Skip to Content

Will WWDC break Twitter?

by Robert Palmer Jun 8th 2008 at 1:00PM

In the Venn diagram of users, the intersection of "Mac" and "Twitter" appears to be quite large. Why this is, I'm not sure, but it's true that many Mac users rely on the short-message broadcasting service for their day-to-day lives.

There's some concern in both communities that the flood of new tweets about announcements at tomorrow's WWDC will break the back of the Twitter infrastructure. Their uptime has been mostly in the 90s this month, with some features still disabled for performance reasons.

Do you think it will hold up? What will do you if Twitter grinds itself into metal shavings?

A poll and results, plus more updates (!!) all after the jump.

2:30 p.m. update: MG Siegler, the author of the VentureBeat story says in an email that he spoke with Twitter HQ about the event. Twitter assured him "they have a plan in place to make sure [a problem] doesn't happen and also have something fun planned. Biz Stone (who I talked to) wouldn't elaborate on either."

3:30 p.m. update: Commenter millenomi points us to Twitter's own blog post from just minutes ago about the preparations they're making. They're doing some hard-core server optimization, and in case that fails, they can turn Twitter services on and off quickly to shed load. Plus: one more thing. Could it be ... [REDACTED]?!

Will Twitter make it through WWDC?
Sure!181 (13.6%)
Yes, but with draconian access limitations320 (24.0%)
The server a-splode830 (62.4%)


View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

WWDC Internet Tools

In the Venn diagram of users, the intersection of "Mac" and "Twitter" appears to be quite large. Why this is, I'm not sure, but it's true...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

20 Comments

Filter by:
sms021

I've been using Twitter for a while now but I'm surprised it's lasted this long. my money is on it crashing.

June 09 2008 at 11:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kakapo

Jobs will go "Boom" and Twitter will a-splode! Bloop!!!....

I like TWTR too... good way to keep w/ things and frnds.

Chrs

June 09 2008 at 12:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Simon

That is the coolest effin' illustration ever. I love it.

June 08 2008 at 11:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lee (UK)

Twitter as a notification service has become awful of late and I'm another one joining the "of course it's going down" group. HOWEVER if it doesn't go down the recent changes it made to the API where you can only refresh 30 times and hour for certain posts and then the changes all the clients makers made ( Twitterific for one ) to comply means that almost real time updates from Twitter are now useless unless it's 2am in the States.

The issue with all the readers, bloggers and tweters is that we want to know what's going on at WWDC in (almost) real time, so delayed tweet sending while it helps not crash the service is useless to people using it for updates of this event.

Here's hoping someone with an N95 and Qix is at WWDC .

On a side note i have no idea why Apple by now haven't used their Quicktime Streaming Server product to show how it can handle real time broadcasts to many from these events live and even throw in some Apple product Ads at the same time ( You can have that one for free Steve ! ).

June 08 2008 at 4:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
l0ne

Ahem: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/06/twitterapple.html -- straight from the li'l bird's mouth.

June 08 2008 at 3:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Wythrol

A gnats fart in a wind tunnel is enough to break Twitter. WWDC is the equivalent of a jet engine down a drinking straw.

June 08 2008 at 2:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd

Totally agree with TD. Twitter has been going through a bad patch for weeks now, so going down during and shortly after WWDC isn't really significant.

June 08 2008 at 2:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
paul

One word: Plurk

June 08 2008 at 2:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Simon Arch

Can anyone recommend a good Twitter feed to follow the goings-on tomorrow? I sure hope Twitter can keep up!

June 08 2008 at 2:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Big John

Sites like TUAW, Engadget and others are painfully slow on keynote days (with good reason, not blaming the sites). I've come to rely on other services, like Twitter, to follow these kinds of events. I hope it keeps up tomorrow but other, lesser known microblogging services might survive the impact a bit better.

June 08 2008 at 2:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.