Twitpic is a program that lets Twitter users share photos, but it is not owned by Twitter.
(Credit: Twitpic)
It seemed like celebrity deaths were contagious last week. After the sad news about Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon dying, a wave of viral death notices went out on Twitter for Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Goldblum, and P. Diddy. But all are safe and sound.
"Britney has passed today," the bogus tweet announced on Sunday. "It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come."
The message was immediately taken down and Spears' staff tweeted that her account was hacked into and that, "She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing."
Similar messages were put up on the other celebrities' accounts, says Mashable, a social-media news site. They believe hackers got access to these celebrities' Twitter accounts through Twitpic, a program that lets Twitter users share photos but is not owned by Twitter. To post to Twitpic, users can e-mail a photo with a subject line, put in their PIN, and the post will be immediately tweeted.
According to The Associated Press, once discovered, the morbid tweets were taken down and Twitpic temporarily shutoff part of its service, announcing they were "implementing a fix immediately."
Twitpic fixed this vulnerability by Monday and in an apology letter explained that the hackers tried every PIN combination possible until one worked. Now, Twitpic says a "fix has been put in place to prevent this from happening," and that less than 10 users were affected by the hack and "no account information was compromised."
This isn't the first time Spears' Twitter account has been toyed with. At the end of April, a hacker got access to a Twitter administrator password by guessing the secret question to reset the password and broke into Spears' and other celebrities' accounts.
CNN gained nearly a million Twitter followers on Wednesday when it acquired the @cnnbrk Twitter account.
The account, the largest on Twitter with more than 947,000 followers, had been maintained and nurtured by James Cox. CNN did not disclose financial details of the acquisition, probably because rules at the microblogging site prohibit the selling of Twitter accounts.
The acquisition comes as the race to 1 million Twitter followers heats up. As of Wednesday afternoon, Ashton Kutcher was in second place with 917,000 followers, followed closely by Britney Spears, who has about 913,000 followers.
Kutcher publicly challenged CNN to a race to 1 million users on Tuesday in a video posted to Qik.com.
"I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter," Kutcher said. "And so I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner--because I don't think it's gonna happen."
CNN accepted Kutcher's challenge Tuesday on the "Larry King Show."
Kutcher, who is best known as star of TV's "That '70s Show" and husband of actress Demi Moore, has said he will donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day if he is first to 1 million followers.
Meanwhile, game publisher Electronic Arts is getting in on the action, promising to put Kutcher's 1 millionth follower in a future EA game and give that person a copy of every game EA produces in 2009--but only if Kutcher beats CNN to the million-follower mark.
Ashton Kutcher campaigns for 1 million followers on his Twitter page.
(Credit: CNET)
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