For better or for worse, we’ve sort of gotten used to the occasional downtime, lost profile images, and other quirky phenomena that strike Twitter as it goes through its never-ending growing pains. But this crosses the line.
This morning Twitter made a post to its official status blog stating that it was, among other things, having problems with phone settings, profile photos, and misdelivery of direct messages. You know, the ones that are supposed to be private. Twitter is blaming the problem on an “underlying data inconsistency in our service”. An update to the blog post at 5:55 AM this morning stated that the issue had been fixed, and that Twitter was in the process of “putting everything back in its right place”, which is apparently still ongoing.
It’s one thing for Direct Messages to suck from a functionality standpoint (Twitter’s DM feature is really basic). But it’s another thing entirely for these messages to start going to the wrong people. Imagine if Gmail or Facebook started accidentally sending your messages to the wrong person – it’s a breach of user trust. Twitter did the right thing by reporting it on its blog (though we’ve gotten a few tips from confused users who are getting messages from strangers), but this sort of thing just can’t happen.
Thanks to Pierre Fontenelle for the tip.
wow
I think that Twitter’s growth has messed with carrier’s ability to handle SMS. Open Market and all of their clients are suffering from this. Any truth to this?
twitter.com/ishatmypants
http://www.ishatmypants.com
Somehow, I’m not surprised. Their “engineers” are hard core “functional language” and “weakly typed” language freaks. I’ve read comments from their API lead about his thoughts on type safety, and quite frankly, I think these sorts of problems are going to continue for years to come.
The execs running the service really need to wake up, and use teams that use more conventional technology (strongly typed languages, proven queue mechanisms that have worked for banks and telecoms for years, etc) to get these sorts of issues under control. (And yes, that means writing a second iteration in parallel, and at some point switching the service over to the second platform.)
I also somehow think that this comment will fall on deaf ears. Scala is just “too cool” to fail. (Just like our gov’t think GM is “too big to fail.)
scala is strongly typed and is based on the Java VM. is the JVM not proven technology? i think using the right technology for the right task is what is most important. you don’t have to use x simply because it is the standard, use it because it is best for the job.
I agree. They should use Java like everyone else who builds industrial strength apps. Weakly type languages DO NOT scale well. They are a nightmare to maintain.
isn’t youtube written largely in python? i guess they aren’t scaling well are they….
Some loosely typed languages allow for type casting, etc. so really it’s up to the engineers to be skilled enough to roll out the application. Obviously they are not.
I simply love thissss!!! Twitter is going functionality-mad.
I experienced this 3 days before. Received a direct message from someone who I do not follow and that guy was thanking me for following him. Now, I am to connect what happened to what is happening to Twitter. Wow!
Oh i got that too! I thought it was weird at the time but then i forgot about it. I was like, “Why would i ever have followed you?!” Some kind of art project made with bread??!! lol.
I got one as well from someone we weren’t following. It also wouldn’t let me delete it saying “you can only delete messages sent directly to you.”
So Twitter’s system knew the message wasn’t mine or even sent to me, yet there it was in the inbox, without the ability to delete it.
Update – It’s now gone.
Doesn’t this suggest to you that these messages are forged and part of a possible larger exploit?
Start thinking hard about this, it’s not very logical otherwise to me,
There’s too many bugs! Yesterday there was literally a 100 page support topic about how users couldn’t upload their pictures, and how their pictures STILL aren’t being displayed correctly on other twitter pages. I don’t understand how they have so much funding, but so little resources.
its because their recruiting team has no talent. They are not hiring the quality they should be with a company of that popularity.
Twitter is not a chat.
You sure about that? I sure have conversations on Twitter….
@Annon: I disagree.. I think Twitter is one open chatroom where you can have public and private conversations. And the good thing about Twitter is that you can send a message to Oprah with the ‘@’ her replying is another thing.
I also think Twitter is over hyped.
Holy mother of Twitter!
That’s a good one!
Seriously. I get that it is hard to scale a site, but facebook or google never had such serious bugs. The image profile thing was extremely frustrating.
It’s still not fully working.
As for the DM’img, I don’t think I’m ever going to use it again.
A lot of people who started using twitter because of oprah or ashton kutcher probably think twitter is ‘crap’.
That is what I thought when I signed up yesterday. I am like… how do people use this thing. Painfully slow and my page kept falling apart.
Jason Kincaid,
You’ve just missed reporting this real tech news regarding the acquisition agreement reached by Loglogic (acquirer) and Exaprotect. A post on this acquisition will perhaps relieve TC from twittermania. Hurry, send Sarah Lacy to the headquarter of Loglogic (which develops real product) at San Jose to get an interview about this acquisition.
http://www.tech...gement-service/
That anon … he is so cheeky … oh wait, he is me. Seriously though, Twitter has been around for 3 years and has consistently sucked. Their developers are obviously second rate, and the service has no practical use. PLEASE STOP GIVING THEM PRESS!
wow not good at all. spend that vc money and fix the bugs . a staff of 30 is too few.
Mythical man-month.
It’s not money that they need to be saved…
Ouch.
I kinda stop using twitter due to the uncertainty of future bugs. Everything getting wired there.
If they are not too sure about building a scalable instruction, why don’t they just find somebody have the knowledge?
I still don’t understand how to DM on twitter properly. I get nervous that I’ll accidentally tweet my message instead.
Unbelievable. This could cause massive liability for both users and the service. I first learned of the issue when @aviel first tweeted about it!
Yup, my work’s twitter account has received at least one of those errant DMs. What a breach of user privacy!
They should have built it on Google Appengine from the start…
hahaha…
Wow, twitter is really not a software engineering company – is it?
No, it isn’t. It doesn’t seem to be at least.
I do understand they are growing fast and all but you would almost think that with $100 million in venture cap they could keep their service from acting up every week!
Daniel
https://Spideroak.com – Online Backup & File and Folder Sync Free
Ewww, scary.
Have not seen the problem myself. I wonder if it just happens on occasional base when you have way too many DMs? Or For every single one.
At the mean time, I think I lost some people that I follow (I am 100% sure they did not block me because they later – in fact, @marshallkfrom readwriteweb announced me as his 10k user early this morning, little did he know that I followed him about a week ago but somehow lost him, then I had to re-follow. I hope it does not happen since he is pretty darn good.
note to self: never DM again…
How about fixing the bug that tells me that every time I log in to Twitter via Tweetdeck it tells me I have 37 updates, 4 DMs, and 1 reply, and nothing has changed. As a communication device, their API is far from robust.
Funny how we just get used to it and blow it off – if gmail or ymail told you that you had 14 new messages and it wasn’t true the villagers would be at the gate with torches…
That is what I thought when I signed up yesterday. I am like how do people use this thing. Painfully slow and my page kept falling apart.
The link on “suck” is broken because of a mis-spelled href attribute.
The site is damn slow. You get tired of it. At times fed up. To me it seems, the whole concept is going to fall apart one day and people are going to blog about “how to stop Twitter from spoiling your day”. What do you say?
I don’t know if it is me or what, but I never have felt comfortable using Twitter’s DM service. If there is something that I want to get to someone that is confidencial or important, I wouldn’t use a service like Twitter. Either email or call the person you are trying to contact if it is so vital.
People get up in arms when a service like this doesn’t work. Use services that do work… It could just be me…
Twitter FAIL
Hype HYPEY
Crap CRAPPY
What is the next site to be executed?
DM Fail
The surprising thing is people still call it the “greatest” service ever. You would think with over 55 M in investment they could fix some bugs.
This is actually not new. This is a “classic” twitter problem from back in the good old days… like a year ago.
Back then, us Twitterers just knew not to send anything too private via direct msg cause it was common knowledge that it could go to the wrong person. I guess the further we go the more we stay the same.
I’m starting to doubt twitter can fix any problem in any amount of time with any amount of money.
Yup. I think they’ve gone too big to really fix the basic problems that are at its core.
This has really been an ongoing issue.. Twitter needs to hire more real developers
Ridiculous. How is this service still around?
twitter sucks its overrated
Is Twitter really that new anymore? I know the mainstream is just catching wind of it, but they have around for about 3 years now and they are still having these problems. I know there are growing pains with every company, but it seems that there are way too many technical pains going on at Twitter. It’s a simple service that should just simply work.
twitter should be ashamed. after collecting all those user fees and advertising dollars, it really should have a better service.
stop paying your service fees and cancel your accounts now!!
Haha. Yeah! If you don’t like Twitter, stop paying them for your membership.
Oh wait, it’s for free.
Yes, thank you for explaining that
Some blame Twitter while I twice received full private conversations in Facebook!
Now I’m quite suspicious using mails in FaceBook.
Btw, I find private messaging in Twitter something the platform is not made for.