Twitter down from attack
Twitter was down around the globe for at least two hours today after being hit by a denial-of-service attack. By 8:16am in California, the site was back up for most US users. Less than an hour later, Twitter was again working in the UK.
Denial-of-service attacks overload websites with meaningless requests for data in order to slow them down, or take them offline altogether. Read more
Facebook’s adolescence
If Silicon Valley technology companies go through something like the stages of life, then Facebook is in its adolescence — growing quickly, and struggling to find its identity.
That it is rapidly bulking up is no longer in question. The latest figures from comScore show Facebook to be the fourth-largest site in the world, with a 340m unique visitors, trailing only the sites of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Facebook has added 208m visitors in the past year, a 157 per cent growth rate that has allowed it to surpass MySpace, Amazon and Wikipedia. Read more
Online ad spending falls again, will keep at it
Online advertising spending fell 5 per cent in the second quarter to $13.9bn from the same period a year earlier, research firm IDC said Wednesday, with the more developed US market declining even more, by 7 per cent.
It marked a second consecutive period of declines, and IDC said that there will likely be between two and four more quarters of the same. In the US, classified advertising dropped 17 per cent in the latest quarter, display ads fell 12 per cent, and search ads held up relatively well, allowing Google to post slight growth. Asia bucked the trend and showed an overall increase in online ad spending. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
