Twitter: It’s time for patent trolls to bear the costs of frivolous lawsuits

According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)’s 2011 survey, an average patent lawsuit costs between $900,000 to $6,000,000 to defend. In the last month and a half alone, Twitter has received three new patent troll lawsuits.

via Twitter: It’s time for patent trolls to bear the costs of frivolous lawsuits — Tech News and Analysis.

Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API | Twitter Developers

In the coming weeks we will release version 1.1 of the Twitter API. To help you plan ahead, we’re announcing these changes now, before the new version of the API is available. Changes will include:

  • required authentication on every API endpoint
  • a new per-endpoint rate-limiting methodology
  • changes to our Developer Rules of the Road, especially around applications that are traditional Twitter clients.

via Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API | Twitter Developers.

Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint. Based on analysis of current use of our API, this rate limit will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.

Inside the real economy behind fake Twitter accounts

Fake Twitter accounts need some information — an image to use as an avatar, perhaps some bio content, maybe even some tweets. For merchants that need to create an inventory of 20,000 accounts quickly, this simply cannot be done manually

via Inside the real economy behind fake Twitter accounts.

By now, though, even this process has been open sourced. First-page results on a Google search for “program to make fake twitter accounts” return this forum on Freelancer.com, titled “Software create fake twitter users jobs.” There, several development projects are posted for bidding that request a program that grabs information from Twitter users’ accounts.

Open Source | Twitter Developers

Twitter is built on open source software, from the back-end to the front-end. Twitter engineers use, contribute to and release a lot of open source software. We of the Twitter Open Source Program Office support a variety of open source organizations and are grateful to the open source community for their contributions, and want to maintain our healthy, reciprocal relationship.

via Open Source | Twitter Developers.

If you’re interested in the projects we have released, check out our official organization on GitHub.

The underground economy of social networks

In a new study, Barracuda Labs analyzed a random sampling of more than 70,000 fake Twitter accounts that are being used to sell fake Twitter followers.

via The underground economy of social networks.

This underground economy consists of dealers who create and sell the use of thousands of fake social accounts, and Abusers who buy follows or likes from these fake accounts to boost their perceived popularity, sell advertising based on their now large social audience or conduct other malicious activity.