Not really. Friendfeed doesn't have anywhere near the volume that Twitter does, and doesn't have anywhere near the immediacy twitter users demand. Apples and oranges. I'm not saying Twitter's downtime isn't a problem; it certainly is, but comparing it to friendfeed isn't really fair.
Anonymickymouse
· 1 year ago
I'm with you Scoble. I have a feeling those guys either know what the problem is and don't want to say it, or really have no idea and are just scrambling to fix whatever is breaking the service at the moment.
How many stuck-up Ruby engineers with CS degrees does it take to build a stable platform? Answer: It's impossible because you just keep blaming your users instead of fixing your crap.
If I seem overly harsh try looking at how they respond to developers on their Google Groups page (http://snipurl.com/2bnad), or another fine example of how they treat their users: http://snipurl.com/2bnao
It looks to me like the giant smug cloud that surrounds that place is what's clogging up their tubes.
Nigel Eccles
· 1 year ago
Gee I laughed when I got to the end of this post about how we are tweeting too much and then you added in links to your Twitter account. A bit like posting about the problems that obesity is causing the US and then offering some free donuts at the end!
Maybe we all need to start rationing tweets? Or even better would be cap and trade. Everyone gets 5 tweets a day, if you want more you have to buy credits off people who aren't going to their limit. Would Scoble sign the Twitter Kyoto treaty?
curiousyellow
· 1 year ago
I love it. Cap and trade for tweets. My daughter joined a few months ago and only sent one tweet. Soon she'll be rich.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Hey, still gotta promote yourself right Nigel? Love the Twitter Kyoto idea.
Nigel Eccles
· 1 year ago
Damn right. Tweet on!
Scobleizer
· 1 year ago
I went over to talk with Twitter's founders/executives yesterday to hear their side of this story and here it is: http://qik.com/video/90546
Vinny
· 1 year ago
Nobody "Blamed Scoble."
Noah David Simon
· 1 year ago
the problem is 3000 friends or more on any network Robert Scoble! What is your real motive? MARKETING! with the kind of following you have, you should be taking on more social responsibility (no not soup kitchens... you should be involved in the social issues between people other then yourself. People are getting harrassed by your so called friends), badmouthing the troops in Iraq? You work PR like a third world nation. When you are in doubt, blame America right? We Won't Be Fooled Again
JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗)
· 1 year ago
"You work PR like a third world nation. When you are in doubt, blame America right?"
What's that supposed to mean? Don't mix the two. PR and blaming America are two totally different things.
Ouch from us here in the 3rd world countries.
glynsync
· 1 year ago
Jesus, get one (1) grip. Question asked if there was anything users could do to reduce strain, Payne responded by illustrating the circumstances under which the current architecture was having problems (users with large numbers of followers), *without allocating blame or naming names*, and blogland goes apeshit.
I'm as annoyed at Twitter's crap scalability as the next person, but being this butthurt about defensively-implied fingerpointing is retarded.
PortVista
· 1 year ago
I find the whole argument of the article unsupported by fact, since Twitter does not actually mention Scoble at all. Twitter actually blames scripts, not heavy users. Also, where is your support for making the claim that most users blame Scoble? You've linked to just about everything else, except anything that supports the whole argument you are attempting to make. It also looks like you're trying to say don't blame Ruby, BECAUSE it's Scoble's fault. Ridiculous, but humorous to read.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
True, Twitter doesn't mention Scoble specifically in the post, but I think most of us users know who they mean. Scoble is not quite #1 in followers or number of people he is following, but when combined with the number of tweets he dishes out, he's clearly placing the most load on the system. Dave Winer made a list to showcase this:
Payne notes "popular users" are those "users with large numbers of followers and people they’re following" -- I don't think a lot of people follow the spam users or scripts as you suggest.
mdoeff
· 1 year ago
I actually think they were blaming two separate groups - popular users like Scoble, Calacanis, etc. But they also mentioned the use of scripts. Re: these scripts, the issue is not that few people follow the spam users. The issue is that the spammers are running rogue applications that follow massive amounts of followers in a short amount of time. Here is a screenshot of an app that looks for EVERYBODY who is currently using Twitter and follows them. http://www.livelybrowser.com/img/TwitterFriendA...
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Good stuff Mike, thanks.
Dan
· 1 year ago
If that theory is valid, @JasonCalacanis and @BarackObama actually have more followers and follow more people than @Scobleizer. Should they be to blame too, or is it better link bait to blame Scoble?
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
See a comment above Dan - It would seem Twitter is saying that it's a combo of followers, people you follow, and number of tweets. Scoble may not be #1 in the first two (though he's close), but when combined with tweets, he's #1 bar-none. Check out Winer's list:
Well, if Twitter can't handle Scoble and his 20,000+ following, what do you think happens when Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan all come to Twitter... and bring 5 million teenagers each? Uh-oh.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Yeah. That is scary to think about.
Robert
· 1 year ago
Bit of a shocker isn't it? I mean, Twitter is famous because folk like Scoble use it, not the other way around. If Twitter wants to blame it's failure on that... then it's quite plain that it's little more than a toy or plaything.
Perhaps we should all simply stop using Twitter... granted, they aren't making money out of us, but then again that's not our fault.
JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗)
· 1 year ago
Yah. "Popular" people made Twitter famous. They put twitter where it is now today. Blaming these "popular" people is not the way to go.
I wonder what will happen to twitter if these popular people they are talking about suddenly leave them and move to Jaiku and Pownce?
Maybe that will help them solve their problems, because these popular people will be bringing with them a HUGE CHUNK of their userbase.
How about we do just that?
Im just curious...
Dave Ortiz
· 1 year ago
It is clear that Twitter has been caught with its pants down. Twitter obviously cannot keep up with subscriber demand. I fear that this attempt to single users out because of their usage will spark the beginning of the end leaving a blueprint for another upstart detailing what not to do. Tread lightly Twitter.
JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗)
· 1 year ago
Yes. Time to move to Jaiku and Pownce "popular" people, and the rest of us will follow.
Steve Woodruff
· 1 year ago
Scaling issues due to unexpected, rapid popularity. Don't blame the fans, however! Just admit that the stadium wasn't built with enough seats, and thank those that have been buying the tickets.
Fortunalee
· 1 year ago
Damn all you customers for using our product! Hehehe... silly twitter.
Matt
· 1 year ago
It has been a frustration seeing all the down time on Twitter, and yeh I've heard the blame being placed on Ruby but I already had the thought that it's more likely to be the big heavy users.
I'd hate to see limits put on the number of tweets you can send, however I'd love to see some people show a little restraint in what their tweeting. Guess well have to wait and see what happens.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Yeah, will we see a "you're tweeting too fast, please slow down" message in the future?
jimmygle
· 1 year ago
It's got to be tough with all the relations and HABTM associations the Twitter database requires. If they're using ActiveRecord, that's probably where the bottleneck is.
CheapCheapCheap
· 1 year ago
I must say that Twitter is addictive. I think they need to optimize it better and get more servers to run it - constant downtime is no fun. A few new webpages spawned up covering "What would people do if Twitter were down" themes.
I get quite annoyed when Twitter has overloads, but I'm patient and wait for the bugs to fix themselves. I'm curious as to how they expect to monetize and grow.
J. Frederic Kerrest
· 1 year ago
Love the info and the new approach. I would suggest to Twitter's engineering management that they consider going a step further and imitating salesforce.com's http://trust.salesforce.com approach. I worked at salesforce.com for almost five years in business development, and in discussions with customers, partners and distributors, this kind of uptime information was paramount in the early years. After we adopted a fully-transparent approach using our trust subdomain, the ecosystem reacted very positively. Honestly, IMO our trust development effort actually laid to rest that concern among customers - very much like addressing the security of hosted data concern by noting that Amex among others had done a thorough analysis and concluded that their data was secure with us, whereby neutralizing any smaller customers' concern. Even when we had service issues subsequently, having a transparent uptime monitor made a huge difference in managing customers expectations.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Yes, IMHO you can never have too much transparency.
This is just silly. If Twitter can't handle Scoble, they're not ready to be anything other than a toy. How many messages do services like AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and Skype handle simultaneously. ya think?
zen_jewitch
· 1 year ago
One thing to take into account is that, unlike Twitter, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc are basically 1:1 services, rather than 1:n Also, AFAIK, Twitter is the only one of the bunch that retains historical messages en masse, in a database.
Regardless, if Twitter can't handle Scobble and his ilk then Twitter is definitely not ready for prime-time.
@zen_jewitch
Dean Hall
· 1 year ago
@zen_jewitch Agreed. The 1-to-n problem is the key, it seems, if Payne's comments are accurate.
After running a rather large network with incredible database needs myself, I hesitate to speculate on the the details of their problems, but I can empathize a great deal. To demand that complicated queries write quickly and then be immediately available for reads to anyone who asks is a very difficult problem. It sounds like fun, though. :)
Chris Baskind
· 1 year ago
Yes, of course there's a difference in the architecture. But AIM has almost 40 million users. Twitter is breaking as they cross the 1 million threshold. Time for a re-think. Their database requirements must be staggering.
@mortgagereport
· 1 year ago
Blaming Scoble for infrastructure crashes is like blaming Derek Jeter for the wear and tear on Yankee Stadium
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Ha!
Chris Nixon
· 1 year ago
"I’ve sent 3,598 tweets (Twitter messages) — Scoble has sent 12,318. This is clearly putting a strain on the service."
That's the equivilent of over THREE heavy users then. Scoble is clearly abusing Twitter's stable system.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
I wouldn't say "abusing", there is nothing stating that he can't tweet so much - but perhaps maybe now there will be.
Chris Nixon
· 1 year ago
Ahhh sorry. My sarcasm didn't come through there. The "Twitter's stable system" was supposed to be the clue.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
Ha ha, no my bad, I missed your clever insert.
M
· 1 year ago
What an exceptionally clever and well-reasoned posting! I am seriously impressed by such a techological insight
Pentaxfan aka Kelly C
· 1 year ago
Wow, you would think that the admin od Twitter would be thanking Scoble, Laporte and Calacanus for making Twitter what it is today! If it wasnt for a half dozen heavy users, Twitter would have fallen into the bucket of useless crap on the cloud. if you (Twitter Admin) can't fess up to what the real problem is, maybe you need to hand over the baton and get out of the business. Aparently you don't like the spotlight and do not know what to do next. You are also saying that you have too many users and are literally pushing them out of Twitterland by the hundreds. I am on the fence and teetering to FriendFeed!
Scobleizer
· 1 year ago
Youredge: hmm, the video works fine here. I hear there's a problem with IE7 and Seesmic video comments over there. I use Firefox, which is a lot faster of a browser anyway. But, I digress. I just hope Twitter fixes its problems and helps stop the blame game.
BrianSullivan
· 1 year ago
And I hope Loic will get the message and fix Seesmic
Avatar X
· 1 year ago
seesmic is fine in IE7 and IE8 for that matter. the problem seems to be lots of random time outs. that happen in any browser. i use IE8 (modded) and Flock 1.2.
shel Israel
· 1 year ago
Like a growing number of social media people, I personally find it useful to blame Scoble for anything that goes wrong. Dozens of people will instantly rush to support my view.
Noah David Simon
· 1 year ago
no you are to blame to Shel. down with the Alist SPAM
gregory
· 1 year ago
an amazing challenge ... everybody connected to everybody, plus to everybody that everybody is connected to ... i have to stop there ... imagine the whole world on there? it would be like, the telephone system .... hmm
Thiago Campezzi
· 1 year ago
I read the original post in Twitter Dev Blog before finding this article, and I believe VentureBeat used a pretty misleading title/text to describe what was said there. My original interpretation when reading the post was that certain actions by certain popular users TRIGGERS the problems - that's different from saying these users ARE the problem.
In other words, they didn't blame these popular users for being too popular, they just said they have to find a way to better handle these popular people. The real problem is the "number of big queries that pile up in our database(s)", as the post says.
Now, I have to agree with Scoble's video response in the comments: adding limitations to the service (a solution that was suggested on the post) seems to me like a bad choice; it's patching what triggers the problem, not solving the problem itself. The comparison with FriendFeed was right on.
Noah David Simon
· 1 year ago
the problem is not just Scoble. The problem is that TWITTER licks these ALister's balls. facebook has a cap of possible friends for a reason. These jerks want twitter to be a marketing tool, while they push they're leftist mob agenda. PIED PIPER ABUSE! Let's limit the people we can follow till twitter works out it's database issue... (which will be never!)
Eric Rice
· 1 year ago
Ahahahahahaha, seriously? I post more than Scoble and Chris Brogan posts more than me. I also have 3 + a couple fake accounts. I'm to blame, too. And I also get around that stupid-assed 140 character limit by posting sometimes as many as 70 tweets in a row. Sue me.
It's a lot of text and a database. I think that's been done on the internet before.
Dear Web 2.0: Never ever work in internet porn if you can't keep things up. And running.
Fred
· 1 year ago
I'm sorry, who are you again?
113.com
· 1 year ago
Nobody to blame, except Twitter itself. Learn from Google (of 1998), people.
Ben
· 1 year ago
RoR has been 'dead' for quite a while! It was a mistake to write Twitter in it.
William Pietri
· 1 year ago
Blaming the technologies is indeed a little weird. Responsible people load test before shipping, so that they know what will happen. The problem is Twitter's and Twitter's alone.
But if I were to point at a technological choice, I'd say it would be building this around a traditional database-centered architecture. The nice thing about Rails is that you don't have to think too hard to get something up and going. The downside is that when you're up and going, you may not have thought very hard.
stevemac
· 1 year ago
Chicken and egg. You don't have the money to do it right up front, but then when you need it you don't have the time to restructure for scaling reasons.
Will thinks like Amazon S3, Microsoft Mesh or Google's AppEngine be the solution to scaling issues?
Laforge129
· 1 year ago
Now as I know more and more, it's not Scoble who did this, they need to fix the problem at hand, not enough servers that can't handle the load!! Then they need to have it also auto-switch when one goes down. All this would lessen the load per say.
nolimitdomains
· 1 year ago
Twitter is no where to be found again today! Oh where oh where has my little Twitter gone? Geez, did they ban me for being funny? Were my posts soooo entertaining that a few people felt the need to "put a hit on me?" Was it that last joke I told..? u know the one about the @@##!@ I am embarrassed! When a Free site wont let you in... It Sucks!
Youredge
· 1 year ago
No problem Mr. Scoble I was using Safari so what's that tell you tech user's out there everybody has a day things just don't work. Like Digg lately normally I can browse my news but not today.
In closing all you bad, bad VentureBeat guys leave the office today even though it's casual Friday you should still be able to find a story in the valley if you get out of the office and perhaps drive out of the parking lot. Personally I can't find enough time to even get my blog setup to open I am to busy finding fuel resources which requires going out into the field, hmm funny I thought that was what reporters were supposed to do as well go out into the field? Perhaps I was wrong...
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
In case you missed it, the actual genesis of this article was talking with Shalom for a different perspective on why Twitter is having some of the problem that it is. I'll judge from the story's comments, links in and prominent placement around the web (top of techmeme, etc) that most do deem it a worthy story.
Eric Rice
· 1 year ago
Twitter is teaching us to skim. 140 characters or less, get to the point. It's not making us smarter media consumers, regardless of WHO makes the media: outlets big or small.
So yeah, we might have missed the point but headlines and keywords sell, not details. We can thank ourselves for that.
Youredge
· 1 year ago
Robert you’re obviously upset but the profanity is not necessary users of Twitter don't really blame any super-user. The majority find it cumbersome when it goes down but to say FriendFeed is more reliable is a stretch too. Your video wasn't even working when I went to your account too see it. Leo Laporte contacted Twitter Tuesday and asked if he should remove his account and thankfully they said no. Surely they would tell you the same thing Mr. I am on the plane heading for the restroom now and such.
Twitter works the majority of the time and until they get the bugs worked out many users are willing to wait. As for Venture Beat if this is the best story that the three Twitter users you noted in the article go find another job. As someone who has left the online tech world and went into the growing natural gas and alternative fuel field I miss my old tech friends from the online tech world so I feel Twitter is great. Every social network has it's bumps and grinds my previous FriendFeed account from the Screen Savers era I dropped from FriendFeed because of RELIABILITY so go pee on somebody else’s fence post with that remark Mr. Scoble it doesn't fly, love ya buddy.
What I don't want to hear is when I post a tweet about being media starved and someone suggests TWIT and Cranky Geeks comes off the wall and start slamming Laporte and Dvorak saying that their shows have no viable technical content. By the way I watched your suggested show Robert and come on...I felt like I was in a funeral parlor how's about some personality. But I must say it was still better than anything the slacker channel G4 had to offer.
So Robert Scoble relax and take a chill pill after all you not in the top three anymore so there is no way your bogging down Twitter. VentureBeat you and all your "we can't find anything else to write about" go FIND A STORY. You know better than anybody else the Twitter users are communicating among themselves about service and thus report their complaints to support. You guys upset you can't use Twitter tell each other you’re going to the restroom or send little Twit Pictures of some chicks butt. That's why I dropped one of your writers.
Should you find this not what you want on your comments VentureBeat I will post it for you on my blog, if you do post and show VentureBeat actually has a backbone then I won’t? Even your rating system is on crack I don't hate the post I just feel that after weeks of Twitter users knowing the system has had some issue you actually think your reporting NEWS. After all is that not what you’re supposed to be doing reporting NEW(S), things that actually use the preface of NEW as part of NEWS.
"You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeat writers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha and Chris Morrison. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well."
Four more than capable writers’ yet you cannot even find new news. By the way fella’s G4 took over ZDTV there's a lead for your next article and I won't even charge you.
All Comments
How many stuck-up Ruby engineers with CS degrees does it take to build a stable platform?
Answer: It's impossible because you just keep blaming your users instead of fixing your crap.
If I seem overly harsh try looking at how they respond to developers on their Google Groups page (http://snipurl.com/2bnad), or another fine example of how they treat their users: http://snipurl.com/2bnao
It looks to me like the giant smug cloud that surrounds that place is what's clogging up their tubes.
Maybe we all need to start rationing tweets? Or even better would be cap and trade. Everyone gets 5 tweets a day, if you want more you have to buy credits off people who aren't going to their limit. Would Scoble sign the Twitter Kyoto treaty?
What's that supposed to mean? Don't mix the two. PR and blaming America are two totally different things.
Ouch from us here in the 3rd world countries.
I'm as annoyed at Twitter's crap scalability as the next person, but being this butthurt about defensively-implied fingerpointing is retarded.
http://twitter.scripting.com/spewage.html
Payne notes "popular users" are those "users with large numbers of followers and people they’re following" -- I don't think a lot of people follow the spam users or scripts as you suggest.
http://twitter.scripting.com/spewage.html
Perhaps we should all simply stop using Twitter... granted, they aren't making money out of us, but then again that's not our fault.
I wonder what will happen to twitter if these popular people they are talking about suddenly leave them and move to Jaiku and Pownce?
Maybe that will help them solve their problems, because these popular people will be bringing with them a HUGE CHUNK of their userbase.
How about we do just that?
Im just curious...
I'd hate to see limits put on the number of tweets you can send, however I'd love to see some people show a little restraint in what their tweeting. Guess well have to wait and see what happens.
I get quite annoyed when Twitter has overloads, but I'm patient and wait for the bugs to fix themselves. I'm curious as to how they expect to monetize and grow.
Regardless, if Twitter can't handle Scobble and his ilk then Twitter is definitely not ready for prime-time.
@zen_jewitch
After running a rather large network with incredible database needs myself, I hesitate to speculate on the the details of their problems, but I can empathize a great deal. To demand that complicated queries write quickly and then be immediately available for reads to anyone who asks is a very difficult problem. It sounds like fun, though. :)
That's the equivilent of over THREE heavy users then. Scoble is clearly abusing Twitter's stable system.
In other words, they didn't blame these popular users for being too popular, they just said they have to find a way to better handle these popular people. The real problem is the "number of big queries that pile up in our database(s)", as the post says.
Now, I have to agree with Scoble's video response in the comments: adding limitations to the service (a solution that was suggested on the post) seems to me like a bad choice; it's patching what triggers the problem, not solving the problem itself. The comparison with FriendFeed was right on.
It's a lot of text and a database. I think that's been done on the internet before.
Dear Web 2.0: Never ever work in internet porn if you can't keep things up. And running.
But if I were to point at a technological choice, I'd say it would be building this around a traditional database-centered architecture. The nice thing about Rails is that you don't have to think too hard to get something up and going. The downside is that when you're up and going, you may not have thought very hard.
Will thinks like Amazon S3, Microsoft Mesh or Google's AppEngine be the solution to scaling issues?
Oh where oh where has my little Twitter gone?
Geez, did they ban me for being funny?
Were my posts soooo entertaining that a few people felt the need to
"put a hit on me?"
Was it that last joke I told..? u know the one about the @@##!@
I am embarrassed! When a Free site wont let you in...
It Sucks!
In closing all you bad, bad VentureBeat guys leave the office today even though it's casual Friday you should still be able to find a story in the valley if you get out of the office and perhaps drive out of the parking lot. Personally I can't find enough time to even get my blog setup to open I am to busy finding fuel resources which requires going out into the field, hmm funny I thought that was what reporters were supposed to do as well go out into the field? Perhaps I was wrong...
So yeah, we might have missed the point but headlines and keywords sell, not details. We can thank ourselves for that.
Twitter works the majority of the time and until they get the bugs worked out many users are willing to wait. As for Venture Beat if this is the best story that the three Twitter users you noted in the article go find another job. As someone who has left the online tech world and went into the growing natural gas and alternative fuel field I miss my old tech friends from the online tech world so I feel Twitter is great. Every social network has it's bumps and grinds my previous FriendFeed account from the Screen Savers era I dropped from FriendFeed because of RELIABILITY so go pee on somebody else’s fence post with that remark Mr. Scoble it doesn't fly, love ya buddy.
What I don't want to hear is when I post a tweet about being media starved and someone suggests TWIT and Cranky Geeks comes off the wall and start slamming Laporte and Dvorak saying that their shows have no viable technical content. By the way I watched your suggested show Robert and come on...I felt like I was in a funeral parlor how's about some personality. But I must say it was still better than anything the slacker channel G4 had to offer.
So Robert Scoble relax and take a chill pill after all you not in the top three anymore so there is no way your bogging down Twitter. VentureBeat you and all your "we can't find anything else to write about" go FIND A STORY. You know better than anybody else the Twitter users are communicating among themselves about service and thus report their complaints to support. You guys upset you can't use Twitter tell each other you’re going to the restroom or send little Twit Pictures of some chicks butt. That's why I dropped one of your writers.
Should you find this not what you want on your comments VentureBeat I will post it for you on my blog, if you do post and show VentureBeat actually has a backbone then I won’t? Even your rating system is on crack I don't hate the post I just feel that after weeks of Twitter users knowing the system has had some issue you actually think your reporting NEWS. After all is that not what you’re supposed to be doing reporting NEW(S), things that actually use the preface of NEW as part of NEWS.
"You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeat writers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha and Chris Morrison. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well."
Four more than capable writers’ yet you cannot even find new news. By the way fella’s G4 took over ZDTV there's a lead for your next article and I won't even charge you.