Sites, whether popular or not, going bust after some time is not a singular occurence on the Internet. Wasn't it Technorati that claimed that 90% of all blogs are usually abandoned by their users? Microblogging sites are not an exception. Creating a microblogging site requires more investment than say an internet forum, a wiki or any kind of website (except a full social networking site). In fact, some microblogging sites can only be hosted on their own server(s) which isn't that cheap in the long run (shared hosting is out for such sites)*. Doubt that? Then, are features such as XMPP, Jabber etc given to webmasters on shared hosting accounts? Nope. In fact, from one forum I visited some time back, a question on launching a microblog from shared hosting was raised. But the devs of that particular microblogging script could only recommend virtual private servers as the bare minimum for running their script.
Now let's turn to some African microblogging sites that have since gone under.

Twyka

Twyka.com was a Kenyan microblogging service that ran on the StatusNet software. Basically, it was targeted to people living in Africa and in the diaspora. A few months later after its launch, the service degenerated to a spamnest; it seemed to have been neglected. Terrible! Currently, you can access some of the pages on the site (the legal and documentatuion pages) but the microblogging service is not working.

Naijapulse

A Nigerian microblogging site that started out quite well but presently, one cannot access the site in any way. The site seems to have been suspended by its hosting company.

I know there are so many African microblogs out there that never got to be known and are now dead. Do you know of any?

*Starting out a microblogging site using dedicated scripts such as StatusNet requires your host to provide you with the features I have mentioned here. However, you can start your own microblog cheaply using WordPress' BuddyPress plugin. If it worked for me while using XAMMP then it can work on any shared hosting account.

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Here is an article on how one can improve their writing skills . Now let's apply that to microblogging. To improve one's writing skills for effective tweets/notices/updates requires:

1. Practice.
2. Practice.
3. Practice.
4. Practice and,
5. More practice.

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Twitter has its own URL-shortening service called t.co that was launched 2 months ago. And this news is from an email update sent to its users (you know the "inner scoop"); I just got it some 2 weeks ago. Here is how the service is described by the Twitter team:

"In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant."

Back then, Twitter allowed a number of URL-shortening services that could be used by its users. The main purpose for such services was to to reduce a long URL string to a form that had fewer characters. Twitter used to allow a URL string of up to 40 characters to be displayed in its entirety but with the advent of these services, users saw a benefit in having shorter links in their 140-character-constrained tweets.
The first URL-shortening service to be used by Twitter was the TinyURL service. With this service anyone could shorten a link that was more than 40 characters. But Twitter dropped the service later and then chose the bit.ly service that strips the long URLs to 26 characters. Other URL shortening services can now be used on the site such as Google's goo.gl service.
Facebook's Twitter bridge appends a shortened link to a shared status update but this only occurs when the status update is longer than the 140 character limit of a tweet. The link usually has the format http://fb.me/xxxxxx that points to the particular status update on the Facebook page. NB: Facebook does not offer URL-shortening services.

Whether this service will be a game changer   in the long run is a matter that should be left to the test of time.

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4 weeks or so have passed since news about scams on Facebook broke out in cyberworld. Here is one such scam and it's quite funny that the scammers were using Facebook Pages to transmit their payload: Facebook clickjacking scam. This has exposed the latest trend in cyber attacks: the use of social networking sites as channels through which hackers can spread their payloads to unsuspecting people. Through use of social engineering, hackers can “tune” you - and I- into their nefarious schemes (fishing of pawns or what?).

One way through which hackers on social networking sites are using is through posting of links pointing to a site containing some malware. Next, they go out and get some users from the network to visit that particular application or website. And, poooof, users end up having their computers compromised; may be their computers will end up being botnets used for spamming purposes or they might lose all their data on their computers after some virus has done its stuff.

Since microblogging sites are social networks too, there can never lack some persons who are out to use them to carry out their dirty schemes. So what does this require? It requires that you should be proactive. By the way, most social networking sites do not offer any form of indemnity in situations where some people have incurred damage from hackers on their sites; their TOS pages say so.

How to take care of yourself

 Here are some few tips that you can you use to prevent attacks from hackers on microblogging sites or any other social networking site:

1. Do not trust every URL posted on the site. If you got some gut feeling that a particular URL points to some suspicious site, you can:

a. Do a Google search for that particular site. Check out reviews on other sites about that particular site.

b. Many microblogging sites use URL shortening services. Twitter’s bit.ly service may not offer one much information on the particular site to which the URL is pointing to (here is an entry on Wikipedia about criticisms of URL shortening) but Identi.ca’s url.ca service displays the entire URL whenever you hover the cursor on the truncated form.

2. Have an up-to-date antivirus installed on your computer. An antivirus program does offer protection even when you are surfing. It can nick any little phoney program that tries to load itself on to your computer.

3. Cross check the site with online databases on malicious sites such as StopBadware (http://stopbadware.org) and Google’s Malware Sites databases.

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Nairobi-stique

!nairobistique If Thika Greens and other upcoming estates pop up on the outskirts of #Nairobi, then the rich will move of of town. Who will move into the vacuum created?

!nairobistique A spat between 2 Kenyan mobile phone behemoths happened yesterday. And the spat is all around one company dropping its call charges between the companies' networks.

Mann Connect

!mannconnect !mannconnectfans If you are a Kenyan in the diaspora and know about Mashada Forums, the online community site for Kenyan affairs, it would come as a surprise when Google slaps a "This site may harm your computer" label on it. But surprise, surprise, that is what I have just seen right now. And that brings up the issue of black-hat hackers again!!

 !mannconnect I t just seems that Kenya Power is having a hard time on Twitter (Twitter profile name is @kenyapower). Me thinks even though the company has failed us so much, it has to weather the attacks and show its caring side. What about using Twitter to apologise for those accidental interruptions or announcing scheduled power interruptions? Someone seems to have an idea of how KPLC should use Twitter: http://www.socialightmediakenya.com/kplc-debuts-twitter.

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