Twitter Down. Causes Worldwide Panic (sort of…)

August 6 2009, 12:43pm

As many of you have experienced, Twitter has been down on and off today since 6 AM PST. This has not been the first time Twitter has gone down for an extended period of time, but the growth in users and activity by those new users has made this outage seem more widespread than past occurrences. Many are tweeting about their lack of Twitter whenever there is a blip of uptime, while others are Facebooking about how they cannot post to Twitter (has anyone ever tweeted when they could not post to Facebook?)

It’s interesting to see how a down social network can cause social panic. Have we become so dependent on social networks that we feel socially cut off when we cannot connect virtually (even when we are surrounded by coworkers we can physically interact with)? Kevin O’Keefe posted a great commentary to his Real Lawyers Have Blogs earlier today titled “Twitter outage ongoing : Surviving in an unconnected world.” I recommend reading it (since you have some free time thanks to Twitter). In it he states:

“Interesting how something I didn’t use a year ago is now something I can’t live without. It’s like I’ve lost my connection with the outside world.”

We all will effectively survive this outage, but it does feel like a part of our daily routine is off with Twitter missing. For some, Twitter is part of their job (like me), while others use it as an intermittent escape from their job. Regardless of why you use Twitter, it has become ingrained in our daily lives.

Since many of us are trying to find some alternative escapes, here are some great videos about what to do when your network/email/twitter is down.

What to do when email goes down What will your people do when the network goes down?

Take it easy as we wait for Twitter to come back 100%!