9th
Tweep Napped
Twitter, like other social networks, has seen a massive emergence of applications outside its own walls (though Twitter’s support apps are a lot more useful than those of other social networks). Many of these applications like tweetdeck, tweetbeep or bit.ly are awesome tools for anyone looking to get the most out of Twitter, but they all come with a risk. In order for these applications to work, users are required to enter their Twitter username and password. One unfortunate student in my social media class experienced firsthand the ugly side of what can happen with one of these applications if the developer has plans other than building a great resource site.
TwitterCampus seemed like an amazing idea: connect college students using Twitter in a single directory. This looked like a fantastic application that I and my students readily signed up for, dutifully entering in our handles and passwords. One of my students, named Max had over 700 followers, which probably made him the most followed person on TwitterCampus. These 700 tweeple were apparently too good to pass up for the developer of TwitterCampus, so he took Max’s handle and password, accessed his account, changed the handle and password to his own, instantly taking over Max’s hard earned 700 followers.
Max has since contacted Twitter representatives who told him there is nothing they can do. The lesson from this: Be very careful to check out an outside application before you hand over your handle and password.
An interesting note to this tail is that my entire class got behind Max, wrote the developer and posted on what happened - as of right now http://twittercampus.com is a blank page.
