Twitter is definitely down, sorta

April 20th, 2008

Over the past few days the number of Twitter statuses popping up from those I follow on Twitter have been scarce.  At first I thought it was because I was beta testing the latest version of Hahlo.  Then, I thought it was a problem with the API and so Twitterrific would also have the issue.  But, I’ve finally taken a moment to look into the problem and I am, indeed, missing the majority of status updates on Twitter.

Recently on Twitter

The image here (pictured) is what I see on my Twitter profile page. You are looking at roughly 12 hours of Twitter activity from, what should be, 43 people on Twitter. However, you’re only seeing activity from four people. This should mean that these four people are the only people that have updated Twitter in the last 12 hours.

But its way off. Turns out nearly every person I follow has updated their Twitter status within the last 12 hours. If you poke around their profile pages, you’ll see that’s true.

The reason I’m writing about this, is because I have yet to see anything on the Twitter blog about this, and I’m certain that I can’t be the only one affected by this. I’ll try my best to make sure that the team at Twitter sees this blog post.

Are you experiencing the same thing?

Update 11:43am EST: I submitted a support request to Twitter in hopes of making them aware of the issue.

Update 8:45am EST on April 21: Still no response from Twitter on their blog. I’m really not sure why they’ve chosen to go silent about this issue, but it is the direct opposite of a good example. Dave Winer is also very surprised at the silence. Ev, Biz, Alex, dudes?

Update: 12:57pm EST on April 21: Twitter has now posted an update to their blog about the issues. Thanks team Twitter for keeping us up-to-date.

Update: 1:05pm EST on April 21:

How to fix your Twitter cache

It is really simple. Follow someone you are not already following. And then un-follow them. Refresh your Twitter page and you’re all set. Your cache has now been restored.

Note: As several people have pointed out, and as I have now discovered myself, this fix only works for “past tweets” that you missed. It does not allow new ones to come through.

Update: 3:25pm EST on April 21: So this post has been linked to from Techmeme, my comment on the Twitter blog, Mashable, and elsewhere. Thanks for all of the links.

Update: 4:15pm EST on April 21: This post has been dugg. Digg it up, if you’d like.

34 thoughts on “Twitter is definitely down, sorta”

  1. Lee

    Yep, I’ve been having this exact same problem since early yesterday morning.

    Apparently, the updates they did to the cacheing system during maintenance the other night caused the issue. (read here)

    I’m still getting all the updates through text though.

  5. Jim

    Yep I have the same problem and I have been only a member for 1 week.

    I submitted a support request to Twitter

  7. Derek Jay Steen

    I, too, noticed this problem after they had maintenance to ‘speed up their service’ the other night. I’m only getting updates from about 5 people.

    I actually found this post because I manually clicked on your Twitter page to see your updates. (Individually clicking on all the people I’m following is getting annoying.)

  8. James Fleeting

    I’m also having the same problem although unfollowing one person and adding them again fixes (kinda). They have posted about it several times on the Twitter Support site (click help on twitter.com). So, I don’t think they are being silent about it, it just hasn’t made the blog.

  10. chris runoff

    Colin,

    I was having the same problem until this morning. My issue was related to @hashtags. I was only seeing updates from people I follow in #phx. I stopped following @hashtags and the problem was solved.

    I know you aren’t following @hashtags, but I wanted to pass my experience along.

  12. Colin Devroe Post author

    Chris Runoff: I’ve seen a few people say that you have to follow / unfollow someone for the cache to update. I think I’m going to try that out.

    James: The man? Did you have any doubt! :)

  13. chris runoff

    It seems the follow/unfollow fix was only temporary for me, but at least Twitter is communicating now.

    I’m a firm believer that you can’t over communicate in a situation like this.

  14. Russell

    I believe you can also use switching on/off “Protect my updates” in settings. That way you don’t have to annoy any one.

  15. James Fleeting

    The follow and unfollow is a temp fix. It basically allows you to grab your past tweets that you missed but new ones still won’t show. I hope it is fixed today.

    @Colin: I had no doubt, it just further gave proof. :)

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  19. MG

    I made a thing to do this automatically the last time Twitter broke its cache: twitter.bodyvisual.com/missing

    Since I use Twitter mostly on my iPhone, it’s optimized for mobile. I have it bookmarked and go to it instead of Twitter. Works like a charm.

    (Sorry for the shameless plug :) )

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  22. acomputerpro

    I thought the problem is, certain tweeters (such as I, @acomputerpro) cannot be seen on anyone’s timeline. I’ve tested it by tweeting and then looking at the timeline of all those who follow me. Well, okay, not all 2,000+, but many.

    I’m thinking this is more of a database replication failure issue than anything else.

  23. Wayne Sutton

    I hope this works, my tweets are not showing up and people think I’m at a secret location. Thanks for the blog post.

    Also what wordpress plugin do you have that allow users to comment with video?

    I’m @waynesutton on twitter and I have a twitter cache problem.

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  29. dave

    hmm…i asked jim gosling and he says it just ’cause twitter on ruby can’t scale for the web, they should rewrite in all java, right? ;)

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  32. Wayne Sutton

    Colin thanks for the reply, I’m a viddler user also. http://www.viddler.com/waynesutton

    I’m going to give the plug-in a try. Do you think one day we’ll see the plugin work with third party commenting systems like Disqus and Intensedebate ? I think this will help with conversations and continue with the trend of turning blogs into social networks. I’m going to update http://socialcarolina.org/blog to wp 2.5 and install the plug-in soon.

    Thanks

    Wayne

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