Twitter experiences another flutter

by Tim Conneally

May 21, 2008, 11:24 AM

In an environment predicated upon all users updating as frequently as possible, social microblog Twitter has revealed its hamartia: that it can absolutely not sustain downtime.

Granted, the service experienced numerous outages in the course of two weeks -- to say nothing of the past few months -- but in combing through the Twitter support forum under the heading "May 20: Twitter Downtime," it becomes apparent that every time the site experiences a service disruption, users are left stranded.

Twitter rep Jason Goldman attempted to calm the grumbling users: "Essentially what has been happening is that we've been trying to make changes in order to improve the long-term reliability of the service. Those changes have introduced instability in the short-term, however."

In the social media realm, however, quality of service is not the determining factor for success; it's user base. The more people start using Twitter, the more entrenched it becomes, downtime or not.

Still, the site's persistent outages have some looking for solutions through decentralization.

Add a Comment

5 Comments

Name E-mail

Betanews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

OH GAWD I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT MY TWITTER

people are stupid.

Score: 0

|

"...it becomes apparent that every time the site experiences a service disruption, users are left stranded."

No s**t Sherlock! Say it ain't so!

I don't care for Twitter, but that line right there shows excellent reporting and analytical skills.

Score: 0

|

Who cares if they experience downtime? Is it that big a deal? Its not as if its a critical service.

Score: 0

|

Here's an idea: stop telling everyone what you're doing every 8 seconds (as if anyone really cares), and you won't worry about the site being down for short periods of time.

Score: 0

|

Not to mention the fact that you obviously have way too much time on your hands if you have the opportunity to go through your 400 followers and see what each and every one of them are doing at any given time.

I'm sure it's exceptionally streamlined, but some portion of decentralization makes sense for something like this. There's no need to go to twitter.com every time you want to do something with the userbase. Kind of retarded if you ask me.

Score: 0

|

Tiny netbooks, simple video set Sony sailing through CES

It's only the first set of Sony announcements, but the product assortment at...

Live from the Panasonic press conference

No longer "Matsushita," and given a big boost with the pending acquisition of...

Sony's big news: the Vaio P 'Lifestyle PC'

The question in advance of Sony's first press conference at CES (there will...

Samsung shows slimmer LED TVs, slimmer Blu-ray console

In an era when HDTVs are being measured in terms of pinky-width, Samsung...

Sharp stays (mostly) on point at lunchtime CES event

A very big room, journalists on the feedbag, and the tricky task of pitching...

Audiovox flashback features Elvis and rabbit-ears

Elvis! The season's first sighting of the King occurred at the Audiovox press...

Live from the Cisco press conference at CES 2009

Known worldwide as an infrastructure company, Cisco now plays a bigger role...

Toshiba focuses on mid-range DTV for everyone

Toshiba's press conference at CES 2009 this morning featured announcements in...

LG unleashes its annual flood of announcements

Holding down its traditional CES-opening spot at 8:00 am, LG on Wednesday ran...

Netgear debuts a BitTorrent-enabled set-top box

The first of NetGear's three big product announcements at CES this morning is...

Live from the LG press conference at CES 2009

Speaking to an overflow crowd in Las Vegas Wednesday morning, executives from...

CES Unveiled event provides a high-energy opener

If CES is a banquet, CES Unveiled -- the opening press event -- is like a...