Their words, not mine.
I’ve mostly stopped bothering to post when Twitter is down like it is now and like it was yesterday (honestly, it’s news when they keep the site live for 24 hours at this point). But, seriously, they need to get their act together. It’s past embarrassing.
Rumor is they’ve closed their big round of funding and things are all high fives over there, but much more of this and people aren’t just going to talk about bailing on the service for something new, they’re really going to do it (yes, even me).
Or how about just having enough respect for your users to let us know what’s going on.
Anyway, I’m in a particularly bad mood because I have food poisoning (thanks very much Grand Hyatt Seattle) and Twittering it was going to make me feel marginally better because a bunch of people would say something nice in a reply. But they take even that away from me.
Update:
Wow, somebody’s listening. Actual communication is so welcome: “We caused a database to fail during a routine update early this afternoon. We switched to a replica and expect this recovery to take place quickly.” What would be great is if Twitter just moved their blog to another platform so that it doesn’t fail when users need it most.
I think they should start monetizing the site and hire more people and get their act together else they will be another friendster.
Twitter…. yawn…
Wow..I hope we won’t see another Friendster Part 2.
Twitter has been up and down for the last few days. It is really serious and annoying. It is like going into a restaurant and the power goes out. If it happens once, people are pretty understanding. But if it keeps happening every time, then you need a lot of luck to get them back.
If twitter was toilet paper, should I bother wipe my a** with it?
I don’t even know if it’s worth spending the time using it anyway. Can anyone enlighten me?
And just as I lay down a deposit for someone to develop with the API…
WOW! This sucks! If this keeps up they are going to hit the Dead Pool!
more servers!!!
nice RSS count Michael !
Can you please stop covering this shit service?
I have never been so enamored with, and simultaneously frustrated by, a product or service in my life.
It’s like a favorite ice cream place telling me “sorry, out of chocolate” every other time I visit. But they’re the best ice cream in a hundred miles. Can’t they make sure to have more chocoloate on hand?????
Have they denied/confirmed anything about switching to php or java?
I think, at this point, if FF offered person-to-person replies like Twitter and had SMS and IM updates like Twitter, everyone would jump ship.
Twitter should be in the dead pool. They are killing the golden goose – the sycophants who can’t stop rambling about it are going to get tired because they just seem like idiots now.
The conversation is starting to shift to Friendfeed
Leave your Friendfeed handle here if you want to network:
http://www.web-...-to-friendfeed/
Status update from Alex:
“Twitter has been intermittently available since roughly 0800 PDT.
We’ve seen issues with our firewalls, backlogged message queues, and
just now our primary database had to be manually rebooted. We’ve
flipped over to a hot replica database but the site may be slow while
some data enters the in-memory working set. We’ve also been trying to
keep the message queues clear and timely today.
The site is currently operating in a mode with limited features.
Until we’re confident that we can answer requests in a reasonable
amount of time, the API will return a 304 Not Modified response for
HTTP GET requests. We’ll try to exit this degraded mode as soon as
possible.
Please bear with us, and keep an eye on our blog and Get Satisfaction
for further updates. ”
http://groups.g...ab0afcb663d3bf5
seriously. I’ve only been using it for a couple weeks now and I think it’s been down at least four times. LAME.
mike…
irony here!!! you’re ticked that twitter doesn’t tell you as a user what’s going on….
ok.. fair/granted.. a biz really should do that. but where the hell did you guys post in big bright lights that your site was having issues with windows/msoft IE…
hell, i’ve posted to you a few times in the past that the forums section was srewing up, and never had the issue resolved.. actually sent an email over the weekend, and yes, recieved a reply, but the problem was still there. as of yesterday.
so.. if you’re in a glass house, don’t be throwin’ stones!!!
peace
For such a great idea and service it’s really too bad that it goes down so often. I guess with the adoption rate they have it’s no surprise, but then again other such tools seem to be able to handle the load well enough.
It’s hard to complain though when a service is free.
Just the same, I hope the rumors aren’t true about them bailing on the service and leaving behind a whole bunch of users very disappointed.
Argh! Even istwitterdown.com is not working properly. Twitter’s pinging site probably caught the sloppiness virus from Twitter…
Funnily enough Twitter may find more favour in Europe. When we’re using it over here the service is usually just fine. It’s when the US wakes up as well – and we’re still on – that’s when the trouble starts. It’s just like the old days of the Web….
Don’t be a crybaby, Arrington. It’s just food poisoning, you ain’t gonna die.
Twitter…social masturbation at its finest.
Michael A:
Since Twitterville is closed yet again, we can utilize the old yet reliable comment stream to send you ‘get wells’. Food poisoning doth not a pleasant day maketh.
it sure feels like I’m gonna die.
If they would have just kept the “Beta” tag slapped on the website like Google does with it’s services, they might have engendered more sympathy.
Also, food poisoning sucks, feel better soon.
I´m so sorry to hear about your food poisoning. Must be really terrible. I wish there was something I could do for you. Its always sad when this happens and there´s no one there to hold your hand. I sincerely hope you will get better soon.
Twitter is free so stop complaining, if anyone here is paying for the service then you have a reason to complain. if you don’t like it don’t use it.
You guys are all losers with nothing better to do.
Using Rails for an ultra-high volumen site like twitter *is* technically wrong.
Sorry about your food poisoning, Michael. I’ve had it before and it can bring you down big time for a day or even more.
As to Twitter, I am in total agreement. Some days I want to rave about how good it is. Then on days like today, I am ready to toss in the towel with it. There is no excuse for operating any service like this, free or not.
“Stop your bitching…”
It is free, but also expected to work correctly! I’m not going to drop Twitter over this, they still offer a great service, but Michael makes a great point – they need to let their users know what is going on!
I know it doesn’t help much but I use Twittermail.com (yeah, my own product) to at least be able to send updates to twitter. These get delivered when the service goes up again. Maybe other third party Twitter tools do the same. You miss the live replies but at least you can say what you wanted to say…
I can’t believe twitter hasn’t been bought yet. It’s my second favorite start-up behind qik(who I can see getting bought out soon as well)
@10…the fundamental problem with twitter is that as users/followers increase, their delivery costs ( in compute ) goes up quadratically. It would be an enormous problem in any language.
No one likes Twitter being down, and no one likes food poisoning. Get well soon, Mike!
Feel better.
You should sticky this post because it’s pretty much always going to be accurate.
I hope you feel better Michael. Maybe you should take the day off, and forget about the stresses involved in working.
Mike, come on … it wasn’t the Hyatt, was it? You’ve been getting sushi from the gas station again, haven’t you? Hope you feel better !
You know Michael for past 2 months whenever i do “Follow TechCrunch” it say’s its following yet I am not one of your followers. I don’t know why but your twitter profile does not like me
http://www.twit....com/livecrunch
I hereby predict (sarcasm alert) that the word Twitter will enter the collective consciousness as a verb to mean “stutter” or “stop and go”
As in “Stop twittering!” or “She has a sever twittering problem”
it really surprising people have endured this constant downtime – with any other site people would be long gone and long time ago – but some how people find twitter’s inability to scale enduring. While people have built every mashup possible for twitter no one has created the twitter killer (i.e a site where you post 140 character messages that can manage to be available for a full 24 hour period).
It’s more enjoyable to watch Twitter twitter than to replace it. At least for the time being.
The technology business is not just about money. It’s about poking fun, being dramatic (ask Michael), bad behavior and above all, humor.
It’s like watching a painfully bad B movie.
Food poisoning is terrible. I had it once on the German autobahn – I seriously thought I’d die then and there.
I hope you get better soon.
Peter
do you follow me?: Peter Urban @ Twitter
Hey Mike,
It looks like they posted this on their blog:
Well, at least FriendFeed is up.
Food poisoning? Ugh. Get better, Michael. (Look… didn’t even need Twitter to wish you well!)
Never been a great lover of Twitter.
If anyone is thinking of bailing try Jaiku.com its way better.
I’m sure I’ve got a few invites left
I am afraid but Michael is now a “twitteraholic”.
i said so.
Ujw
p.s get well soon.
Jaiku is Finnish for “Twitter is down”.
So Ruby On Rails cant scale, I told you so Evan!!!
Every post you threaten about leaving, but you never do it
We always have blogging and comments. Hope you’re feeling better soon.
I’d love to see Twitter stable for once too. I’m a long time fan, but it’s getting annoying. Heck, I even have a podcast about Twitter called The Nothing Show (if you’re so inclined).
Cheers,
Dave (in 140 + characters) Delaney