Denizens of a couple of social networks were faced with quitting cold turkey when attacks on an eastern European blogger took down the sites upon which they have come to rely for contact with friends and relatives.

Both Twitter and Facebook were down more than they were up for most of the day as the popular networking sites were caught up in a denial-of-service attack on a pro-Georgian blogger on the first anniversary of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. The main target appeared to be his account on Twitter, which was completely down for some periods, but Facebook was also severely compromised for long periods of time.

The Georgian blogger, known just as Cyxymu and whose real name is Giorgi, blamed the problems on Russia. The year-long conflict between Russia and Georgia has been the primary focus of his blog for the past year and he has gained some powerful enemies in Russia. Giorgi said, “An attack of such a scale would cost a huge amount of money. This is why I think that some structures in Russia are behind this. … It is not clear to me why I was targeted, but the fact that this attack happened proves that I’ve been doing something important. On my blogs I have been writing about Russia’s preparations for the war, what was happening on August 7 last year and how the war started.”

More startling than the occurrence itself was the reaction of people who were unable to get their Twitter or Facebook fixes for a day or so. Many of them sounded more like someone had denied them their crack cocaine and not just access to a social networking site. A CNN article detailed the reactions of a few users, some of which are quoted below:

I was pretty upset, actually. It feels like a lifeline for me … Pretty much everyone knows almost every detail of my life by what I’m doing on Twitter

Horrors!!! People will have to communicate face to face!

I did absolutely nothing. It’s like my heart was gone.

I felt so empty inside.

Don’t panic. Have a backup plan, and be prepared.

Better yet, give some consideration to actually living a life complete with non-virtual contact with non-virtual people. Social networking can be a wonderful adjunct to a full life. But when it becomes your whole life, when you have more interaction with people on Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, and MySpace than you do with people in real life, you know that may well have reached a serious stage of psychosis and might want to ratchet down your social networking a little.

Related:

Entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm under Blogosphere, Hacking, Internet, Politics, Social Media.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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