It was sure nice of Twitter to respond to a post on TechCrunch about Twitter being down — again. The question I have is: Where are these updates hours beforehand, when the service is actually down?
I know there are some often vague and usually repetitive updates on the online customer service site Get Satisfaction, but I never check there because I’m not directed to check there by any error message. Judging from the after-the-fact tweets (Twitter messages) from many of my friends and followers, they don’t know to check there either. By default I check the Twitter Blog and that usually has no updates. I’m sure it’s a hectic time for all involved but, please, think about the users.
Some of those users are apparently planning a boycott (cutely dubbed a “Twit-out”) of the service tomorrow in protest of its downtime issues. The goal is to show those running Twitter that its users make the service what it is. They organized this action on content conversation service FriendFeed, which also pipes in Twitter data — when it’s actually available. There is definitely a trend in Twitter users flocking to FriendFeed to talk about Twitter when it’s down.
Despite my annoyance with the service, I’m not ready to partake in a boycott just yet. I simply still find it too useful and I have a high tolerance for pain. (Its woes also give me something to write about, right?) However, I would advise Twitter to be careful. While I and other users who are addicted to the service may not walk away anytime soon, if other less active users who we follow start leaving, it will make the service less useful. This will prompt others to use it less and less. Eventually such a chain reaction will lead to a slow death for the service.
Every service has some amount of downtime, but Twitter’s woes are amplified by a few factors:
- It is a communications tool — and what good are those if you can’t use them to communicate?
- A growing number of other services rely on Twitter for their own livelihood. When it goes down, they all go down.
- It actually does have a substantial amount of downtime and it’s quite often in the middle of weekdays when people want to use it the most. This is made worse by the lack of status updates by the Twitter team.
Today’s mishap was apparently caused by a database failure during a routine update this afternoon. The meltdown Twitter had a few weeks ago was also brought about by changes made during an update. This is very troublesome and suggests poor planning.
I hope Twitter’s new round of funding is wrapped up and it can hire some new personnel who can correct these issues. Otherwise, it may be time to sell to someone who can. If Twitter were a public company, I might just go all Carl Icahn on it. (Of course for that I would also need money — and a replacement board. Who wants in?)
1:34 am
The battle to fund Twitter » VentureBeat said:
[...] service Twitter was close to raising a new round of capital as interest around the site (and arguably the site itself) explodes. Tonight GigaOM’s Om Malik reports that the site has not finalized a $15-20 million [...]
6:16 am
Twitter outage spurs rebuke from bloggers, contest : Twitter Gossip said:
[...] respect for your users to let us know what’s going on, asked TechCrunch. Meanwhile VentureBeat noted that during major outages the official blog is rarely updated and it’s unclear to users where [...]
8:06 am
Blogging 2.0: from surviving to thriving ¦ Online Media Cultist said:
[...] * Twitter - Beyond being the preeminent “smart people network,” Twitter is a wonderful place to see and be seen, or tweet and friend and follow in Twitter parlance. It’s a wonderful and flexible and powerful platform, built on a vibrant community of influential-types, bloggers, techies, geeks and, increasingly, everyone. Now if only it didn’t crash so often. [...]
8:57 pm
Twitter: An admission of failure, a call for help » VentureBeat said:
[...] sure you’re sick about hearing about Twitter downtime by now. Quite frankly I’m sick of writing about it. However, a post tonight on [...]
12:51 am
The next time you complain about a company on Twitter, Get Satisfaction may be listening » VentureBeat said:
[...] it wasn’t made very clear during its outages over the past several months, Twitter has been using the online customer service site, Get [...]
8:50 am
We Don’t Know What We’re Doing But We’ve Got the Money to Fix It| Zoli’s Blog said:
[...] Twitter isn’t failing on purpose, but it’s still failing [via Zemanta] [...]
12:55 pm
Twitter on its architecture: We can rebuild it. We have the technology. » VentureBeat said:
[...] all the downtime, quite a few fans and haters of the micro messaging service Twitter have taken the opportunity to [...]
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Twitter may have more serious issues than its downtime » VentureBeat said:
[...] we crack a lot of jokes about Twitter’s uptime and go on about its potential valuation, it’s easy to forget that as with many communication [...]
11:12 pm
The only thing Twitter has to fear, is Twitter itself » VentureBeat said:
[...] As I said last week, despite Twitter’s issues, I have no plans on leaving the service, I still find it too useful. However, if Twitter is really unable to get its act together, other will start to leave. This will cause a chain reaction that yes, will eventually prompt me to stop using the service. [...]
6:36 pm
Lorsque Twitter a des difficultés à faire face à la croissance « nomade sur mon divan said:
[...] Twitter isn’t failing on purpose, but it’s still failing [...]
9:38 pm
Twitter: Still not working, but explaining why on Twitter Status blog » VentureBeat said:
[...] months of awful communication with its users amid problems, the micro-messaging service Twitter is finally starting to get it. Tonight the site launched a new [...]
11:53 pm
Twitter: Don’t blame Ruby, blame Scoble » VentureBeat said:
[...] to transparent in a hurry. That is to say, it has gone from keeping users in the dark during its downtime to explaining the problems it is having in detail. Tonight, developer Alex Payne wrote a Q&A [...]
9:58 pm
Twitter To Users - Outage is Your Fault! | Blogitics.org said:
[...] to transparent in a hurry. That is to say, it has gone from keeping users in the dark during its downtime to explaining the problems it is having in detail. Tonight, developer Alex Payne wrote a Q&A [...]
12:01 pm
No, you’re not driving away your Twitter friends, Twitter may be just cleaning house — or losing data » VentureBeat said:
[...] Twitter Status Blog, which Twitter has been great about updating following its serious downtime issues last month, has no word on this latest issue [...]
1:17 pm
Twitter finally gets its new round of funding; “very strong” valuation » VentureBeat said:
[...] came close to that precipice, and some users left or were boycotting. But if Twitter is able to right the ship, which it appears to be doing, those users will come back [...]
5:11 pm
Twitter or FriendFeed? There can be more than one. » VentureBeat said:
[...] not to say that Twitter can’t kill itself. It can if it continues to simply not work. The same would be true of any service. When a service doesn’t work, users can’t use [...]
7:44 pm
Twitter gets its sexy back. And by “sexy” I mean users. » VentureBeat said:
[...] down fairly substantially during the middle of June. That tends to happen when you service simply doesn’t work. This lead many to proclaim that other services such as Plurk, Identi.ca and FriendFeed were on the [...]
7:56 pm
Chicken Little, the cloud is falling » VentureBeat said:
[...] But I would hardly put Gmail in that category. Twitter was there a few months ago, but the company understood that, and has done a good job correcting those issues. If it did not, it would have been replaced by a [...]
6:57 am
Twitter Cuts SMS Updates For UK « Burned At Both Ends said:
[...] the outcome, this is yet more bad press for Twitter. This is currently the top item at Techmeme, and it’s spawned a number of [...]
2:20 pm
Google finally ready to take Jaiku seriously? » VentureBeat said:
[...] may have been wise for Google to pay attention to Jaiku much earlier. After all, when Twitter was having all of its reliability issues a few months ago, users were screaming for a viable alternative option. Some tried to start using their Jaiku [...]