Those of us who use Twitter as our primary instant messaging system (and rolodex, and news channel, and social networking site, and life-streaming host, and water cooler, etc.) got a substantial dose of blackout this morning as Twitter simply….. well….. evaporated.
No Fail Whale, no worm, no ice cream (iScream) nothin’. My primary communication vehicle was simply missing from the internet.
I can’t return my dms, access my link stream, get my tweeple’s contact information, find my record of things I’m supposed to respond to today, etc.
Just thought I’d randomly yell at cyberspace for it…. and will completely diversify my internet presence in a much more strategic way following today’s crash. I’ve invested too heavily. No one medium should have me like this. Especially one that’s being run by a couple of guys from a garage-sized office in San Francisco. It’s even crossed my mind that there’s been a NorCal earthquake! But of course I can’t find out because I always check Twitter for my instant earthquake news. Biz, Jack, EV where are you?
Agreed? Comments, ideas, complaints, criticisms… are you with me?
The “real” blog post that was supposed to go up today will still appear… only not until I register my complaint here.
No, not against Twitter.
Against myself, for knowing better than to let a tiny, upstart, micro-medium with under 5 million users have me.
Oh, I bet “twitter fails” is trending, but how would I know?
i’m convulsing as i ty…
You mean… we have to go back to ‘old-fashioned’ IM, e-mail, and *gasp* blog posts to keep up with people!?
I’m curious to know how you do all those things with Twitter. It would seem hard to control, kinda messy. I use OmniFocus (and sometimes email) for personal task tracking, Address Book for contact info, etc. All offline. All backed up.
Cynthia… you forgot to mention all the clever quotes we get from the twitterverse. You think this is bad ? Imagine when we run out of electricity…. that will be really bad
I wondered about that myself. Twitter has become my crack. I need my fix!
So what are your plans for diversification?
I can’t say I’m that frustrated. I did get a little baffled and disappointed when it went down, I guess I had better things to occupy my mind. Like Facebook (kidding!)
Not sure how I’ll diversify. Time for research…. know I’ll start with spreading out. For example, I’ve got 250 people subscribed to me on FF but I’ve never used it…..
Now that we know it wasn’t just some little upstart crashing, but a concerted effort to silence a political activist, sounds like an opportunity to give them a voice out of the silence! Sure drove me nuts when I couldn’t update people on our vacation (or use the Twitterverse as my only connection to the outside world!)