyway.

Ex Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

Failure top down

I remember BlackBerry and Nokia. Both were company with a vast fan following. And there’s no doubt, their current situation is all thanks to failure on part of the respective leadership. This seems to be the case with Twitter. And the cracks seem to have developed a couple of years ago. First, the then CEO Dick Costolo resigned. Soon after there were a couple of reports when Twitter ended up laying off employees in tranches. Since investor sentiment is critical, most of these developments are hushed. Today, the VP of APAC at Twitter, Rishi Jaitly, said he was moving on to newer opportunities.

A huge list comprising alumni from the likes of Google were employees at Twitter. They certainly don’t come cheap. They probably are very capable bright minds and skilled in their respective fields. Yet, the exodus of people at Twitter continues. Either they’re asked to go, or they’d simply start looking out for new opportunity. Like Jaitly, they may sugar coat it with ‘new opportunity, same mission.’

21h

Rishi Jaitly @rsjaitly

Building/leading @TwitterIndia, and expanding @TwitterMediaacross Asia Pacific & Middle East, was the leadership experience of a lifetime.

 Follow

Rishi Jaitly @rsjaitly

Today, after 4 years of user/business momentum in India & the region, I’m sharing my intention to move on to new opportunities, same mission

4:01 AM - 1 Nov 2016

 
•  2626 Retweets
 
•  9393 likes

It’s natural. It’s happened at BlackBerry, Yahoo, Nokia, and almost every company that has eventually sold off or wound up.

Image Credits: Reuters

The struggle to stay relevant

I can’t help but reiterate how instead of thriving, Twitter is fighting a battle to stay relevant. On Twitter, the vocal crowd is now indifferent to the medium itself. There used to be a time when social media debates got vocal. Those in favour of Twitter would look down at those who preferred Facebook. Both are indifferent now. It’s kind of clear. Numbers matter right?

Facebook rules the game when it comes to number. Be it earnings from advertising, or sheer users, Facebook has an edge at any given point in time. The newer innovations at Twitter were supposed to be live video via Periscope, or short looping video which came in the form of Vine. After flirting for a long while, Twitter has dumped Vine. And is curious with Periscope. While Facebook seems to have nailed it with Live.

That’s video. In addition, when it comes to advertising, brands can’t do much with Twitter beyond sponsored trends, sponsored tweets and may be a few cards here and there. Consumers may not necessarily care about any of these, but brands also increasingly plan Twitter into their larger campaigns to have a balance and generate short time buzz. When it comes to consistent driving of sales online, it’s back to the old rules. Anything but Twitter. The next time you browse through Amazon or Flipkart in search of that pair of Nike shoes, you’re more likely to see a follow up ad on Facebook rather than Twitter. And it’s not an isolated preference.

What’s unique about Twitter from a marketers point of view is trends. The only thing brands and advertisers, or communication strategists ever cared about Twitter was Trends. Depending on whether a particular campaign trended in Mumbai, India, or the World, brand executives get a louder pat on their back. No one ever expected a surge in sales via Twitter. Unfortunately, for Twitter, that makes its criticality in the advertisers options just nosedive.

Twitter HQ. Image: Twitter

Twitterati took more than they gave

Twitterati on the other hand, are busy fighting with each other. Right vs left. Democrat vs Republican. Unlike Facebook, again, where we’re busy watching cat and dog videos. Sigh, my Twitter bio says that I love dog videos. But I end up sharing more of those on Facebook rather than Twitter! That explains quite a bit.

Twitter has created quite a few personalities, just like YouTube or Facebook. Similarly, Vine also has a few stars. That’s the service they axed. They retained Periscope for now. But Vine’s gone. A piece in Billboard talks about how Vine stars made a last ditch effort to save the platform turned feature, but in vain.

So the next time someone tells me about millennials and all that this generation stands for as the basis for new business opportunity, I’m going to give them the reference of Twitter as my counter.

Yahoo not to hold Q3 earnings call or webcast

Image: Reuters

  17 Oct 2016 , 15:58

Yahoo Inc said on Friday that it would not hold a call or webcast when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday, citing its pending $4.83 billion deal with Verizon Communications Inc.

Last month, Yahoo disclosed a massive data breach in 2014 that affected at least 500 million of its email accounts.

Verizon soon called it a ‘material event’, which essentially means the company wouldn’t have offered the amount it did, had it known about the data breach earlier. It may also have probably not bid for Yahoo at all. And, this makes it even worse for Yahoo.

According to Cnet, a Verizon spokesman had said “material” finding kills the acquisition, said “the statement stands on its own. Nothing more.” This clearly hints at a possibility of Verizon changing its mind. If this happens, the company may just lose its chance of getting whatever asking price it still can, or simply struggle finding a new buyer. In worse case, there are chances that Verizon may renegotiate the price, and experts believe that Yahoo may have no other choice either.

Verizon reports results on October 20. Companies that are being acquired do not typically hold earnings calls with analysts.

With input from Reuters

Yahoo built software to scan all its customers' emails for US spy agencies

By Rob Thubron on October 5, 2016, 6:15 AM


It seems there’s no end to Yahoo’s problems. Last month, the troubled company admittedthat at least 500 million user accounts had been compromised in a breach that took place in 2014. It claimed “state-sponsored actors” were responsible for the attack, though a security firm disputes this. Now, it’s been revealed that Yahoo secretly built custom software last year that scanned all of its customers’ incoming emails for information provided by US intelligence officials.

The report comes from Reuters’ Joseph Menn, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo was complying with a classified US government request when it created the scanning tool that searched hundreds of millions of user emails at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI. The software was searching for a specific string of characters, though it’s unclear exactly what words or phrases it was looking for and what data, if any, Yahoo handed over to the authorities.

When Yahoo’s internal security team discovered the software, they initial thought it was the work of hackers. Company CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to comply with the demand led to Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos leaving his position to join Facebook in June 2015. Stamos said a programming flaw could have allowed hackers to access the stored emails.

The incident is the first known case of a company agreeing to an agency’s request to scan all arriving emails, rather than probing stored messages or a small number of accounts in real time. "Yahoo is a law-abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States," the firm said

Security analyst says Yahoo!, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Tumblr all popped by same gang Says five-strong 'Group E' may have lifted a billion Yahoo!records, sells to states

30 Sep 2016 at 06:17, Darren Pauli


Five hackers are said to be behind breaches totalling up to a staggering three billion credentials from some of the world's biggest tech companies including the Yahoo! breach that led to the loss of 500 million credentials.

The claims, made to The Reg by recognised threat intelligence boffin Andrew Komarov, pin the world's largest hacks on "Group E", a small Eastern European hacking outfit that makes cash breaching companies and selling to buyers including nation states.

Komarov told The Register the group is behind a laundry list of hacks against massive household tech companies including the breach of Yahoo!, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and VK.com among other public breaches.

The analyst says the same hacking group has breached other major tech firms but would not be drawn on revealing the names of the affected companies nor the number of compromised credentials. Komarov has reported those breaches which are not on the public record to police.

He goes further and says much of the reporting concerning the Yahoo! breach was inaccurate, and suggests the number of affected credentials could be as high as one billion, double what was reported.

Group E had, according to Komarov, breached Yahoo! and sold the massive data haul through a recognised hacker identity who served as a broker.

It was then sold to a unnamed nation-state actor group.

Komarov's employer InfoArmor says it performed "extensive analysis of collected intelligence" from the Yahoo! hack from different sources to "clarify the motivation and attribution of the key threat actors" concluding "many recent press reports and published articles have significant inaccuracies".

Yahoo! last week pinned the breach on a unnamed state actor but did not say if, as Komarov claims, that the group bought the credentials from Group E which conducted the intrusion.

The company did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.


Hacking gangs Group E, For Hell, and broker Tessa88. Mind map by Andrew Komarov.

Komarov tells The Register Group E, so called after the first letter of its leader's moniker, broke into sites using a variety of attack vectors.

"Web apps vulnerabilities and exploitation, plus network intrusion through infection … [and] direct access to databases and source code," Komarov says.

Sites breached by the five-person Group E hacker outfit. Statistics via Andrew Komarov
Breach companyNumber of recordsYahoo! 500 million (up to 1bn)
Myspace 360 million
LinkedIn 167 million
Vk.com 137 million
Qip.ru 133 million
Badoo 126 million
Dropbox 103 million
Rambler.ru 101 million
Tumblr 50 million
LastFM 43 million
Fling.com 40 million
Mobango.com 6 million
Other combined dumps: 600 million


A second group known as "For Hell" used the same broker to sell stolen databases and masterminded other high profile breaches. Komarov says one member known as ROR[RG}) hacked Ashley Madison, Adult Friend Finder, and the Turkish National Police, while a second team mate known as "arnie" or "darkoverlord" conducted breaches of unnamed health care organisations.

Komarov, an established threat intelligence man formerly of Intelcrawler before its acquisition by Arizona-based security firm InfoArmor, is one of a handful of cybercrime intelligence analysts who closely monitor closed crime forums and dark web sites.

He fingers a Russian-speaking criminal hacking identity known as Tessa88 as the broker used by the two hacking groups.

That broker is claimed by hackers including some speaking to Vulture South to be a part-time scammer for selling bogus credentials, although the claims cannot be verified. Komarov says Tessa88 was at pains to mask the identity of the hacking groups when selling the Yahoo! credentials to the nation-state actors.

Security group claims Yahoo hack was not "state-sponsored"

By Rob Thubron on September 29, 2016, 1:30 PM



When Yahoo last week confirmed that 500 million of its accounts had been leaked following a hack that took place in 2014, the company said that state-sponsored actors were behind the attack. But according to an independent security firm, a gang of cybercriminals-for-hire was responsible.

Arizona-based InfoArmor, which provides companies with protection against employee identify theft, released an investigative report claiming there is no evidence that a nation-state stole the data.

Last year, Yahoo became one of several companies, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to say it would alert users who they suspect have accounts that have come under attack by state-sponsored hackers. It has never revealed how it determines this, or what evidence it has to prove the 2014 hack was orchestrated by a government.

Andrew Komarov, InfoArmor’s chief intelligence officer, concluded that the Yahoo hackers were cybercriminals after reviewing a sample of the leaked data. The firm acquired this from “operative sources” as part of an investigation into a five-person criminal gang located in Eastern Europe known as Group E.

“They have never been hired by anyone to hack Yahoo," said Komarov "They were simply looking for well-known sites that had many users […] According to our information, most of the group's clientele are spammers."

Komarov added that Group E has sold the Yahoo data to at least three different clients. One was a state-sponsored party who had an interest in exclusive database acquisition, and the other two were notable criminal gangs who planned to use it for spam campaigns. "We don't see any reason to say that it's state-sponsored. Their clients are state sponsored, but not the actual hackers," Komarov told the Wall Street Journal.

InfoArmor also believes that Group E was behind the high-profile hacks of LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Dropbox.

Senators demand answers from Yahoo over delay in reporting hack attack

 manded that Yahoo Inc explain why hackers’ theft of user information for 500 million accounts two years ago came to light only last week and called the company’s handling of the breach “unacceptable.”

The lawmakers, all Democrats, said they were “disturbed” that the 2014 intrusion, which was disclosed by the company on Thursday, was detected so long after it occurred.

“That means millions of Americans’ data may have been compromised for two years,” the senators wrote in a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer. “This is unacceptable.”

A Yahoo spokesman said the company would respond in a “timely and appropriate manner” to the letter, which was signed by Senators Patrick Leahy, Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden and Edward Markey.

The top US stock market regulator said separately that prompt disclosure by companies of “cyber events” is a priority. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, asked about Yahoo, said she could not comment specifically on it.

She earlier said at a conference that SEC examiners in recent months have been checking that companies comply with 2011 agency guidance stressing the need to disclose hacks.

Yahoo has faced mounting questions about exactly when it knew about the 2014 cyber attack that exposed the email credentials of users, a critical issue for the company as it seeks to prevent the breach from affecting a pending takeover of its core business by Verizon Inc.

The internet firm has said it detected the breach this summer after conducting a security review prompted by an unrelated hacking claim that turned out to be meritless. Yahoo has not given a precise timeline explaining when it was made aware of the 2014 attack, or if it knew of the breach before announcing the deal with Verizon in late July.

In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said her agency supported quick disclosures although she declined to say if the FTC was investigating Yahoo.

“In our view, approximately 30 to 60 days (after a breach is discovered) might be appropriate,” she told the Senate Commerce Committee. “It is necessary for consumers to be notified so they can take appropriate steps to protect themselves.”

In their letter, the senators requested Yahoo brief them on the company’s investigation, cooperation with authorities and plans to protect affected users.

The senators asked Mayer for a timeline of the hack and discovery as well as Yahoo’s steps to prevent another breach.

Yahoo’s shares closed up 2.5 percent at $43.37 each in a broadly bullish market on Tuesday.

The letter came a day after Democratic Senator Mark Warner asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Yahoo and its senior executives fulfilled obligations to inform investors and the public about the hacking attack, which Yahoo has blamed on a “state-sponsored actor.”

The SEC has guidance for companies on reporting hacks, but companies that have experienced breaches often omit details from regulatory filings, a 2012 Reuters investigation found.(reut.rs/2dblx5S)

Reuters

Yahoo Confirms 500 Million Accounts Were Hacked by 'State Sponsored' Hackers

500 million accounts — that's half a Billion users!

That's how many Yahoo accounts were compromised in a massive data breach dating back to 2014 by what was believed to be a "state sponsored" hacking group.

Over a month ago, a hacker was found to be selling login information related to 200 million Yahoo accounts on the Dark Web, although Yahoo acknowledged that the breach was much worse than initially expected.

"A recent investigation by Yahoo! Inc. has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company's network in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor," reads the statement.

Yahoo is investigating the breach with law enforcement agency and currently believes that users' names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, passwords, and in some cases, encrypted and unencrypted security questions-answers were stolen from millions of Yahoo users.

However, the company does not believe the stolen information includes credit card information or any bank details of the affected users.

Yahoo has been criticized for its slow response to the data breach, but it is now in the process of notifying affected customers via emails and asking them to change their passwords, as well as security questions.

At this moment Yahoo did not provide any evidence on why it believed the breach was work of state-sponsored hackers.

Despite millions of people affected by the breach, the biggest victim here seems to be Yahoo itself.

The data breach reports come just as the company is trying to negotiate a deal to sell itself to Verizon for $4.8 Billion. So, if the breach reports negatively impact its share price, even for the time being, it could cost the company and its shareholders a slice of its buyout value.

Over past few months, a large number of data breaches have been reported to plague companies likeLinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, and VK.com as hackers put up for sale massive data dumps of user credentials stolen earlier in the decade.

Change your Password and Use Password Manager

Needless to say, users should immediately change their Yahoo account password. The company will also be prompting anyone who hasn't changed their password since 2014 to do so now.

"Additionally, Yahoo asks users to consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password altogether," Yahoo suggests.

Also make sure that you also change your passwords on other online accounts if they use the same password, and enable two-factor authentication for online accounts immediately.

And once again, a strong recommendation: Don't reuse passwords.

If you are unable to remember different passwords for each site, you can adopt a good password manager that allows you to create complex passwords for various sites as well as remember them for you.

We have recently listed some best password managers that could help you understand the importance of password managers and help you choose a suitable one, according to your requirement