Twitter fails the uptime test

Twitter experienced almost twice as much downtime as its rivals last year

Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter experienced more downtime than any other social networking site last year, clocking up over 80 hours, according to new research from application delivery firm Akamai.

The firm's quarterly State of the Internet report found that Twitter experienced nearly twice the amount of downtime as its rivals in the social networking space, with 84 hours in 2008.

LinkedIn came in second with 45.8 hours, while Facebook came 11th with just 7.2 hours.

The figures could force corporate users to think twice before relying on these primarily consumer-focused tools for work purposes.

The news also comes hot on the heels of yet another Twitter security scare, when security researchers found spam being sent from fake accounts on the site.

The Akamai report also listed some interesting findings on broadband speeds, with the UK failing to make the top 10 of countries with the largest percentage of 5Mbit/s-plus broadband users.

Despite nearly 20 per cent of global internet users now being able to connect at speeds above 5Mbit/s, the UK languished well below countries such as Latvia, Belgium and Romania, the report found.

South Korea had the highest average broadband speeds, with 69 per cent of connections at speeds over 5Mbit/s, which is a year-on-year increase of seven per cent.

Japan was the second top country, with 54 per cent of users experiencing 5Mbit/s-plus speeds, while Romania was the surprise new entry in third place, improving by a staggering 124 per cent year-on-year to 45 per cent of internet users.

The UK also failed to make it into the top 10 highest average broadband speeds. South Korea once again triumphed in this category, with an average of 15Mbit/s, 10 times the global average. Japan came in second again, with 7Mbit/s, while Hong Kong was edged into third place with 6.9Mbit/s.

However, there was some comfort for the UK, as it did not make it into the top 10 originating countries for attack traffic.

The US came top with 22.85 per cent of traffic observed as attack traffic, which Akamai defines as unsolicited attempts to connect to unadvertised systems. China came second with 19.3 per cent.