Twitter Fail

The fate of Iran’s revolution — and quite possibility the world itself — is dependent on this?

#twitter #fail.

I guess they should have done that scheduled maintenance last night after all?

UPDATE: It seems that Twitter postponed the work from the middle of the night US time in order to avoid inconveniencing the Iranians.  I was aware of that but not the fact that they chose 2 to 3 pm Pacific instead. I was also unaware that the U.S. State Department had asked for this move.

Granting the extraordinary nature of what’s going on in Iran at the moment, it nonetheless seems an odd move to shut down the network during prime usage periods in the service’s host country, which must comprise an inordinate share of the total users.  Then again, there’s no way to scheduled maintenance on a global network without inconveniencing somebody, somewhere.  It would seem Twitter needs to figure out a way to have redundancy in the system so that they can shut down parts of it during off-peak periods without turning the world dark.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. quimby10 says:

    I believe this is the rescheduled maintenance period; see here.

  2. James Joyner says:

    You’re right. What kind of idiots schedule maintenance during the middle of the day in the country that is 99 percent of their market?!

  3. Phil Smith says:

    Idiots that were specifically asked by State to reschedule the down time for early morning Tehran time?

    http://bit.ly/c48Ki

  4. quimby10 says:

    The original planned maintenance period was, in fact, in the middle of the night U.S. time and was changed specifically to minimize the downtime for Iranians.

  5. Franklin says:

    The original planned maintenance period was, in fact, in the middle of the night U.S. time and was changed specifically to minimize the downtime for Iranians.

    I think this would have been a good idea had it not been publicized. Now it looks like our gov’t is deliberately interfering, although in a seemingly benign way.

  6. Phil Smith says:

    Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to get very irritated when somebody takes away the free ice cream?

  7. James Joyner says:

    Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to get very irritated when somebody takes away the free ice cream?

    The problem is that these things become mass platforms that people depend on. People praise Twitter when it’s doing well and pile on when it fails.