Twitter's not working... again

Ronny Kerr · October 12, 2009 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/b27

Internal 500 HTTP Server Error is preventing users from tweeting this afternoon

whale failAbout a half hour ago, Twitter acknowledged that many people are having trouble tweeting this afternoon due to an internal server error:

We’re looking into the cause of the 500 errors that are being seen by users on twitter.com. We’re also working on the posting problems that many people are running into when trying to create tweets.

Besides not being able to tweet, thousands of users are reporting having problems with nearly every aspect of the social site's services: inability to tweet from third-party applications, inability to tweet from Twitter, and, in some cases, inability to merely load the Twitter site at all.

If it seems like Twitter is down all the time, you are not mistaken.

A quick glance at the Twitter Status blog reveals that, just four days ago, the site had to deal with some "unplanned downtime:"

We’re currently diagnosing the causes of an unplanned site outage that happened a few minutes ago. We are recovering from this issue now and apologize for the interruption in service.

Digging through older logs, one finds that at least three instances of internal problems occurred throughout September--and those were just the reported ones.

Quite frankly, if Twitter has any serious plans of competing with Facebook, these errors need to either happen much less frequently or they need to be resolved faster and more efficiently. With over 300 million active users, Facebook enjoys far less hiccups than its smaller competitor.

Having just closed a $1 billion round of fundraising, Twitter should probably prioritize the consistency of its site's operations before delving into any new service adjustments and improvements. With Internet users, quality is key. Twitter users already enjoy the way the site works now, when it works, so Twitter should be working tirelessly to support the site's foundations.
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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.

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