Twitter is already struggling to stay afloat as the tech world buzzes about Apples WWDC 2008... and Steve Jobs hasn't even taken the stage yet. Perhaps Twitter shouldn't have made their "we're ready" announcement yesterday (or as Michael Arrington noted, "Tempted Fate")?
Twhirl isn't passing data in either direction and Twitter.com is moving remarkably slow.
That said, TechCrunch is down as well...
It was about a year ago that Apple announced the iPhone and the tech world traded in their cell phones and blackberries for the slick, full-screened gadget. I was intrigued (and love the UI) but it wasn't enough for me to trade in my trusty Blackberry Curve.
So as today's iPhone 2.0 announcement looms just two blocks away from my home (where I type this) - here's what I am looking for and what will get me to convert:
- 3G: seems a given - Improved Photos: the Blackberry doesn't cut it and I'm using my phone for media more and more - Video: the rumors of a front-facing video feature have me giddy - Sizing: sure the current model is sexy, but it's still relatively big (height and width) - Other Improvements: ie GPS, MMS
You can follow the WWDC at USA Today and live on Engadget and Gizmodo.
I turned my girlfriend Anette onto Twitter 6 months ago (@anetteherrera. She's admittedly and proudly not a techie; but she enjoys following a few close friends has actually posted 100+ tweets since registering.
All of her twitter usage has come from her Blackberry. Other than registering, she has never visited Twitter.com. So when she asked me last night why she hadn't received any Twitter updates in over two weeks, I realized that she had no idea that Twitter had been down and shut off their IM service.
Fascinating.
Twitter has been lauded for being transparent with their status problems - releasing a new blog, giving interviews and attempting to address the issues. But, that praise has come from techies (like myself). And if you don't read TechCrunch or blogs like this regularly - you'd be left in the dark wondering why twitter@twitter.com on GTalk isn't working... which is precisely what happened to Anette (though she really should read my blog!).
The lesson I learned is that transparency only works when there are viewers.
One of the great growth factors for Twitter was the ability to receive and post from distributed sources (ie off-Twitter.com)... But the only notice from Twitter regarding their service failures is on a status blog and in a small square on your Twitter.com profile. Perhaps an email would work? Perhaps an @twitter direct message?
While most of Twitter's users are tech-folks, I guarantee there are countless others like Anette who wondered why they weren't receiving Twitter updates and couldn't makes posts. It's not good business to hope that these users figure out what's going on and hope that they return... when the service returns.
This is becoming a habit: I write a post and a couple days later, after more thinking and discussions, I get an urge to follow it up. So here's my follow up to "Relax: In-game Advertising Won't Kill the Video Game Industry" - a response to CNet's claim that Sony's forthcoming in-game ads are going to hurt the industry. My argument was threefold:
1) It's a natural progression considering the move to online gaming and platforms 2) Sony, and others, will ease their way in and innovate with consumers responses and data in-hand 3) Ads will help offset the growing costs of big-name video games and lead to game innovations and enhancements
But here is another argument: It's already happening! Here is a 'screenshot' (err... photo) from MLB 08 The Show. The game is being played between the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Whitesox and notice the bevy of ads in U.S. Cellular Field:
- Louisville Slugger - MLB and MLB.com - New Era - Majestic - Upper Deck
Why can't those placements be run like AdWords? Instead of static brand ads, wouldn't it make sense that the NBA Finals be advertised their this week? As a consumer, I haven't cared to date (nor have I ever heard a complaint) - and I would prefer timely, dynamic ads moving forward.
I've written a lot about Twitter over the past few weeks - much of my writing is about community, trends, and general usage. Today, much of the buzz is around - as Michael Arrington terrificly puts it - Twitter's "minor period of uptime." Webware goes even further by asking Twitter to close shop until their issues are fixed: "A proposal for Twitter: Shut it Down."
I used to love Twitter. But the site's pogo status--it's up! it's down! it's up again!--is driving me away. I've removed the Twitter sidebar from the Webware home page, and I've stopped religiously updating it. Because I figure its users, and my followers, are learning to not trust it, to not bother visiting the site since it's likely to be down when they visit. Chances are fewer people are reading my Twitter posts now than a month ago.
I believe Twitter is bleeding users. Every time Twitter users go to Twitter.com or to their Twitter app and they see the "Fail Whale," an error message, or just a non-responsive site, they're that much less likely to come back the next time. Instead, they're going to FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, or even the whacked-out Plurk.
I understand users' frustrations, but Twitter would be nuts to shut down. Doing so would kill their business and be a far tougher pill for the devout Twitter-community to swallow than the (increasingly regular) bouts of downtime (and after all, the community's outrage is a sign that they value the product).
... That said, I 100% agree that it's a major problem - from both a user and a business perspective.
Twitter's struggle with downtime has affected more than just community - it's affecting the product. Twitter hasn't introduced any new functionality (and there are so many products aching to be launched!) because of the ops issues.
Rather than shut it down, Twitter needs to continue being transparent with their struggles and build an all-star team. We saw this issue with Friendster - and that turned out really poorly. Friendster's inability to scale enabled a slew of competitors to pass them, steal their communities, build big brands, and get very rich. Twitter can learn a lot from that famous web 1.0 story as there are numerous players lurking behind... the most imposing at the moment is FriendFeed (who is chomping at the bit).
And as Twitter struggles to stay up - FriendFeed (and others) are innovating, releasing new products and trying to convert Twitter's users.
Today, Sony officially announced an in-video-game advertising deal with IGA Worldwide - leading to numerous negative blog reactions. The boldest was by Don Reisinger at CNet with his "In-game advertising will ruin the video game industry" article:
In-game advertising not only ruins the experience of playing games, but it makes for a title that "sells out."
Think about it -- how many times have you played through Guitar Hero III and the entire Tony Hawk franchise wondering where the developers went wrong? Was it really necessary to drop the name of another product? Did we really need that extra banner behind the artist's head?
Of course the answer is no, but we're still being annoyed with in-game advertising for no real reason. Sony wants us to believe that we will benefit from it because it'll not only provide us with knowledge on a slew of new products, it'll increase developer revenue, helping create better games.
I'm motivated to respond not because I am a big gamer (I'm not) - but because this reaction is strangely common for new, controversial innovations (and this is an innovation). In-game advertising might prove to be a massive failure. It also might prove to be the next AdWords platform and an opportunity to engage with active game players. We won't know unless Sony tries.
More importantly, it's an open market and the market will solve itself. If Sony moves forward too quickly and pushes ads too aggressively, the video industry won't conclusively fail... it will have to adapt to the poor reviews and sales... and it will re-innovate.
Likely what will happen is that Sony will move with baby-steps and leverage their online-platform to swap units in, collect results, and gather data. And Sony is probably a better platform to test with than XBox - after all, PS3 Online is 100% free and overwhelmed with users. Perhaps an additional business opportunity to sell ad-free online play? Maybe Don Reisinger would be willing to pay a few bucks each month for that?
Visited any tech site recently? Chances are, it looks a lot like Techmeme's current front page: inundated with news and rumors regarding Apple's iPhone and upcoming announcements (see headlines here and here):
It's not just a Techmeme syndrome though. According to Twist, Twitter discussions around 'iPhone' are soaring as the Apple conference approaches:
In Google Trends, Google shows that iPhone related news is growing steadily (outside of the major peaks surrounding release dates).
The only major hub that doesn't show iPhone growth is Facebook. Their Lexicon tracker shows relatively flat use of the term 'iPhone' in Wall chatter... and to put that in perspective, I've charted 'iPhone' against the 'Lakers' - who start the NBA Finals tomorrow night. So maybe this gives perspective on tech geeks like myself whose over-infatuation with the iPhone isn't representative of the norm? Then again, if Apple really is to sell 10,000,000 units - that infatuation will have to be pretty widespread:
While I cannot definitively label this as the worst cross-marketing I've ever received (see that one here...!) - this isn't far behind. Today I received a package of Myoplex Light (a healthy, protein-heavy meal replacement system). In the package, Amazon included a coupon for a free McDonalds Southern Chicken sandwich and a free Southern Chicken Breakfast biscuit. Seriously? The point of me ordering the Myoplex was to eat healthy. Amazon even lists the product under the "Health and Personal Care" category - so not only is the McDonalds cross merchandising completely irrelevant to my purchase... it's downright cruel and tempting!!
InGameNow has been down since Saturday... So have thousands of other sites as 9,000 servers were caught in a massive fire at server and hosting company The Planet's Houston, Texas data center. Now the good news is that no one was injured and that 6,000 of those servers were restored last night at 5:06pm CDT. The bad news: InGameNow is still down. There are numerous lessons to be learned in this ordeal (one of which is the strain this causes on a start up, it's users and the engineers), but I am particularly struck by The Planet's responses - which truthfully has been mixed.
I often write about the importance of transparency. For customers, The Planet has been very transparent and responsive. They have sent out numerous mailings (see below), are reachable via phone, and in Twitter-esque style, are updating a blog / forum each hour with "Data Center Status Updates". Considering the severity of the issue, I applaud the type of regular communication and frankly, it probably also relieves some of their CS burden.
That transparency, however, isn't reflected to new customers - and that's disturbing. There is no mention of any issues in either "Recent News" or "Recent Blog Posts" - in fact, their main blog is linked to directly on the homepage and hasn't been updated since May 28th (last post: Hello, World). And much of the page is dedicated to "Learning more about World Class Data Centers". Considering the circumstances, perhaps part of the page should be dedicated to support or at least linking to the Status Blog.
The part that really irks me is the default pop-up screen that asks you if you'd like to interact with Live Sales Representatives... I am tempted to type in "When will InGameNow.com be running?"
Update: 11:05am pst InGameNow is now up... although, as you can tell, it is running slowly and graphics aren't rendering as the necessary fixes we have implemented will take a few hours to propagate.
The Planet's Initial Email:
> Dear Valued Customers: > This evening at 4:55 in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, > creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls > surrounding our electrical equipment room Thankfully, no one was > injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost. > > We have just been allowed into the building to physically inspect > the damage. Early indications are that the short was in a high- > volume wire conduit. We were not allowed to activate our backup > generator plan based on instructions from the fire department. > > This is a significant outage, impacting approximately 9,000 servers > and 7,500 customers. All members of our support team are in, and > all vendors who supply us with data center equipment are on site. > Our initial assessment, although early, points to being able to have > some service restored by mid-afternoon on Sunday. Rest assured we > are working around the clock. > > We are in the process of communicating with all affected customers. > we are planning to post updates every hour via our forum and in our > customer portal. Our interactive voice response system is updating > customers as well. > > There is no impact in any of our other five data centers. > > I am sorry that this accident has occurred and apologize for the > impact. > > Sincerely, > > Douglas J. Erwin > Chairman & Chief Executive Officer