I am finding it weirdly hard to find a straight answer to this? Like, what engineering challenges does twitter face that, say, facebook doesn't? Or is just a bad engineering thing?
Are there any other major sites that are known for being down a lot?
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:12 (fifteen years ago)
you get what you pay for
― Party Car! (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:15 (fifteen years ago)
people in charge of twitter probably are too busying tweeting "I am fixing twitter" instead of fixing twitter
― iatee, Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:17 (fifteen years ago)
on facebook it's OK if "real time" actually isn't: they can fill your news feed with any old shit that's to hand like photos or old conversations if required. You can spot when it's flaking out because old stuff appears in your wall. Twitter has to be (or wants to be) as real-time as possible, which makes what they're doing at their scale at lot more difficult.
They also made some tech decisions in the early days that probably make sense when you're just making yet another 2.0 website and want to get started, but that bit you on the ass when you're trying to scale to the hundreds of millions. They've had to rewrite big chunks of their back-end as they go.
Other sites that were known for being down this much: Friendster.
― stet, Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:17 (fifteen years ago)
Great answer stet, thanks.
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:26 (fifteen years ago)