Well I never realized. If you had asked me a few months ago if I used Twitter I would have said yes. I had a few updates under my belt, even developed the Twitter Toolbar for Firefox and Flock users, but I really didn’t think Twitter was that big a deal yet. Now I do.
Is It Really a Scheduled Maintenance?
Twitter has been down for a couple of hours now, a scheduled maintenance. You think they would do that at night time, but they did it in the middle of the day, whatever, guess they are not that big yet. As I write this though, I’m thinking maybe they are big. Maybe they know they are big, and we just don’t yet. By shutting down in the middle of the day two things happen. The first thing is a slap in the face wakeup call reminding us Twitter users that we are on their site all day! Second, if it gets any talk, and I’m sure it will, it’s free publicity.
What Happened To My Internet Access Though?
Well the truth be told, I still had internet access, but it didn’t totally feel like it. No @camp185′s (that is me), no direct messages, no NEW FOLLOWERS! How the heck am I supposed to market my site now, make new contacts, and have a little fun? You can bet todays numbers will be down a little for my site today, less Twitter visitors.
I never realized how important Twitter has become for me, and if haven’t at least tried it out you should, just wait until tomorrow when their site is running again. Twitter
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Hi Robert, great post – but I think there are some points that you didn’t really think through. “You would think they would do it at night time” – It’s almost 1am here in the UK and 2/3am in the rest of Europe, you’re forgetting that Twitter is international. There is no good time for scheduled maintenance, ever.
“Maybe they know they are big and we just don’t know it yet” – Twitter is huge, everyone knows it – Twitter grew in traffic in the last 12 months more than any other website in the world. In that small space of time it’s taken on more users than either MySpace or Facebook, and it’s forced Facebook to totally rethink their UI to be more LIKE Twitter.
As for how your supposed to market your site, I don’t think a couple of hours of no twitter is going to kill your business
I know they are huge, but their are still a ton of people (majority)who do not tweet so not that big yet.
In regards to a good time to do it, scheduled down time was 2pm pacific. That’s 10pm your time. Best time to do it in the day would be where the least people use it in the day. China
Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_7948000/7948092.stm
Twitter grew 1,689% from Feb08 to Feb09 compared to Facebook’s 114%
http://mashable.com/2009/03/16/twitter-growth-rate-versus-facebook/
7 Million new user registrations in Feb09 alone
Had to make one more comment. No Twitter, and business would continue like you said. The day I started using Twitter to sell my usability test though, was the day I made my first tweeter lead that lead to my first twitter sale.