Comments on: When It Comes to Social Networks, Uptime Doesn't Matter

By: Marcy

Marcy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:45:47 +0000

Who would have known that Twitter had a downtime of almost 50%? At the rate things are going, they really worked hard to get it going. I think it’s quite a turnaround – I guess it’s safe to say that they have great minds behind Twitter.

By: Kortbloggat 13-19 februarie (re:pub) — Niclas Strandh digitalPR, creative planning och sociala mediestrategier

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:40:51 +0000

[...] When It Comes to Social Networks, Uptime Doesn’t Matter En spännande take på att sociala nätverk handlar om andra saker än om upptid och tillförlitlighet när det gäller tillgänglighet. Av de uppmätta sociala nätverk som Pingdom valt att följa är det Twitter som är sämst – rejält sämst. Självklart finns det ett samband mellan en stark tillväxt = popularitet och högre nedtid då redundans alltid kostar pengar men det visar också på ett nytt sätt att se på sina tjänster: när de är sociala så handlar det snarare om att välja den oavsett reliabilitet. Det samma kunde ses på Jaiku: alla samlades igen efter långa nertider. Det som krävdes för en stor flytt var Bloggy.se och att Google meddelande att Jaiku skulle sluta att utvecklas. [...]

By: Thomas Whitney

Thomas Whitney — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:50:06 +0000

Thanks for the article.

I was mostly amazed by Twitters down time. How is this acceptable if it is used for business marketing? Will we not grow tired of that quickly?

Digital security is a huge issue in all social networking sites.

I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind touching base in an article about just what steps are being taken to protect the user. I found some information on http://www.justaskgemalto.com which was helpful. Just wondering what your take on it is.

By: JAy.

JAy. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:46:29 +0000

Matthew, I think you hit the nail on the head with the closing to your article. Twitter’s downtime issues are due to the fact that the service is growing faster than anyone envisioned, including its creators. Twitter launched and quickly outgrew its technological backbone.

That said, where would Twitter be on the list if you only looked at the last two quarters of 2008? Unless everyone had a terrible 1H08, Twitter could move out of the gutter thanks to the dedication of their development team.

JAy.

By: Morning Edition - Feb 19, 2009 « Sazbean

Morning Edition - Feb 19, 2009 « Sazbean — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:11:03 +0000

[...] When It Comes to Social Networks, Uptime Doesn’t Matter (GigaOM) [...]

By: SD

SD — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:18:16 +0000

Peter, compete.com’s traffic data is worthless. It only counts US traffic. It would only be valid for measuring something which only applies to Americans (US election sites, for example).

By: Niclas Strandh aka Deeped » Strandh delar med sig - 2009 02 19

Niclas Strandh aka Deeped » Strandh delar med sig - 2009 02 19 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:02:02 +0000

[...] When It Comes to Social Networks, Uptime Doesn’t MatterEn spännande take på att sociala nätverk handlar om andra saker än om upptid och tillförlitlighet när det gäller tillgänglighet. Av de uppmätta sociala nätverk som Pingdom valt att följa är det Twitter som är sämst – rejält sämst. Självklart finns det ett samband mellan en stark tillväxt = popularitet och högre nedtid då redundans alltid kostar pengar men det visar också på ett nytt sätt att se på sina tjänster: när de är sociala så handlar det snarare om att välja den oavsett reliabilitet. Det samma kunde ses på Jaiku: alla samlades igen efter långa nertider. Det som krävdes för en stor flytt var Bloggy.se och att Google meddelande att Jaiku skulle sluta att utvecklas. [...]

By: Which Social Networks Are People Talking About Most? « Spaghetti Testing | Peter Smith

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:23:45 +0000

[...] I got curious about this question when reading the comments Mathew Ingram’s recent post on social networks and uptime. Mathew noted the curious case of Twitter, which is the social network “that everyone wants [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:38:04 +0000

According to compete.com’s recent numbers (lazyweb stats FTW!), Twitter is actually more popular than Imeem (by a long shot), and trails only Facebook and MySpace in terms of monthly visits. See http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/

By: SoMoJo

SoMoJo — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:43:17 +0000

Re: Sd’s comments on site popularity

It’s actually pretty darn impressive to see imeem near the top, while it’s not hugely popular with techies it’s managing to serve almost 80million users per month via those embedddable widgets that turn up in a lot of the other sites on the list, take a look at quantcast’s stats – http://www.quantcast.com/p-03Kgz0RV6Ztmc

It’d be interesting to see youtube added to this list, they’re not really a social site, but they probably push more data than myspace & imeem combined.

By: Social Networks, and its popularity factors | JigishThakar.com

Social Networks, and its popularity factors | JigishThakar.com — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:31:32 +0000

[...] Information source : gigaom.com [...]

By: Kevin Pruett

Kevin Pruett — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:49:13 +0000

I think this is a great insight into the social network arena. If a service proves innovative and revolutionary, user adoption should arguably outweigh company resources. In other words, services and social networks like Twitter should strive to achieve their “breaking point.” Twitter’s ‘fail whale’is a testament to their unbelievably growth.

http://www.techsoomer.com/twitter-teaches-startups-hunt-fail-whale/

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:14:53 +0000

Thanks for the comment, SD. I didn’t say Twitter was the biggest — I said that (in my opinion) that it’s the one people are talking about the most and the one that is growing the fastest. I certainly haven’t read or heard that much about Xanga or Imeem in that context, although I don’t know offhand what their growth rates are like. And Twitter is growing quickly despite having the worst uptime — that’s my point.

By: SD

SD — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:32:34 +0000

I completely disagree with you, Mathew, on two major points.

First of all, for the most part, the services listed above with the lowest amount of downtime are generally the most popular. Facebook, Myspace, Imeem (you may not use it but it’s more popular than twitter) are all near the top. The general data seems to contradict your assertion.

Secondly, twitter is not as big as you seem to think it is. Twitter is a very popular site, but its traffic is one of the lowest of al thel networks you have listed. This would once again seem to contradict your assertion and indicate that uptime *is* important.

By: » GigaOM: “When It Comes to Social Networks, Uptime Doesn’t Matter” » Cornell Info 2040 - Networks

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:32:36 +0000

[...] in the New York Times, but it comes from Matthew Ingram at GigaOM.com. The article can be found here. The Pingdom study it discusses is [...]

By: For social networks, uptime doesn’t matter

For social networks, uptime doesn’t matter — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:14:53 +0000

[...] the rest of this post at GigaOm) [...]