Twitter prepares for iOS 5 launch

The launch of iOS 5 is right around the corner and Twitter is gearing up for an onslaught now that the social network will be integrated into iOS. So how is Twitter preparing to avoid a day-long fail whale when iOS launches?

According to Twitter's engineering VP Michael Abbott, the social network is not panicking about the upcoming increase in traffic. It's been slowly beefing up its servers and infrastructure over the past year. "During the last nine months, there's been more infrastructure changes at Twitter than there had been in the previous five years at the company," says Abbott in an interview with GigaOM.

And Twitter seems confident that iOS 5 owners will not significantly increase the number of tweets flowing through the network. Even if it does, Twitter can handle the load as it is already processing over 230 million tweets per day, up from 60 million last year.

Abbott also confirms that, even with mounting pressure from Facebook and Google +, it's not going to change the premise of its network anytime soon. Twitter will remain focused on the "simplified experience" we all know and love.