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Does Social Media Site Reliability Matter?

Started by Nick O'Neill · 10 months ago

Over the past few weeks there has been a pretty consistent trend of conversation in the blogosphere surrounding site downtime. One meme that frequently reoccurs is that “Twitter is Down.” Just last night Mike Arrington posted an error message from Twitter which said  ... Continue reading »

5 comments

  • now that i've read your post... ^_~

    i think both - i think to some, it matters and to others, they're just making a lot of noise. i've found that people who suffer from chronic feelings of entitlement complain the loudest. but people who appreciate a service get bummed about downtime but don't let it affect their loyalties. when i'm happy with a site, i come back in spite of the downtime. but i also complain a little bit. ;]
  • I was getting error messages on Facebook last week. (I got excited, thinking it might be the new profiles, but alas). I've only had one error page on Plurk, and it was one specific page. I've never had problems with the other three sites I "use" (Digg, aNobii and Last.fm), but I still like Plurk and Facebook the best.

    Ok, that was useless information, but I'd say people don't really mind errors, because more often than not they come back within minutes. I think people understand that it's free, and that nothing can really be done on their part to fix it. It's just something that you come to expect when you use the Internet; people know that eventually there are going to be problems, and though they're slightly annoyed, it doesn't affect their "loyalty."
  • Are we becoming gluttons for social media punishment?

    It is becoming our way of banding like brothers in a knowledge of system failures. For a tribe (twitter) to survive, we must (a) have the group established with desire to grow, and (b) develop emotional attachments. In a group desire to make this thing work, we suffer the growing pains together and in doing so, establish our place within the platform as well as within the group.

    So yes, maybe we are loud. But I'd rather read someones witty rant about the system being down that about what soup to reheat for lunch.
  • I don't think the average Internet users notices downtime as frequently as users who are online all the time because they are content producers earning an income on the web. I wonder how many Twitter users have never experienced downtime?
  • Julian is right 100%, the reason most social media sites that have issues with scaling (like Twitter) can survive is because the average user doesn't notice. Twitter isn't just for internet marketers or tech savvy web users. That would be like saying the only people who visit Digg are desperate bloggers looking to one day hit the front page. Once Twitter gets their issues worked out, sites like Plurk will be obsolete because who wants a noisy timeline when you can have Twitter? ^_^

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