Andrew Dobrow

This is another part of this "social action" that's being undertaken, that I don't like. A logo? Seems almost gleeful. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. - Brad McCrorey

Fair enough. But for me, it's more about letting people know about FriendFeed -- we're not trying to bring down Twitter, no one is that naive. No one expects to leave Twitter permanently, this is just a way to let people know: Hey, we know you miss Twitter when its down, but here's something else you might enjoy. - Shey

Brad, I think this is good for Twitter. If they have any prayer of gaining more customers and actually making money they have to improve their service. I have no loyalty to Twitter and will abandon it in a heartbeat if this outage stuff continues. - Jason Kaneshiro

Fair points, Jason. I couldn't agree more. I don't see how the twit-out has anything to do with that though ;) - Brad McCrorey

I hope Twitter will get the message but somehow, I think it'll have as much of an effect on Twitter as the Livejournal "writers' strike" had on Livejournal. I didn't participate in the LJ strike myself, incidentally. - Morton Fox

How can you not see the relationship? The "twit out" is a publicity stunt to make this annoyance clear to Twitter, likely through the blogosphere. If enough tech bloggers write about the "Twit out" Twitter will be forced to be aware of the issue and do something to rectify it, as it adds PR pressure. - Jason Kaneshiro

Brad, Chris offered the idea to me of getting a bunch of developers together and creating some sort of emergency twitter application for when the service is down. My argument was that Twitter should be doing more THEMSELVES for the community at those times. It should be something they're doing, not something we have to figure out. Twit-Out is a way to send that message. - Andrew Dobrow

I wish I could sum up exactly what I'm trying to say about this whole issue. When the last big outage hit, I blogged about it, I talked about it on getsatisfaction, I kept checking other blogs about it. I ranted, I raved. I NEVER went silent. I think that makes more sense. So, it's not as if I'm not bugged by the problem. I just don't think this is going to help. - Brad McCrorey

I don't think anything else has helped yet either. - Andrew Dobrow

@andrew I think talking about it is a better way of going about it. The twit-out seems too negative, almost hopeless. A mass throwing-up-of-hands. - Brad McCrorey

@andrew In the end, whatever you intend this to be, I'm afraid of it just being another meme. People jumping on a bandwagon.. Which, I suppose is exactly why we're all on twitter, to some extent. Whatever your mission, the gleeful masses changing "twit-out FTW!" just look like a mob to me, and mobs aren't constructive. - Brad McCrorey

ps - either way I'm enjoying the debate. This is the most I've ever used FF :P - Brad McCrorey

Once again, it's not about hurting Twitter at all. If the goal was to hurt them, it would be totally reverse spite, since I LOVE Twitter. All it's about is sending a community message to Twitter that something should be done for those situations, in respect to the community. At the very least, there should be a "We're working on the problem" type page, rather than just a purely dead server. It's also a matter of treating the community with some respect. - Andrew Dobrow

heh - brad, I'd see a mass throwing up of hands is just quitting twitter. Don't you think on some level this is giving Twitter a chance to fix it - making them aware of the problem? This is no different than some disgruntled comcast user posting vids of the sleeping repairman, forcing comcast to fix the situation due to public embarassment. I'll always take the side of the user / customer and companies that don't listen to their users really, ultimately shouldn't be in business. - Jason Kaneshiro

Great discussion so far -- I think I'll give it a like :) - Shey

Jason - This is just one step away from quitting it altogether, as I see it. I think bitching, whinging, blogging, ranting, is giving them a chance, and we're all already doing that. This low-level, probably low-participant "protest" in the end will probably have little impact, other than to promote the organizers. " - Brad McCrorey

and, good call, Shey :) - Brad McCrorey

Well Brad, I definitely agree with you on that last point - I'm already looking for Twitter alternatives. FriendFeed might be it :) - Jason Kaneshiro

Jason - This is by far the most I've ever used FF. If there was a spaz-like client for it, I'd be more interested ;) I'm not sure if I could handle the firehose of information, though. - Brad McCrorey

Thanks Brad. But I disagree that this is a step away from quitting. No way! Unifying voices is the best way to have impact -- being scattered only adds to the noise. And this has nothing to do with self-promotion for me anyway, I'm sorry if it's come across that way. What gives you that impression? - Shey

I don't mean that it was INTENDED as a tool for self-promotion (although, that spiffy logo does kind of lend itself to that argument -- I'm just sayin'). I'm merely saying that the by-product of the organizers / participants getting attention from this is more likely to be the lasting effect than any real pressure on twitter. - Brad McCrorey

Perhaps, but either way, we gave it a shot. It's just a matter of Twitter taking the time to listen to the community or ignoring it. - Andrew Dobrow

(I can't take credit for that idea, btw, Sean Reiser put it in my head) - Brad McCrorey

Either way, Andrew, I'm very much enjoying this debate / dialogue / what-have-you. Major props for raising awareness. I remember during the 2/3 day outage that people were only noticing the problem 36/48 hours into the outage in some cases. Awareness is the key. - Brad McCrorey

Agreed :) - Shey

Totally. The conversational aspect has been, by far, the most fulfilling part of this project. - Andrew Dobrow

groovy. Common ground is a nice place to be. Cheers! - Brad McCrorey

And like I said in other threads, it will definitely be a learning experience for everyone :) - Bwana

And remember, Bwana and Shey were the innovators of this idea. I just happened to run with it. So big props to them! - Andrew Dobrow

After thinking about this further, I'm going one further than a one day twit out. I'm boycotting Twitter until they demonstrate they have fixed the uptime problems. I don't need Twitter that badly, and in the meantime I'll just use FriendFeed exclusively. I know one user has little influence in the larger scheme of things but I'm tired of the downtimes and will patronize the service that is better, period. - Jason Kaneshiro

You're braver than I am, Jason! One day is enough for me. Just trying to send a message through the community. - Andrew Dobrow

The fact that we can HAVE this conversation on FriendFeed from something that was posting on Flickr... linked to another conversation from FriendFeed tells me that, indeed, FriendFeed IS something wonderful. - Vince DeGeorge

That's a great point Vince -- I don't think we're just being elitists here, FriendFeed has something going for it that other services don't. - Shey

when twitter goes down, I don't want a technical explanation from them. I want to hear why they continue to let it happen. - rambn