Twitter Hacked by Iranian Cyber Army - Where is the real-time conversation?

All social media sites are covering this breaking story:

TWITTER HAS BEEN HACKED.
(maybe it was only a DNS attack, but no one is sure at this point. Most headlines are reading "HACKED")

By whom? A group who calls themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army" (evidently you can e-mail them at iranian.cyber.army@gmail.com (gmail, really?)

(screenshot of http://www.mowjcamp.org/, another hacked site that supports freedom and human rights in Iran)

Twitter is going mad with people talking about it. "Iranian Cyber Army" is the most popular search on Google right now.


I am following over 500 people, mostly located in California and Sydney, Australia. NO ONE is tweeting about this breaking news. Most of the west coast is probably asleep by now (maybe not on a Friday night). But Australians are still tweeting! Maybe it is timing. Again, it is Friday night (just past happy hour here). Most people have left their social media maven tweets at work and are enjoying the social aspect of the technology. But I think this is BIG NEWS.

Twitter's reliability is again being questioned. Mashable asked how it could compete with Facebook with security issues like this. I see a bigger problem. Most of us don't use Facebook and Twitter for the same reasons. That being said, will we continue to use Twitter to share breaking news, or will we find another more secure platform? Is this switch possible? Will Twitter encounter a backlash for yet another site failure? There are many questions people will attempt to answer in the next view days. (Does this mean less talk about the Google Phone?)

While most articles are focusing on the Twitter fail, I am more interested in the effect this will have on politics. Who is the Iranian Cyber Army? What message are they trying to send to the US? I am sure it has to do with #iranelection and using Twitter to share information with the rest of the world. How will the US Government respond to this attack? How will the Iranian Government respond? This story is bigger than some twitterers not being able to update their status for an hour.

But...what if... it is all some stupid prank? After tweeting about it, I got a reply from @IranianCybrArmy who seems to be making light of the whole event. Funny? Not really.

Maybe I am taking this too seriously. Oh no, Twitter is down, it's the end of the world! I'm not one of those people. But I am interested in the role social media plays in politics. If this was a legitimate attack, social media as we know it is about to change.

As I write this blog, the story continues to break. I'm obviously ready and excited for the real-time web. But is everyone else? As soon as I heard about this attack I searched Google for more information. I came across articles from the regular sites (Mashable, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, CNN, and more). Next I checked the trending twitter topics, and "Iranian Cyber Army" was among the top. The tweets are still flowing at high volumes - too high to find any quality information! Real-time curation is definitely needed. How can we find the gems when they don't make it on Google's front page and they are lost among thousands of tweets? I am looking for information on who the Iranian Cyber Army is, but I might wait until the experts report on their research in the morning.

Here is the real-time challenge: can we have a conversation while the story is unfolding? I started a "fyre" on LiveFyre, a place for real-time conversations on articles, blogs, multimedia, and other content. The site launched less than 2 weeks ago, so my discussion isn't going anywhere at the moment (also because it's the middle of the night for most users). LiveFyre is a great way to discuss topics in real-time. What I find so great about it is that it allows you to write 300 character comments, making it much easier to get important points across than with Twitter. You still have the ability to send updates to Twitter and Facebook, but it doesn't require you to bombard your stream with the conversation as other live chats do. Another great feature is "breakout" streams, allowing users to continue a discussing a related topic. There are many things to discuss about the Twitter attack, we just need to get it started!

Come join the conversation on LiveFyre. Let's utlise this real-time technology to discuss meaningful topics that are unfolding as we type.

Social Media Campaigns or Conversations?

Is your company or organisation flocking to social media because it seems like "the place to be?" While it is great that they see the need for an online presence, it is important that they approach the online community strategically. The social web is not just another channel to broadcast messages to a group of people. It gives you the opportunity to engage with your audience by allowing them taking part in the conversation. How can you expect them to listen when you are not listening to them?

Social media is an effective way to reach your audience. But just like any other communication strategy, it needs to be carefully planned and executed to its full extent.

Great, you're ahead of the game. You created a Facebook page, secured your Twitter ID, and even established a hashtag. Now what?

TAKE A STEP BACK.

Think about what you are trying to achieve. What are your goals? Who is your target audience? How can you get them involved?

If you are starting to learn about social media and need some direction, check out this slide show from brand infiltration. They tell it how it is, with no additional fluff:

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Below I examine two social media campaigns that I feel could have been carried out more effectively. If they had taken the time to communicate with their audience, they would have received higher levels of engagement creating more loyalty towards their brands. Perhaps I should stop referring to the users as the "audience." Jay Rosen calls them "the people formally known as the audience," because social media has enabled them to produce content just as easily as they consume it.

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Case Study 1: Sculpture by the Sea

In their words (copied from their Facebook page), "Sculpture by the Sea is staged on the spectacular 2km Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk in Sydney. The exhibition sites over 100 sculptures from Australian and overseas artists over 3 weeks for an estimated 500,000 visitors."

Sculpture by the Sea has developed an online presence across multiple networks. At the same time, people have produced copious amounts of content about the event. While both parties are sharing information with online communities, there is a lack of interaction between the two.

WHAT THEY DID RIGHT:

• Facebook page with over 1,200 fans (the page was created for last years event).
• Twitter account to share information (over 300 followers)
• Flickr Group for Sculpture by the Sea photos (275 members, 2 years old)
  
• Established a hashtag to be used for Twitter and Flickr (#sxsbondi)
• Added links on their homepage to inform people of their online presence

WHAT THEY COULD HAVE DONE BETTER:

• Facebook: Over 1,200 fans is a decent number. But when 500,000 people are expected to visit the event (and I'm sure the majority of them are on Facebook), the page could be more active. Even without more fans, Sculpture by the Sea should have taken a more active approach. While they developed a fun voice, their updates were quite sporadic. Some yielded comments, and it would have been great for Sculpture by the Sea to respond to some comments to keep the conversations going. In addition, there are only 86 fan photos, only 2 of which are from this year. If they had sent updates encouraging users to upload their photos, I can safely say they would have generated a large response. For example, take this clipping from the page:

All they would have to do is comment back saying "Great photos! It would be great if you could add these to our Fan page to share your photos on Facebook!"

In addition, they could have created best photo contests, or even just encouraged people to to share their thoughts on their favourite pieces of art.

• Twitter: Following 52 people, and 44 tweets sent out. That pretty much sums it up. If you search twitter for #sxsbondi, you will find 2 pages of results, @sculpturebysea returns 19 tweets, and sculpture by the sea, returns almost 300 tweets! Keep in mind this is only for the past nine days. This is by no means a complete report of tweets about the event, but it gets the point across. If you look at the tweets from @sculpturebysea, you will see that all they are doing is broadcasting information. No @replies, no retweets, and only one or two asking for participation. If they had monitored the topic, they would have seen numerous users tweeting about the event, looking to share their photographs, blogs, and opinions. They could have followed people talking about the event, retweeted user-generated content, and asked the community about their thoughts. This would increase the overall chatter, and would encourage others to continue to share information. In addition, they could have used a social bookmarking site like delicious to aggregate the content. This would be very useful for obtaining future sponsors and would help continue the buzz when the event finished. Lastly, monitoring Twitter is amazing insight into your audience. Take this tweet for example:

This is great insight into a new feature they tried to integrate into Sculpture by the Sea, augmented reality. @sculpturebysea could have responded inquiring about the problems, or even just thanked him for the feedback. By acknowledging the problem the event would gain credibility and could possibly attempt to fix it.

• Flickr: Everyone enjoyed taking photos of Sculpture by the Sea, myself included. There are thousands of photos from the event, taken by amateurs and professionals. While the Flickr group is very active, there are many more users that are not aware of the group, or the sxsbondi tag for that matter. In a search, I found over 3,600 photos that were taken at this year's Sculpture by the Sea, but they were not tagged with sxsbondi. If the event had vocalised the tag through Twitter, Facebook, and more apparently on their website, I believe more photos would be posted, and there would be a more organised collection of content. Overall I think they provided a good space for photosharing, but more collaboration would have enriched the experience.

There are a few additional steps I would take to make the event more interactive online.

• Continued emphasis of hashtag throughout all mediums - this helps in aggregating the content and provides consistency when searching for information. I would also argue that it fosters a sense of community and ownership by making people want to tag their content with #sxsbondi.
• Use of Google Maps - Google allows users to create custom maps with information and linking content. I would have created a map outlining the route. It would emphasise winning sculptures, bus routes, and other information points. Photos could also be incorporated to show where specific art was located.

As we could see from Twitter, blog, and Flickr posts, the online community will be active about something they are interested in regardless of the affiliated organisation. BUT... if the organisation takes the extra step to engage the community, they will develop a better reputation, create more buzz, and learn from the insight of the users.

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Case Study 2: CollegeScholarships.org - A Twitter Scholarship

Synopsis of the Organisation: "The College Scholarships Foundation is the non-profit entity behind the scholarships provided here on this site. This foundation offers many varieties of funding such as traditional scholarships for minorities and women, while also introducing popular offers such as the First Ever Blogging Scholarship."

As a pioneer in social media scholarships, @scholarship decided to create a "Twitter Scholarship." The guidelines are simple. Send a tweet on the following topic: "In 140 characters or less, write a Tweet highlighting how we can use Twitter to improve the world." Then send them an @reply with a link to the tweet, and use the #scholarship hashtag (which is evidently used by others as well).

Simple enough. Right?

Originally, the scholarship was worth $14,000!!! That should get everyone applying. The winner would be getting paid $100 a character! So the entries started rolling in...or did they?

Only a few days after announcing the competition, @scholarship was "underwhelmed" by the number of entries. They released a blog explaining their efforts, along with their decision to decrease the scholarship to $1,400 for first prize.

While they said they aggressively promoted the scholarship, I beg to differ. Here were their actions:

• making a custom logo for it
• promoting it across hundreds of pages on our widely read site
• mentioning it on our blog
• pinging some of our contacts in the industry and emailed a few bloggers about it
• promoting it on Twitter
• and we even went as far as buying Google AdWords ads to help get the word out

And how did they promote the Twitter scholarship on Twitter?


One tweet.

Let's take a look at their Twitter stats:

• When the announced the scholarship, they had 231 followers
• They are following 5 users
• They have 29 tweets
• Majority of tweets are broadcast oriented
  

Last time I checked, that isn't going to get the message to many Twitter users. I believe they should have researched the community before jumping into unknown territory. Here is how I would have approached it:

• Research the community. Find out how many college students are on Twitter, and how they are using it.
• Look into other online communities. A good resource for them would have been 20 Something Bloggers, a ning network of exactly that, 20 something bloggers.
• Find and reach out to other scholarship and college oriented sites that are on twitter. Engage in conversation with them and contribute by retweeting relevant articles.
• Use Twitter to promote the College Scholarship Blog, and encourage comments on the posts. (and respond to those comments!)
• Create a Facebook page - find college students where they are already spending a majority of their time, and interact with them there.

Once they establish their brand and voice on the networks, THEN release the scholarship. People will be more willing to spread the message, especially if they already have a connection. If they make this an annual scholarship, hopefully they will be a part of the community before they try to get people to participate.

Sidenote/Disclosure: I learned about this scholarship through a tweet. The tweet was regarding a case study where a social media campaign failed. Of course I was intrigued by the study, and spent some time crafting my response to the scholarship. Luckily for me, I understand the social web and the power of twitter, and won first place with this tweet:

Social Media Club Question of the Week: Who to trust? Verifying social media information

Social Media Club asked their 15th question this week keeping in mind the protests regarding the Iran Election.

#SMCQ15 How do you know who to trust within the social media environment?

Listen to the Question of the Week Podcast to hear to the discussion. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

I have been watching CNN a little too religiously over the past few days, trying to stay up to date on the Iran election protests. CNN is using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to report what is happening on the ground because journalists have been forced to stop reporting. Many of the photos and videos being shown are said to be unverified, but the content still broadcasted over CNN and will interpreted as news by money. The CNN news reports often refer to tweets tagged #iranelection and read tweets from the last 30 seconds or minute. Obviously CNN is not checking the facts of these tweets coming in every few seconds, and I believe that can be misleading to people uniformed about Twitter and the situation at hand.

Does content gain credibility when it is retweeted? If so, I agree with @ChrisHeuer when he said that we need to critically analyze the information, look back in their tweets, and try to check their sources. I found some videos on YouTube of building explosions in Tehran, and they had low views. Was this original footage? I contacted the user to see if he was in Tehran, and he responded that he was in Italy and resubmitting videos to help share them online. He also has a blog where he said he gets information from “trusted people,” but I am still unclear of his credibility. The information from his blog is written in English, Italian, and large sections of Farsi (translated page here). Even if it is not accurate, some of the Farsi translations are powerful words. Share this site with others, and please let us know if you find out if it is a trustworthy source.

I have joined the conversation by sharing articles and content online, and I changed my avatar to green to show my support for Mussavi and citizens of Iran. At first I was watching because of the use of social media, but didn’t want to take a stance until I investigated the history of Iran and its people. I agree with Mussavi and his politics, and I support my generation and their efforts to make sure their voices are heard and votes counted.

#IranElection: A Cyber Revolution?

I recently completing a paper on the use of social media as a backchannel in natural disasters and political action (to be posted later), and I finished reading Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. My timing, unfortunately, couldn’t have been set up better. Footage of the current protests surrounding the Iran Election are all over CNN – but this isn’t your mainstream video being shown to the world. It is video made by the citizens of Iran, because the Iranian government has shut down foreign media and are censoring what is being shown on their networks. But thanks to information communication technologies and social media, the world has been able to see what is really going on. Pictures submitted by citizen journalists show the streets packed with people, everyone with their phones or cameras high in the air, trying to capture the event to share it with the rest of the world.

The Iranian government has been working to block these social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and now they have blocked internet access, SMS, and soon the phones as well. Iranian protesters are working to report the event while keeping their identities anonymous, afraid of what may happen to them if they are caught. People in other countries are trying to help, as Twitter users change their locations and profiles to confuse the government. As reported on CNN, Internet users outside of the US are sending proxies to people in Iran to give them fake IP addresses that place them outside of Iran. The grassroots efforts that often stem from cyber citizens are working hard combat the government’s efforts to censor the images coming out of Tehran, really turning this into a sort of “cyber war.”

This is not the first time information communication technologies (ICT), social media, or smart mobs have helped spread messages of political activism or shared breaking news with the world. This is one of the first times however, that social media and citizen journalism (or reporting) has become a leading source of information regarding the status of people on the ground in Tehran.

The first time I saw the real power of citizen journalism, whether it was meant to be or not, was after the US Airways flight landed in the Hudson River. The Twitpic of the plane in the water, with passengers standing on the wing, instantly had tens of thousands of views within a few hours. I realized at that point that technology is affecting how we see the world, and how we spread messages through massive networks. This is only one small example of how ICTs are used as a back channel. Hurricane Katrina, the Southern California Wildfires, and even the Seattle World Trade Organization protest. While many people use Facebook and Twitter mainly for social means, soon it will be hard to avoid learning about current events through social media sites. That’s where I first learned about the Hudson River landing in the first place!

While I don’t have very much background on the Iranian election and I don’t want to make assumptions, I do believe the government doesn’t have the right to censor the protest. The police are being very brutal, which has led to disturbing videos of the violence that is occurring. If the Iranian Government thinks that after the protests the problem will just go away, they have another thing coming to them. The protests have been documented and broadcasted to the world, and it will not be forgotten. This is not the last time social media and ICTs will have an impact on political action and natural disasters, and it is the job of scholars (hopefully me some day!) to study the information citizens are sharing and figuring out ways to be more prepared for the next event. The beauty of the Web is that all of this information is archived, and it will be available to analyze for further studies.

To view photos, videos, or information about the #IranElection, check out www.ireport.com or search #IranElection in google, but I must warn that many of the photos and videos are extremely graphic. The web doesn’t have to be censored, so we are really seeing the real picture.