The Twitter Technology
The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework, deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.
From the spring of 2007 until 2008 the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling, but since 2009 implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala. The service's application programming interface (API) allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter).
Why Tweet????
Dick Costolo, who moved up from chief operating officer to become Twitter’s chief executive in October 2010, taking over from co-founder Evan Williams, who remains at the company focused on product development, went onto say that Twitter’s goal was to provide a platform for people to connect for a specific purpose and not just for the sake of connecting – whether it be for people’s daily news hit or to communicate with people of importance to them (telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8252422/Twitter-is-about-connecting-people-for-a-purpose-says-CEO).
Using Twitter for Your Business
As a business, you can use Twitter to quickly share information, gather market intelligence and insights, and build relationships with people who care about your company. Often, there is already a conversation about your business happening on Twitter (chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business).
A Piece of Twitter History
Twitter's prehistoric document, circa 2000. An early temporary name was "Stat.us." Credit: Jack Dorsey.
Ironically, sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey, who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
The legal-pad sketch of the idea that would become Twitter has been noticed before, but given all the recent hype, an interview was scheduled with Dorsey to inquire about it in a little more detail. In the interview, Dorsey uses the document to touch on aspects of the micro-messaging service's history, including the inspirations and constraints that came to define one of the Web's most rapidly growing information channels (latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator).
Using Twitter Provides a Huge Upside for Its Users
Once you get an account, the benefits are clear. By simply searching Twitter posts, it is possible to quickly find informal reviews of a product or service. Often, users will pose a question and quickly have recommendations, ideas and offers of assistance in response. People planning a vacation can get recommendations from the locals on where to eat and what to do. Also, many businesses have customer service quickly and easily available, providing direct assistance when possible and guiding customers to the appropriate level of help when necessary (ehow.com/list_6149329_benefits-twitter).
Twitter Facts and Figures
Here are some facts and statistics about Twitter users:
- Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users.
- New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day.
- 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month.
- 75% of Twitter traffic comes from outside Twitter.com (i.e. via third party applications.)
- Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API.
- Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day.
- Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day.
- Of Twitter’s active users, 37 percent use their phone to tweet.
- Over half of all tweets (60 percent) come from third party applications.
- Twitter itself has grown: in the past year alone, it has grown from 25 to 175 employees.
linkedintobusiness.com/2010/04/the-latest-twitter-stats-from-the-huffington-post
Even Twitter Has Issues
Various “bloggerati” are up in arms about the ongoing instability of Twitter. Information is slightly better than it has been before as the technical folks are communicating the status and their ongoing work to resolve the problems. Various Twitter clients fail to work, and in some cases the site is completely unreachable. The FailWhale image has become all too common (baltimoremick.com/blog/2008/07/01/twitters-failure-and-friendfeeds-shortcomings).
From a personal perspective, I may learn to enjoy Twitter. Is it something you need to be on? Not really, but it is incredibly simple to use. Nonetheless, the downtime of this free product has been annoying, but keeping in mind that you get what you pay for.
Applications for Your Desktop
So get out there and start “Tweeting.” It’s the hottest thing on the web and it can be a useful tool for your e-business.
