The accounts of 55,000 Twitter users have been hacked and the usernames and passwords copied into Pastebin. The hack is the largest in the service’s history, and required five pages on Pastebin to leak all the data. Twitter have said only that they are looking actively at the situation.

The ease with which the service could be penetrated could make users, and potential users, more cautious of using it, although I believe the idea was to highlight security flaws as opposed to anything more malicious. As AirDemon point out, this could have easily been avoided, by guiding people to use more secure passwords when they signup as is common practice on many websites, and encouraging regularly password changing. Twitter has always emphasised how easy it is to sign up and start posting, but this has left its users’ data vulnerable.
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Interesting piece from 10,000 Words blog looking at how the The Wall Street Journal is using Facebook’s Timeline tool to cover Facebook’s initial public offering.

The WSJ has created a special Facebook page that lays out the IPO and tells the story of Facbook. Read More »

In the last week, the latest Google algorithm ‘Penguin’ has come into force, looking to eradicate websites that break search best practice rules.  However, Google has been forced to admit teething problems with the update after it received complaints from legitimate companies that had been removed from search rankings as a result of the changes. Read More »

Rovio Mobile the Finnish firm behind Angry Birds has revealed that the games have now been downloaded more than a billion times.

Rovio is currently thought to be working on a follow up to Angry birds to be released in the Summer.

As as well as the one billion downloads as many as 12 million Angry Birds apps have been bought from the app store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdTZOFeWiTI&feature=player_embedded