Social Times - Latest Comments in Can Twitter Survive Downtime?

Re: Can Twitter Survive Downtime?

SharonG — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:30:09 -0000

How in the world does Twitter make money? Because maybe if they made some, they would have a more sustainable backend.

And yes, someone could start something else and could get a migration - but it would depend on timing. Could you get the top 10-20 people with most followers over to your new service? That would be Scoble, Brogan, etc. Is there a time in which they all would be sick of Twitter because of the broken functionalities that would actually end up in a mass exodus to something extremely similar?

Facebook is no Twitter. It's an application thang. People don't want a whole browser window to be open all day; take up too much screen real estate. People like their little AIR apps in the corner of their screen sitting open all day to check in from time to time.

Re: Can Twitter Survive Downtime?

Cesar Diaz — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:22:20 -0000

Arrington also mentioned how his traffic saw a dip during the Twitter problems the last few days. I'd be interested in seeing how that might have affected other sites. I unsubscribed from several feeds, including Social Times, since I was keeping up on new articles via Twitter. I missed some content yesterday because of that and I wonder if sites saw a noticeable change in traffic.

Re: Can Twitter Survive Downtime?

BarbaraKB — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:12:16 -0000

Twitter has survived worse. And, yes, there is competition but it's not Facebook. Jaiku is the closest but Google doesn't seem to care about it. And Pownce has never caught on. I have to say, for now, when Twitter is down, I go to Utterz. At least there I can leave an audio rant... ;-)

Re: Can Twitter Survive Downtime?

Connie Bensen — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:11:10 -0000

Some good points, Nick! I've seen the comments about FriendFeed too, but Twitter definitely has it's appeal. I'm sure that scaling is a challenge for them.

I don't understand why they do their maintenance when they do?