Twitter Tuesday - the accept bug, the Twitter Business Center and more

Filed under: Features, Web services, Social Software, Microblogging

What a topsy-turvy week it's been for Twitter! The service saw the biggest, strangest exploit in its short history, and revealed plans for its new Business Center. Of course, there are also apps and third-party services to talk about. And, on the lighter side of things, a Japanese man used Twitter to get out of an embarrassing bathroom situation. We'll cover all this and more in this week's Twitter Tuesday!

Okay, here goes ...

First, more details on the huge exploit that temporarily allowed users to make any account follow them by tweeting "accept @username." It was only working for an hour or two after it became public knowledge on Monday, but this trick had been around for a while. As it turns out, a Turkish user discovered the bug by accident when he was tweeting out his love for a metal band called Accept. Gizmodo reports that they received a tip about the bug from a friend of this Turkish metal fan, and didn't believe it at first.

Basically, Twitter had to scramble to roll back everyone's followers -- with everyone temporarily listed at 0 followers! -- because a guy liked an obscure band. Why would Twitter leave such a massive vulnerability open? Well, the most likely explanation is that it's a Twitter SMS command that wasn't removed from the web version of Twitter. "Accept" is the command that the owners of locked Twitter accounts can use to accept someone's request to follow them. Why it wasn't removed for open accounts (or just removed from Twitter's web version altogether) still isn't clear.

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Twitter Tuesday - the accept bug, the Twitter Business Center and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 11 May 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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