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Microblogging is a mess!

May 20, 2008

I signed up for Twitter when it first appeared almost two years ago, but never really used it until recently.  I began an experiment focusing on local (i.e. Dallas) twittering as explained here.  Ironically, almost every time I try to ‘tweet’ I can’t because Twitter is down.  Mike is writing about Twitter’s failure in a post titled, “Twitter: Something is Technically Wrong.“  How annoying.

I IM’d Whurley and asked him if Twitter was always down and he agreed.  He suggested I try Leah’s Pownce but when I did I got error 500 — Internal Server Error.  So I have concluded that this whole microblogging space is a mess.  How hard could it be?  Hmm…

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Personal 

Comments

10 Responses to “Microblogging is a mess!”

  1. Bradley Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    I had seen that TC article earlier… I’m guessing the guys over at CakePHP are snickering and chanting “rails can’t scale.” who knows what the real issue is but the microblogmasters better get their act together.

    p.s - you gotta watch out for that tabber, it’s not very friendly with big images in posts

  2. Alexander Muse Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    So, we looked into this. I think it is almost 100% a database issue. They are trying to use MySQL and we believe this is their issue. The Obvious folks need to contract (i.e. they don’t need to hire) with a database expert and migrate to a real solution. I suspect we could find someone (or a small team) to get everything stable within 30 days. Perhaps at a cost of $80,000. This isn’t a rails issue…

  3. Fred Oliveira Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    I’m astounded with the quality of the online software we use these days. Both Twitter and Pownce are tricky applications with quite a lot of users. However, there are solutions to these scaling problems (architectural changes to the apps, better queueing systems, erlang-based implementations) but no sign of them being used, or these problems being tackled.

    It’s frustrating, but once you sit on a pile of $, moving becomes a commodity not a necessity for many (unfortunately most) of these products and startups.

  4. Fred Oliveira Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    I didn’t refresh before typing in my comment, so I missed the two before my own. Apologies. Alex: it is a database issue, no doubt, but I wouldn’t go so far as calling MySQL a bad solution - it’s actually a great solution if used wisely. Just as PostgreSQL with partitioning and slony be another good solution to their problem. It kinda hurts my eyes and ears to see so many people claiming this is a Rails issue when it clearly isn’t - but people are known to throw out hipothesis even if ill-informed.

  5. Alex Leverington Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    No offense to twitter but, thousands of hits per second is not a lot. Can you imagine how hard the full blogging sites get hit? They are not this unreliable and have just as many people with RSS readers and more complex content.

    One solution is separating the HTTP infrastructure between reads and writes and create a node-based distribution system. At the very worst only X number of sites will go down instead of the whole system. Oh yes, this sounds easy in a blog post explanation but I’m sure it’s very difficult and expensive.

  6. Curvezilla Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

    Big in Japan could build a beefier microblogging app called “Musing”. Do you muse?

  7. Alexander Muse Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Curvezilla - how about we build it together…

  8. Curvezilla Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    We are in! This deal can only be sealed over sake bombs and sushi.

  9. Jim Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am

    Facebook has a decent “microblogging” application by updating your “status” via a text message.

  10. Alex Leverington Says:
    May 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 am

    @alex, @curvezilla
    I’ve got a plan. A seriously serious plan.

    @Jim you can also configure facebook to set your status via twitter.

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