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Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

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Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#41

Can anyone comment on whether the issues with Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal are related? Nobody seems to be saying it, but it doesn't seem to be a coincidence? I know Twitter has had downtime before but this is of long duration, early in the morning and coinciding with issues with the other sites. Is this an anti-socialnetworking hacker attack???

They're probably not. Twitter is a DDoS according to its status page; whereas http://status.livejournal.org/ says that their problems were "due to some database problems."

No idea about Facebook.

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#42
post #34

"these outages are much more serious. 45 million people worldwide now rely on Twitter as a communication platform" Riiiight. Rely is a very strong word. How will we do business?! How will we talk to our friends and relatives?! Let's face it, Twitter solved a problem that never existed.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/443634

And as we know a lot of it has been blown out of proportions thanks to the potent mix of random "twats" and overeager traditional media.

As a tool it has its uses. However, I strongly believe that 45 million people don't _need_ this as a tool and use it purely for enterntainment. To say that we rely on Twitter for communication is simply false.

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#44

Apparently Facebook is seeing intermittent errors as well, down for a bunch of people. Do these people all share a datacenter?

Facebook chat showing connection errors and other peoples' photos are appearing in my mobile album. Of course, it could just be load from all the displaced twitter users.

Friendfeed is up :).

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#45
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how new markets are born. Back in the day e-mail solved a problem that didn't exist too.

There was no way to transfer a document instantly and without using paper. Faxes were slow and used paper. There was a clear business need. So I don't think thats a fair comparison. Then again I don't remember those days from personal experiences, just making an assumption. From a different perspective. If it was serving a need people would be willing to pay for it.

When email was first becoming popular, most people didn't know they wanted to transfer a document without using paper. And in fact when they GOT a document in an email, much of the time they wound up printing it out.

But even then your basic argument is flawed, because it assumes that the point of email is attachments. The original technology email replaced was not the fax machine but the letter. Likewise, Twitter is arguably partly a replacement for SMS.

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#47
post #31
post #19

federated protocol.

That is indeed the solution. If a Twitter type service is to become a real communications platform it must be federated (decentralized) and immune to DOS attacks, government intervention, etc.

that's the idea behind identi.ca

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#49
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/443634

And as we know a lot of it has been blown out of proportions thanks to the potent mix of random "twats" and overeager traditional media. As a tool it has its uses. However, I strongly believe that 45 million people don't _need_ this as a tool and use it purely for enterntainment. To say that we rely on Twitter for communication is simply false.

Also the 45m figure probably means 45m people have created an account at some point, tried it, thought it was ridiculous, and stopped using it. Daily users is probably far lower.

Re: Serious Twitter, LiveJournal Outage Ongoing

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no way to transfer a document instantly and without using paper. Faxes were slow and used paper. There was a clear business need. So I don't think thats a fair comparison. Then again I don't remember those days from personal experiences, just making an assumption. From a different perspective. If it was serving a need people would be willing to pay for it.

When email was first becoming popular, most people didn't know they wanted to transfer a document without using paper. And in fact when they GOT a document in an email, much of the time they wound up printing it out. But even then your basic argument is flawed, because it assumes that the point of email is attachments. The original technology email replaced was not the fax machine but the letter. Likewise, Twitter is…

Thanks for the insight on email. I stand corrected.

However I still think that you can't compare Twitter to email. By now Twitter is widely accepted. And I still don't see how we would _rely_ on it for communication. Its a micro-blogging service, might as well call it "follow my random thoughts and I'll follow yours", which obviously works for a lot of people.

We should start treating it as a enterntainment tool and not as a fabric of modern society without which news would not propagate throughout this world. There is waaaay too much hype around Twitter. The day I saw CNN read random twitter feed is the day I died a little inside.

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