Boycotting Twitter Could Lighten The Load on Blog24

Boycotting Twitter Could Lighten The Load

Posted by Chris
On July 03, 2008
Categories: Featured, Social Networks, Twitter

As I begin to write this the Fail Whale is indicating Twitter’s ongoing problem — ‘Twitter is over capacity’. It is the frequent outages that Twitter suffers that has prompted Paul Chaney, Internet Marketing Director at Bizzuka, to arrange a 24 hour boycott of Twitter on July 4th.

Paul Chaney explains his idea:

It’s time fans of Twitter express some tough love by joining in a 24-hour boycott - a “twittercott” - starting at 12:00 a.m., July 4th. Let’s declare our independence from Twitter by not using it the entire day. We send a message by NOT sending messages. Get it? If enough of us were to participate it would be a shot heard round the world wide web!

Paul wrote about the boycott on his blog, Conversational Media Marketing and has set up a group on Facebook, Boycott Twitter, which, at the time of writing, has 5 members.

One member, Graham Hancock of Mississippi, posted the following comment, which sums up my opinion about Twitter’s troubles rather well.

I don’t see how this will get anything done. Just get over it. Twitter is free and their service will get better over time. But hell, you’re more than welcome to boycott and make the service faster for the rest of us.

Of course there was a response from Paul Chaney that included the following ludicrous analogy:

We’re like a bunch of drug addicts who continue to go to the same dealer for our fix. But the dealer is unreliable. Still, we show up hoping not to see the whale this time. That’s insanity.

Twitter Fan I Am — Addict I Am Not

Personally I am a huge fan of Twitter and send tweets daily. I do feel that the alternatives, like Plurk, FriendFeed and the brand new identi.ca lack some of the features offered by Twitter.

Using SMS to add Tweets via mobile phone is a major advantage over the other services. Also I am able to received updates from selected members directly to my phone. This is how I keep in touch with my brother who lives over 5,000 miles (8,000km) away. I use the SMS method to add items to my Google Calendar too — very useful.

Major Investment

While I doubt that a one day boycott will have the desired affect. Following investment from Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos and venture capital specialists Spark Capital should give Twitter a noticeable performance boost in the near future. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, indicated recently that the process of rebuilding Twitter, “piece by piece,” is underway and, “will take months”.

Hopefully the investment will turn Twitter into a reliable service by autumn. However, the new service mentioned earlier, identi.ca is copycat sites that offer similar microblogging services but Twitter will hopefully remain the forerunner. If these clone sites become as successful as Twitter they too are destined to overload failure.

The Fail Whale Sensation

Ironically Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale’ has it’s own fan club, failwhale.com and its own merchandise. A claim that none of the Twitter clone error pages certainly cannot make.

The popularity of the Fail Whale does seem to indicate that despite the problems that Twitter continues to suffer there is a dedicated and loyal base of users that will ensure Twitter’s success in the future.

Shall I Join The Boycott?

Boycott Twitter if you like but only time will heal Twitter’s flaws, and it is doubtful that rival sites will gain as much popularity or attract the investment to survive. Whether I boycott Twitter or not is yet to be decided, I’ll let you know via Twitter tomorrow.

The good news at the moment is that Twitter is now live following the most recent hiccup.

Update: July 3, 2008 @ 16:59pm

Paul Chaney Blogs His Rationale

Rationale behind the Twitter boycott by Paul Chaney.

Some are wondering what my motives are in calling for a boycott of Twitter on July 4, a day I’m suggesting that we “declare our independence from Twitter” for 24 hours.

I can understand that some, perhaps many, consider this an exercise in foolishness (or stupidity) and that nothing will be accomplished. It’s obvious that others view Twitter’s foibles as nothing more than an annoyance, something to be tolerated until the day finally comes when we see the Fail Whale no more.

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