I love Twitter. I have become quite accustomed to having TwitterFox beeping out sounds of updated tweets (what us Twitter users call posts) as I click on its icon to see what they are. It has been great to keep up with what friends and colleagues are doing in their daily lives.
Twitter has also been very useful in asking questions or learning about other people’s opinions. It has been a handy tool for online discussion. It has even made it quite easy to post links of interest or ask fellow Twitter users to vote up a social news submission on sites like Digg, Mixx and Sphinn.
Lately, Twitter has been falling short in meeting the needs of our relationship. Anyone that uses Twitter regularly has noticed that from time to time the service has lagged or even gone down.
However, it has been happening much more frequently. In fact, Twitter has been down or suffered technical problems over the last 5 days in a row. Okay, I wasn’t online much over the weekend but Friday, Monday and today, Twitter has gone down. In fact, this is the screen I saw just before writing this post:
Twitter – we need to talk. If you are going to keep me as a loyal user, you need to be dependable and even faithful to be there when I need you. Haven’t I always been faithful to use you on a consistent basis? Do not my almost 1,200 posts at the time I write this prove that? I have even been a faithful brand evangelist for you, telling people how great you are, while shunning poor Pownce and Jaiku in the process (see – I didn’t even link to them).
Be that as it may, I cannot continue to tolerate daily outages. It is tainting our relationship. What can we do about it?
I know some would argue that Twitter is a free service and has yet to monetize itself so why am I complaining. However, I’d point out the $20 million you raised in April. Was this not sufficient to increase your computing power or whatever else you need to do to accommodate the growth you have experienced? Maybe you need to display some ads to keep the lights on. I’m fine with that – hell, I’ll even click on them once in awhile.
I really hope we can work this out, Twitter. I don’t want to have to go to Pownce, Jaiku or even some other micro-blogging/chat/IM service. Tell me what we need to do. I am listening (we all are). 😉
David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful search engine and social media marketing campaigns for large and small businesses.
I just tried to log on and got the same message you did – AGAIN.
I’ve only been using Twitter for a little over a week and I do like it, however; I think it has been offline almost as much as it has been on since I began Twittering.
Been using twitter for some time and enjoying it very much.
Haha! Trying to establish communication with Twitter? You can’t cos it’s a bird. =P Joking. I wonder what is happening to it.
Here, Here! Great post, and I agree on many points.
Twitter is down quite often and it gets annoying. After the shortage yesterday, Tweeters were tweeting that they may just abandon Twitter (ha! say that 3 times fast) and use Google’s Friend Feed- and encouraging others to do the same. Will this be Twitter’s downfall? We’ll just have to wait and see!
I also experience a similar scenario..for 2 days now I ‘m having a hard time posting updates on my Twitter account..I always have to hit the refresh button or log out of the page first before my updates would appear..anyways I still love Twitter..^^
hmmmm I know I’m doing it wrong – I can’t stand twitter!
I have followers – I am following some big guys but after a few tweets I turn it off every time – I have never seen a useful tweet.
Twitter start getting down i think. Really can’t stand for Twitter anymore. it’s time for me to quit!
Twitter does seem to have more downtime lately. Hope they can resolve this problem soon. Thanks for posting this.
Can’t keep up with all the latest plus the old eye sights not the same as 30+ yrs ago.Enjoy things while you can.Have fun.
I do had trouble with twitter. Frankly its quite annoying. But I do love twitter and how it’s work
/dontfollow
Yea twitter is definately something. Glad to know im not the only one who isn’t the biggest fan.