This Site's Dead Anyway: Twitter DDoS Overlooks MySpace, Does an Attack Signal a Site's Relevancy?

Yesterday, if you were searching for a short-form, self-indulgent way to describe what you had for breakfast, you were shit out of luck. Basically, the Internet's most popular social networking sites broke. Web sites that were down yesterday included:

Facebook, Livejournal, YouTube, Google, and the one that got the most spotlight, Twitter. (Gizmodo and Xbox Live were also down for those that are all about being thorough.) What's missing?

MySpace.

Reuter's blogger Alexei Oreskovic called the fact that the L.A. based social networking site was left out of the attacks a "stinging slap in the face."

He continued, "Perhaps the malefactors didn't deem MySpace a target worthy of attention. MySpace's popularity has waned at a time when Facebook and Twitter have experienced massive user growth."

Since when does a DDoS attack signal a site's relevancy (and not the predilections of a bunch of assholes with bots)?

Perhaps theory behind the attacks postulated by CNET's Elinor Mill's offers a better explanation, in that the attacks were all focused on one Georgian blogger, Cyxymu, and were in retaliation for his blogging about the one year anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war.

What Reuter's overlooked is that user Cyxymu did not have an account on MySpace, which may or may not be a litmus test of the site's influence. Judging from Cyxymu's latest tweets, he wasn't using Twitter for the kind of hard-core rabble rousing that deserved a Denial of Service.

Cyxymu's tweets (translated from their original Russian:
@dv0rsky Of course
@1arsz darn! it's not good (in re: Moldovan reporting that original declaration of independence was destroyed in the fire during the riots)
@1arsz Did they really lose it? (same story)
Summer is good!

Whether or not Cyxymu is the sole culprit, the fact that MySpace isn't cool enough for a DDoS, on the heels of Cody Brown's proclaimed death knell to Twitter (in which he calls the microblogging site a "cyber-ghetto" doomed to fail a la MySpace) does not bode well for the homegrown social network, which is now being held responsible for News Corp's fourth-quarter net loss of $203 million announced on Wednesday.

If Cyxmu had been a musician would things have been any different?

With Russia now ComScore's #1 country for social networking usage, maybe MySpace can re-position itself as a safe haven for DDoS prone political bloggers (a.k.a the "cute cat" theory)?

"Social networking has become a popular online pastime not only in mature Internet markets like North America, but also in developing, high-growth Internet markets such as Russia," said Mike Read, SVP and managing director of comScore Europe. "In a country as geographically large as Russia, social networking represents a way of connecting people from one corner of the country to the other. "

We always thought the site looked like a Belarusian disco anyways.

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