Twitter Virus And WP To Twitter Problems?

Poor Twitter! While many users may complain and carry on about how crap and unreliable Twitter is, I feel sorry for the guys trying run it, or a better way to say it might be “stay on top” of it.

At the beginning of the month (September 2010), Twitter made some changes to it’s API function – meaning that 3rd party applications that didn’t make adjustments would stop working.

So if you were wondering why your WP blog plugins like Twitter tools or WP to Twitter stopped sending tweets automatically, that’s why. I guess they are getting sick of automated syndication clogging up their site.

And if getting that sorted wasn’t enough to deal with, just today when I logged in to Twitter’s web interface, I was struck by the nasty Twitter exploit/hack/virus thing that posts a strange string of hyper-linked gibberish to your twitter automatically.

Apparently, your account can be “infected” and over-run by this virus thing just by mousing over the link that it has injected into one of your followee’s tweet.

As far as I know, there is not a threat to your account or PC…thank goodness!

News just in: Twitter tells us this morning’s security vulnerability has been “fully patched and is no longer exploitable” – thanks to http://twitter.com/mashable

But can you imagine the guys at Twitter trying to catch that thing? What a webmaster’s nightmare!

So what can you do to keep using Twitter to help automate your business and use it with peace of mind?

I have been using Twitter Feed to post blog updates to Twitter automatically for a while and just changed over a couple more blogs to it today. They use RSS feeds from the blogs instead of the API system. It still works (for now) so try it out – it’s free and works like a charm.

And to avoid Twitter hackers hi-jacking your account, it’s recommended to use 3rd party applications like Tweet Deck or Hootsuite. With these apps, you can manage your Twitter and other social site profiles easily while keeping the viruses and attacks out.

All the best,

Stu “Sensei” Stirling

1 thought on “Twitter Virus And WP To Twitter Problems?”

  1. There is so many differing thoughts on design and style that it really is impossible to please anyone regrettably…

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