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By Laton McCartney
Now that Twitter Inc., the privately funded, San Francisco-based real time short messaging service is beginning to at least look at business apps —and ways of generating revenue—it has been beset by some significant security problems.
"If you're interested in the details of this weekend's worm attacks we have chronicled them here on our company blog," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told CIOZone.
"On a weekend normally reserved for bunnies, a worm took center stage," Stone wrote in his blog, noting that Twitter experienced four worm attacks.
This particular worm was reportedly created by a bored teenager, one Mike Money, and is currently generating thousands of spam messages containing the word "Mikeyy".
"Please note that no passwords, phone numbers, or other sensitive information was compromised as part of these attacks," Stone noted on his blog. "We are still reviewing all the details, cleaning up, and we remain on alert. Every time we battle an attack, we evaluate our Web coding practices to learn how we can do better to prevent them in the future. We will conduct a full review of the weekend activities. Everything from how it happened, how we reacted, and preventative measures will be covered."
In its three years in existence, Twitter has raised $55 million in venture funding, most recently $35 million in February from Venture Partners and other VCs. It also just hired its first staffer to focus on revenue. Anamitra Banerji, former director of ad product marketing and management at Yahoo. Banerji is researching how businesses use Twitter to figure out which new features they would find most valuable and come up with ways of generating revenue.
To date Twitter has yet to announce a business model. While it is being used by several companies such as Salesforce.com it still isn't creating revenue, presumably a prerequisite if it is to develop into a successful company that, as its Website notes, "attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business."
In recent weeks rumors have swirled that Twitter is being courted by Google and Microsoft, but several analysts have noted that until Twitter can figure out how to turn its service into a money maker, a deal by either company will not make sense.
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