Sunday, September 7, 2008

Gamer's Bill of Rights?

What's more important, a Gamer's Bill of Rights, or an Online Users's Bill of Rights? Do you even have to think about it?

Twitter showing improved uptime

Both Read Write Web and TechCrunch point out that Twitter has seen much improved uptime in the past couple months, reaching 99.88% uptime this past month.

TechCrunch quotes co-founder Biz Stone:

"Twitter has been making great progress in terms of uptime and reliability. Fail Whale sightings are far less frequent these days thanks to our efforts but we still have a long journey ahead. Last month we saw 99.88% uptime and so far this month we are at 99.96%. Our engineering and operations teams have been taking a very methodical approach to improving Twitter. We’re using the word “craftsmanship” to characterize our work here at the office. Reliability and dependability continue to be top on or list of key goals."

What I like most is the details that Twitter provides on their blog describing where the issues stem from:
"I've always respected a good sense of pacing. It's easy to be fast and loose, but it takes a certain discipline, foresight, and patience to guide something through the right way. For most of Twitter's early days, pacing could be considered an unattainable luxury. Our effort started with a bang and quickly accelerated to a disconcerting velocity that never let up. We found ourselves reacting to situations instead of crafting solutions and features we wanted to make.

With nearly two years at full speed, thousands of successes (with as many mistakes), and countless lessons learned, we've finally discovered our rhythm as a team. By carefully regrouping all aspects of our work, breaking the problem down into smaller parts, and iterating rapidly, Twitter, Inc. is poised to bring a new kind of communication to every part of the world."
Kudos to Twitter for not only the improved uptime, but for keeping it's users in the loop on things that generally are discussed only behind closed doors.