Is Cyber Crime Becoming an Agent of Natural Selection for Technologies?

As interesting as the Twitter phenomenon has been, I find it even more interesting how it will likely end.   Many recent articles over the past several weeks have detailed the growing tsunami of Twitter and Facebook attacks (read posts from The Last Watchdog here and Graham Cluley’s blog here) and the seeming helplessness of the respective hosting entities to stop such attacks.  Are we seeing cyber crime becoming an agent in the natural selection of technologies?

I find the Twitter scenario fascinating because my sense is that it will ultimately decline into obscurity with security being the final straw in the process.   While breathlessly following Miley, Demi, Ashton and others was fun for a period and there are those who have found very unique ways to use Twitter for commerce, Twitter to me is the online equivalent of meringue – as in frothy, full of warm air, and of little or no nutritional value.   Others must have come to the same conclusion, because in talking to social media types the sense is that the Twitter fad has most definitely peaked.   Now that attackers are making life in Twitterland so very difficult with their relentless attacks, I believe that the normal cooling off cycle associated with such fads will be highly accelerated. 

But wait you say, aren’t other things such as Facebook and email under relentless attack as well?  Indeed they are, but I think there are real differences based on the perceived value of each technology.  eMail has become a firmly established part of life for most of us, and is a vital cog in commerce and intra- and extra-business communication.  Facebook for many has replaced other forms of communication as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family.  As the father of two teenage boys, I can assure you that Twitter never threatened texting as a means of communication amongst teens.        

So my thesis is that these other communication vehicles like eMail and Facebook have a much higher perceived value than Twitter and therefore are thought to be worthy to be fought for and defended.  Giving up on eMail would have some pretty far reaching consequences on business with a directly detrimental effect on the global economy.  That is why we continue to use eMail in the face of 90 percent-plus spam rates.  Facebook may not be a critical cog in business, but it has enough substance and higher value content to be seen as something of worth by a critical mass of users.  It is such value realities/perceptions that drive conscious decisions to invest time and money into defending the attacks on those technologies.

As for Twitter, do we really want to dump loads of cyber crime expertise and dollars into defending Twitter so we can all have instant access to the keen life insight’s of Paris Hilton?  If Twitter went away completely today, would that have any real and lasting effect on the economy or business productivity? Actually, it may the opposite effect on business productivity.

So in the order of natural selection for technologies, the arrival of cyber crime forces an evaluation of worth for that technology – does it provide enough value to warrant the investment needed to defend that technology.  If the answer is no, then cyber crime was one of, if not the major deciding factor in that technology being selected out.  Left unchecked, cyber crime will eventually choke out the technology and accelerate its demise.    

Of course cyber crime has had no influence on my Twitter experience – I decided Twitter was on the way out when Miley Cyrus closed her account.  Luckily I was able to follow the entire thing on Facebook.