Twitter:we made it

Bare functionality, constant sightings of the "fail whale," API calls dropped to 20 and then to 10, the archives and replies function shut off, direct messages shut off...

That doesn't sound like "making it" to me. What it SHOULD be doing is staying up with all functionality, like most other well-designed services.

Twitter's definition of success is a far cry from mine.

"our uptime during the event was 97.3%" ... "About 4% of requests during this time did return the page that asks folks to wait a few minutes and try again."

Which means that 1 in 15 users got some sort of error. That's a lot.

This seems a bit analogous to the Chris Rock "Always asking for credit for things you're supposed to do" routine.

Nonetheless, impressive they stayed up so well on Monday, despite the recent issues.

They really should do one of two things:

1) Throw AdWords on their fail page

2) Make it a contest; for example if you happen to spot the special green Fail Whale, you win an iPod.

I wonder if they have considered load testing twitter themselves, instead of letting their users do it.

Disclosure: I'm currently writing a hosted load testing tool.

They may have been up, but the site was DEADLY slow. Was hard to do anything from the site (I have twhirl, but not at work)

97.3% ?

They oughta send a $2.56 check to everyone they let down.