The Twitter Database Replication Whale: A Stroke of Genius
When Twitter took yet another hit today when one of their databases crashed, they knew that some downtime was in short order. In all honesty, Twitter has been doing 100 times better with site management and public relations in recent days. Even the image they’re now using for their maintenance place holder is a real communication method of culture and politics, or at least as cultural and political as social networking can get.
If you don’t take a second glance at the image (and most of us will wind up not doing so), it appears to be simply a fun attempt at a silly image to keep you amused while the site is down. While this was no doubt ultimately the goal, this whale is now burning an image into your head with symbolism, whether you like it or not.
Do you see the little Twitter birds grasping at their net, struggling with all of their might to keep the massive whale from falling into the water? This is where Twitter now stands. At the corner stone of scaling management, we are the whale, and they are the birds, while only a few days ago it seemed as though Twitter were the harpooners.
But will the net hold long enough to get us faithful users ashore? And do we even want to get there? Whales are supposed to be in the water, right? So what’s the deal with that?
Twitter definitly might have us caught in their snares for the time being, but the net’s threads are inevitably weakening. This whale might get loose pretty soon and escape into the massive sea of competition as fast as possible.
Filed under Tech, social |6 Responses to “The Twitter Database Replication Whale: A Stroke of Genius”
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You’re a master of symbolism. I didn’t catch that at first, but it sure as hell makes sense now.
Notice the erratic flight path of the twitter birds. they must have seen my post about the other graphic they had been using
http://holla.lalafufu.com/2008/05/my-proposed-twitter-random-error-page-redesign/
haha forgot to finish my though. Those birds are all over the place
Sure. They’ll make it. How do I know this? because despite all the friend feed stuff, we are still using twitter, even with the problems.
I guess it would need more than just seven little birds.
I think the birds are actually helping the whale, who was beached, return to the sea. That’s how I saw it, anyway.