Go Big Always

Twitter is burning

Twitter is under fire right now as the powerful focusing lens of the Internet calls into question the service’s ability to deliver on a large-scale. Post Macworld’s Twitter shut down, Dave Winer was frustrated enough that he said he would play with an XMPP-based, decentralized Twitter. We referred to Twitter’s service activity as a prime example of the problem with a polling architecture for a communication service. Marshall took the XMPP case one step further to bring more of the world’s attention to an important flaw: Twitter’s architecture is not scaling well. And now, Shel Israel has crafted a message that should send a shiver down the spine of any Twitter fan.

Twitter has formed a highly connected community. They aren’t happy with the instabilities. They’re ready to leave the service behind.

To be fair, the Twitter guys didn’t mean to start this service. It was an accident, just like Flickr, which started as an in game chat service with a cool photo uploader that stole the show. And, just like Flickr, suddenly everyone was on Twitter. It has grown past the point of novelty to being a chief contributor in Marshall’s rent, and other bloggers as well. Many people depend on it as they would the telephone company. But, Twitter is just a few guys and a couple of servers. You know the world has changed when a few people can create a service that permeates our culture to the point where it angers people when there are outages.

I wish I could help Twitter, somehow. Check out Biz’s comment on Shel’s post. He explains how he started a blog in response to demand, that they share usage stats, and other insight that makes you want to root for Twitter. I think that’s what Shel was getting at when he expressed his love for it. He genuinely wants to see them succeed.

That said, the genie is out of the bottle. I already want a federated Twitter. There’s a million features and uses I can think of for it. Perhaps Biz and Ev can leverage their brand to offer hosted versions of the service to those who can’t or won’t set up their own Twitter server. I’m confident there is a huge market for a robust and evolved Twitter service. Yes, I can even see a Twitter as part of an enterprise system.

Incredible how quickly all of this happened. What’s your take? Can the Twitter brand survive? Is anyone else working on decentralized Twitter service?