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Comment by moystard | Hacker News Reader

Facebook relies on people using their service all the time, when they want. They want it to simply work. That's why they have this obsession about 24/7/365.25 uptime on their servers. It means also no friction when people use Facebook on their mobile, thus a 5 star app.

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If you're being that precise the calendar actually has an average of 365.2425 days per year and not 365.25. In fact that was the major motivation for switching from the Julian Calendar a full 430 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

Or, if you're being really precise, you'd say 24/7/52... </pedantry>

I was expecting this kind of comments if I had only written 365 days a year, thought I was covered, apparently not.

I think the pedantry was invited by the attempt at specifics. C'est la vie.

I was just kind of surprised to see the .25. If you had put just 365 I'd have read that as "a year" and not give it a second thought. Instead it got me thinking if it actually rounded out to .25 or not so I went and checked. Apparently that wasn't too appreciated... :) No offense intended.

They have cemented their position. They can, at this stage, suffer down time without too much concern (hell, even twitter was down recently)

> hell, even twitter was down recently

You seem to think Twitter has a strong reliability record.

Fail whale...

I hypothesise user engagement would suffer in the face of down time. This, plus the added scrutiny this technical failure would place on their stock, means now is not a time when they can be careless about reliability.

Agreed, in fact it's ironic that they try sooo hard to have 100% uptime, as a small amount of downtime, can be a good thing.

No-one cares if vital utility x is working. It's not like they are texting their friends, about x being 'up'.

But if you take away x, often it highlights just how important it was, and it becomes relevant to them.

It reminds them just how much x, means to them.

Then, if x reacts to the adversity in a crowd pleasing way... instant karma and mindshare.

cf. new coke as well.

(speaking from experience in the hosting industry)

I disagree. There is so many social websites out there that you need your users to think you are the only option, If your service is down, people will have a look at others', and might them interesting.

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