It was down. It was down for 2 days. Now it's back up. Why wasn't there any notification? Or did the notification email end up in my SPAM folder? I couldn't tweet during those 2 days when a couple of my fellow colleagues were waiting for updates of my field trip whilst on a job. Well maybe in the future, upon loading Twitter on the browser, should it not connect to Twitter's back-end server, implementing the 'error code alerts' feature may be a good idea (just like MSN Messenger's error code alerts when you have a problem connecting).
I realized i wasn't the only one having this issue. Quite a number of bloggers were complaining and whining about it. By being on the Internet since 1993 (that's a good solid 15 years now) and freelancing by developing websites since 1995, i seriously DO NOT SEE WHAT THE BIG FUSS is all about. All IT and Internet projects are BOUND to have downtimes, server issues or even migration issues ... backlogs, appends, chokes and performance issues to add on further. Ask any project consultant, technical support team, database administrator, system administrator or developers for that matter and they will concur with me on this one. Never ask a business or sales oriented personnel though.
Two days downtime is fine, 1 week is reasonable but 1 month isn't. You were only down for 2 days, or maybe less .... well KUDOS Twitter for bringing it back up in just TWO DAYS. I salute you.
On a different note i wanted to say that i've been a user of Twitter since her beta launch almost 1.5 years ago. I've never been hooked on it nor have it neglected it. I've only used it for research purposes and at most, peeking into 'texthibishionists' lives all over the web for curiosities sakes. (Ummm.. that's a new word.. 'texthibitionists'). Facebook has its own module on the right column called 'Status Updates', Friendster has one called 'Shoutout', Hi5 has one called 'My Status', Bebo has one under 'What Are My Friends Saying?" and Skyrock has one called 'Description'. Most IM (instant messaging) tools have this feature too. These features offer the same thing as Twitter except Twitter just does slightly more than that. Yes, 'slightly more than that' is what i just said. You know why? Because most Internet users (how many percentage are bloggers or bother to read blogs anyway if you get my drift?) will really not see any reason to use Twitter once other platforms offer the same main feature of Twitter. The layman don't understand differentiation or positioning.
Twitter, do you even have a niche or a positioning? You do. Use it. You know what you had thought of before! Dock it on the OS. Yes, the bottom right taskbar. DOCK IT. Don't leverage on GTalk, Jabber or LiveJournal. Instead, put it up on CNet's Download. Get .Net developers to work on it. Yes i also know you have an AIR Widget, but the adoption rate of AIR is the same as ... wait there is literally no adoption rate yet for AIR (AIR is brilliant, don't get me wrong). Furthermore, you'll have to wait for AIR to squash JavaFX and Silverlight before even considering that... that may take like... years. Your VC may squish you till the last drop by the end of the 3rd to 5th year. Do'n't wait that long. Trust me, i think it'll work. MSN Messenger squashed ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and GTalk. Now give them some competition. Dock it! Dock Twitter Messenger, the Generation Z Notification (soon to come IM) tool for Windows, Mac and Linux.
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