Tech

Massive Twitter Data Loss

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It looks like Twitter have screwed up big style. I added several people to my Twitter account (feed? roll? What’s the correct technical term here?) at Wordcamp UK on Saturday, and now they’ve all vanished.

After adding them all back in again, I’m now thinking: is there any point? I’m sure some people can’t quite see the point of Twitter anyway, but it’s a handy way to keep up to speed with distant contacts. I’ve got a few folks from Blogcritics on there, and the previously mentioned Wordcamp crew.

Clearly Twitter have rolled back some sort of database, and have had to restore a version that’s lost shedloads of data. Check this link and you’ll see lots of people talking about lost followers.

If I managed to lose that much data, I’d be fired. My users would have no faith in the service I offered. Not to mention the cost of losing that much data.

And to make matters worse, there’s no mention at all on Twitter’s blog. There is, however, a notice on their status page. But how many users know about that? You’d think a service like Twitter could send a ping to all of its users to notify them of the problem.

I could move to Pownce or Plurk, but I can’t be bothered. There’s nobody I have any interest in following on those services, which really does defeat the object in my eyes.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll carry on with Twitter. I’d like to hear from anyone that’s completely put off by the recent cock-up.

Fail Whale indeed.

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