Twitter is under fire right now as the powerful focusing lens of the Internet calls into question the service's ability to deliver on a large-scale. Post Macworld's Twitter shut down, Dave Winer was frustrated enough that he said he would play with an XMPP-based, decentralized Twitter. We referred to Twitter's service activity as a prime example of the problem with a polling architecture for a communication service. Marshall took the XMPP case one step further to bring more of the world's attention to an important flaw: Twitter's architecture is not scaling well. And now, ShelIsreal has crafted a message that should send a shiver down the spine of any Twitter fan.
Twitter has formed a highly connected community. They aren't happy with the instabilities. They're ready to leave the service behind.
To be fair, the Twitter guys didn't mean to start this service. It was an accident, just like Flickr, which started as an in game chat service with a cool photo uploader that stole the show. And, just like Flickr, suddenly everyone was on Twitter. It has grown past the point of novelty to a chief contributor in Marshall's rent, and other bloggers as well. Many people depend on it as they would the telephone company. But, Twitter is just a few guys and a couple of servers. You know the world has changed when a few people can create a service that permeates our culture to the point where it angers people when there are outages.
I feel like I want to help Twitter. Did you read Biz's comment on Shel's post? He explains how he started a blog in response to demand, that they share usage stats, and other points that make you want to root for Twitter. I think that's what Shel was getting at when he expressed his love for Twitter. I felt like he was being genuine when he said he wanted to see them succeed.
At the same time , I feel like the genie is out of the bottle. I already want a federated Twitter. We are already working on it, and I'm sure we're not alone, which Shel suggested in his open letter. Perhaps Biz and Ev can leverage their brand to offer hosted versions of the service to those who can't or won't set up their own Twitter server. I'm confident there is a huge market for that service and it could be ad supported or another revenue model to make it an attractive tactic.
Man, I can't believe how quickly all of this came about. What is everyone's take on this? Can the Twitter brand survive in an open standard market? Is anyone else working on decentralized Twitter service?