louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

keif — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:57:29 -0000

Respectful disagreement? This is a rare commodity! :)

If it's free, and broken - I say move on. Those that stick out can deal with, and if it's really worth it, you can always come back later when it's fixed (assuming they do get to that point before everyone leaves).

I'm with you on "co-owning" the brand - however Facebook/Myspace are money making entities - ads, selling of data - twitter (AFAIK) doesn't have this (but the data is pretty open).

Really, if a "twitter killer" came along (maybe it has?) it hasn't been able to really do any better, yet. Until one comes along that can handle twitters numbers and data handling, I think twitter is probably going to be the best option.

Having said that, they're dealing with TEXT. Flickr tosses milions (billions?) of photos/images - how many times have they gone down? Like this old post from flickr in '07:
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2...

They announced downtime and gave some stats about how many *billion* bits a second they do - on twitter they say 11,000 requests per second (per this blog[http://www.mooseyard.com/Je...] - take with grain of salt) and it also states AOL handles a billion IMs a day - so is twitter doing that much more, or could it possibly be that everyone that said "Ruby doesn't scale" or "Twitter needs a rewrite" is right?

Unfortunately, I can't find any "real data" about twitter's data usage/needs. Maybe they need to quit creating "custom feeds" for Zappos et. al. Maybe they need to go down for one month to rebuild, and to show everyone how much they need twitter (because I see TOO many "twitter is down" messages to indicate people do not care!)

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

leigh — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:11:12 -0000

Again, I don't agree about your comment about the "right" to complain. Regardless of free, if it's broken all the time then free means I'm paying too much. I pay with my time, my frustration, my wasted efforts etc. All start ups should get a break as they ramp up, get better resources and real money. However, if they get 20 million bucks and STILL can't fix the issues, that means to me that the problem simply might be unfixable and therefore the product will become useless and we as users will look elsewhere. I believe that on the Web products often become co-owned with their customers so regardless of what their user agreements might say, the power of the network will prove the lawyers and the business folks wrong every time (think Facebook Beacon or Myspace widget ad policy).

As for taking things personally, respectful disagreement is one of the reasons i love the web. No offense ever taken. :)

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

keif — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:06:57 -0000

No, I think it is relevant - a company being handed x amount of dollars doesn't guarantee anything other than the idea is solid enough for investment.

I remember awhile back there was talk of leaving Rails to go to PHP (or some other 'expandable' solution - I know, this isn't a "ruby is/is not scalable conversation) - they chose to stay with Ruby - so maybe they though they could continue with it. Maybe with the money they should have rebuilt it from scratch.

Whether or not you consider them a "real business" - that's a matter of opinion. According to the TOS that EVERY user agreed to - twitter has no responsibilities to anyone, for anything. If they shut down tomorrow, all its users can't exactly do anything except move on.

Point is - all this "twittering" about how much "twitter sucks" is getting really old from a bunch of people who use a free service (especially when there are quite a few alternatives). Unless you're one of the people who dropped the money - but really they're the ones that have the right to "complain" about their investment.

Good lord, how's that for a comment? ;) Don't take any of this personal, please, I speak to be corrected and become better informed! :)

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

leigh — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:02:25 -0000

With humblest respect, I don't think your question is relevant. Whether I can or not is besides the point.

The point is, that once you leave your alpha and beta stage and are taking big money hoping to be bought for big money than customers expectations change. That's just a fact. It's like the expectations of a child vs. an adult. Once you become an adult, you can't just turn the clock back when it's convenient. Either they are a real business or they aren't. I would suggest once you have 20 million dollars involved, you've graduated to being a real business and with that comes real customer expectation. Like it or not. Fair or not.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

keif — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:45:55 -0000

I'm not really being convinced by your arguments that a free service is letting you down.

I see post after post of you condemning twitter (and pointing out how great the competition is). I don't have all the numbers, but have any of the other microblogging/twitter clones have the same numbers as twitter? Do you not think when they blow up (possibly ahead of schedule) they'll not have the same issues of growing too quickly?

People can bitch all they want about a free service (god I love the internet), but really - it's a free service. No ads. No spam (unless you auto follow). No reports (that I'm aware of) of someone's account being hacked into and spamming.

So the problem is downtime. Game networks have downtime. Sites have downtime. Maybe it's time Twitter scheduled a daily/weekly/monthly "we're going down to put in improvements." But I have a feeling a large number of users would cry that they can't use twitter for five minutes.

So all the "twitter power users" want their cake, and want to eat it to.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

keif — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:39:29 -0000

So you are saying that with 20 million dollars you can?

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Svetlana Gladkova — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:04:19 -0000

Louis, I have just found that both our posts (thanks for the link, BTW) have been linked from a post that reached the front page on the largest Russian technology community site (it is somewhat similar to Newsvine in implementation but geeks only and VERY popular) at http://habrahabr.ru/blog/mi... so it may be interesting to see how many visitors they can send (in light of the recent discussion of blog links sending less traffic). Profy has received 5 so far :) And they describe us as almost hysterical about loss of our precious followers :(

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Svetlana Gladkova — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:59:06 -0000

Correct, it is hard to expect rational decisions when the community seems to be deeply in love with Twitter no matter how much it fails. I'd really prefer to have a stable Twitter to moving somewhere else - I just hate changes almost in all areas. But many users seem to be too angry with Twitter so we should not expect informed decisions from them - love and hate tend to blind people.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

adondai — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:43:02 -0000

Yeah, I agree with that one! Seriously I'm getting a little tired of everyone acting like the world is crashing down because a free non-essential service has a little downtime.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:40:27 -0000

actually, mine seems like it's almost back to normal. weird

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

nickhalstead — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:10:34 -0000

Ouch, I seem to have lost about 20% - so its not consistent how many people have lost...

sent from: fav.or.it

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

micahwittman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:54:26 -0000

I agree with you. But, reality is complicated: 1) People taking action on a purely rational basis *doesn't* happen, 2) Cognitive strain of leaving your native microblogging community square _can_ be over come, but is painful and 3) Some, especially the casual users _and_ the heavily-invested users, are like motorists murmuring about pot-holes in the road, but living with it because that route is the shortest from A to B, while thinking: - "I'll do nothing and 'THEY' will fix it some day."

Let's just hope the community makes an informed decision.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

kamla bhatt — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:49:43 -0000

I am one of the lost folks from Twitter's database...and unable to log into Twitter.

What is the secret of Twitter's continued success among its user base?

Kamla

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Roger Jennings — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:31:59 -0000

My Following and Followers counts went to 0. Had to rebuild Following from the People avatars, which (for reasons unknown) didn't disappear.

--rj

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

nickhalstead — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:25:37 -0000

nope, still very much broken.

sent from: fav.or.it

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Louis Gray — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:04:32 -0000

The Twitter numbers are not even close to fixed. I went up one to 673. Still missing between 900 and 1000.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:22:22 -0000

Aren't the numbers fixed now?

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

NaS — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:11:42 -0000

so, not just me and everyone then... practically affecting every tweeters eh?

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Eden — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:37:34 -0000

Of course my numbers are much lower than yours, but I only noticed a small drop in my followers (like 6-10), which could definitely have been the removal spammers. On the other hand, I didn't check the list so it also could have been my closest friends who are no longer there- I better go look!

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

philbaumann — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:15:58 -0000

When Twitter posted video of new offices, I thought that was ominous. I expected just more typical whale fails, but I didn't expect them to be so creative and inventive in their approach to failure.

It's a real shame, because I think Twitter is a useful tool in the right hands. Perhaps it's time for the right hands to run Twitter. Still, something irrational tells me Twitter's wings will continue to flip and flop.

Maybe Twitter just needs to burn completely, arise from the ashes and rename itself Phoenix. But that mantle might belong to identi.ca.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Svetlana Gladkova — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:26:31 -0000

What I find the most frustrating about the situation is that there is now almost no reasons for people to stick to Twitter. We've heard voices from people explaining why they don't leave Twitter giving the main reason as having their community over there and not willing to build it elsewhere. Right now there is no such reason because you can not rely on Twitter to keep your community where it is - and that could really lead to a mass exodus after all.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Kim Woodbridge — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:51:31 -0000

I know you didn't :-) It's so frustrating because it seems like I lost my favorite followers and not the possible pseudo spammers. And, hey, I was pretty excited when Louis followed me back the other day and poof - now he's gone again :-) I am not hopeful about Twitter fixing this ...

Hey, and stop picking on me ;-)

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

andymurd — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:46:44 -0000

I guarantee that I didn't unfollow you Kim.

Oh, but you're just showing off with "Oooh, Louis Gray follows me, la la la". Louis, follow Kim again! Do I have to start a petition?

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

leigh — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:47:45 -0000

Someone else gave them 20 million dollars. Are you saying they can't afford to build a proper architecture that won't fail every other day for 20 million dollars? I would suggest taking that kind of money and expecting that people won't be pissed and/or leave the service if it keeps going down is an unrealistic expectation.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Kim Woodbridge — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:46:11 -0000

I save all my emails - everything. So I searched through Twitter follows and have found that I am not being followed by anyone who added me between 7/6-7/21. So, it isn't just inaccurate numbers or spammers - these are people I want to connect with. For example, I lost andymurd below and Louis who started following me a couple of days ago. It's really frustrating.

And I think Louis' twitter post about twitter reinstating an old database is true - that is the only way that my check on emails and followers makes sense. I'm just hoping that as I re-follow people that they follow me back again.

Like andymurd, I've been easygoing about the problems with twitter but this last mistake really has me upset. How can you build a community when Twitter takes it away from you? And what kind of back-up system do they have? I would be really surprised if this gets fixed without me re-following the people that I lost.