The Twitter outage from last Thursday evoked some very strong reactions among members of the social media community. Voices both on and offline all shared similar expressions.
"I actually found it harder to get my work done."
"I picked up a book, read the first 140 characters and then lost interest."
"I had to get on MySpace...how boring"
"I felt incomplete!"
Even traditional media from the AP to CNN to the San Francisco Chronicle took notice and spent the day reporting on the issue, updating readers as the situation progressed.
The few hours that Twitter went down was attributed to a Denial of Service attack (DoS attack) or Distributed Denial-of-Service attack (DDoS attack), which according to Wikipedia, is defined as:
An attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely.
While Twitter fanatics waited, Facebook, Livefeed and other social media sites were overloaded and slowed by an influx of active users going somewhere else to converse (and complain about Twitter being offline). TechCrunch's humorous approach to the issue described the frenzy by offering 15 alternative things to do while Twitter was down.
Once back online, denial of service conversations were through the roof on Twitter. Hashtags continue the conversation through today, such as #whentwitterwasdown.
The uproar that Twitter's hiatus caused was a lesson in how dependent we've become on using online tools to share content and interact with others. Although the situation lasted only hours, it spurred some important lessons for brands as they engage in social media marketing.
Twitter blackout key learning's:
- Twitter users feel dependent on it - it's their go-to source to share and receive information. While Twitter users are active on other social networks, it appears that Twitter is the main destination for many of them.
- Micro-blogging isn't a come-and-go fad or trend. The reactions to the DoS attacks demonstrates just how much we all love to share what we're doing and thinking in only a few brief words. If you haven't developed a presence on Twitter already, now is the time.
- Evaluate your current presence. Did Twitter going down disrupt your day? If not, it probably should have. What can you improve on in your Twitter presence? Respond to more followers? Add links to share photos and videos? Think about the purpose of why you're there, and make sure you're achieving it.
- Develop a back-up plan. If one social media tool goes down, do you have a presence elsewhere online where people feel they can contact you? Brands can't rely on one tool to deliver their message or product. If Twitter is how you deliver customer service (which is great!), then have a similar real-time solution in place to implement in case the site goes down. For instance, Businessweek reported that Stocktwits was at a standstill, and is identifying new ways to prevent this, such as a downloadable widget.
- Identify what/where else you are and could be. Clearly, Twitter is a strong tool, albeit some issues. What else is out there that you aren't investing enough in, or aren't involved in completely? Is Facebook your main resource for hosting images and videos from events? If so, what is your back-up plan there? How can you expand your presence on any of these channels? A shake-up like this is a good time to renew interest in determining which are the right tools that will allow your brand's message to stay ahead of the curve and create sustainable conversations.
Co-authored by Leah Bassett
