I have been very frustrated, nay, annoyed, about the intermittent performance of Twitter. The web 2.0 flavor of the month (several months ago) actually has a lot of potential. The technical infrastructure has been unable to scale to the demand placed upon it by the Twitter user community. I have alternatively heard the technical shortcomings attributed to an inability to deploy servers quickly enough, database issues and front-end software choices.
Twiter reminds me very much of Facebook. It’s a web site that, once you see the value potential of the site, you begin to see great potential. Once the hockey stick of rapid adoption hits the site, though, the infrastructure is completely unable to keep pace. Because web 2.0 platforms like social networks (Friendster) and micro-blogging sites (Twitter) rely on both the number of users and number of social transactions they can enable. As the number of these transactions is capped, users begin to look elsewhere. For Friendster adoption brought extremely slow performance and database errors. For Twitter some convenient methods for sending and receiving messages (particularly IM) become unavailable on a regular basis and for extended periods of time. The first-to-market innovators show others how to duplicate the promised user value and highlight some of the tecnical pitfalls to avoid. Friendster users went to MySpace and Facebook. If Twitter cannot get their act together where will the Twitter users go? Jaiku? FriendFeed?
