I noticed today that Twitter has been very stable lately. Actually, I really hadn’t noticed any downtime in almost a week. I decided to check http://status.twitter.com/ and find out if this is true. From what I saw, there has only been 104 minutes of unscheduled down time in the first 11 days of July. That’s less than 10 minutes of downtime a day. Good job, guys!

Twitter really has a lot of potential to bring people together by making us more transparent to each other. For example, if you only know me from my blog, then there is a lot about me that you don’t know. Friend and family know me in some ways, and coworkers know me in some ways. Depending on what I decided to share on Twitter, my friends and family can learn a lot more about what I am working on at work, and my coworkers can learn a lot more about what is going on at home. All of this in easy to digest 140 maximum character messages.

My Twitter URL: @CJCraft

As much as I like what Twitter can do, it wasn’t long ago that I was become very irritated with the frequent “Twitter Blackouts” that were occurring on an almost daily basis. A lot of people were considering leaving Twitter, and the thought crossed my mind a couple times. I was really started to get frustrated with Twitter, and I wasn’t the only one:

Without Twitter many people had to resort to drastic measures to fill the void. One poor soul even had to the leave the side of his computer, and actually build a real life version of the Twitter Fail Whale.

Others made online portals dedicated to the phenomena: http://failwhale.com/

And to top it off, you can even follow the Fail Whale on Twitter: @FailWhale 

Yeah, I “failed” for it too. I couldn’t resist, so I made a Twitter photo mosaic that is composed from all the friends pictures of the top 100 most popular Twitter users. 

Resources I used in creating: Too Many Tweets: A Twitter Photo Mosaic.

• Ranks the most popular Twitter users.
  • http://www.twitterholic.com/ 
• Get File Name from URL (C#/.NET)
  • http://www.thejackol.com/2007/04/10/get-file-name-from-url-cnet/
• Where is my Twitter ID number?
  • http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/where_is_my_twitter_id_number
• Scott Hanselman: The Weekly Source Code 22
  • http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheWeeklySourceCode22CAndVBNETLibrariesToDiggFlickrFacebookYouTubeTwitterLiveServicesGoogleAndOtherWeb20APIs.aspx
• Change File Extension
  • http://bytes.com/forum/thread486309.html
• How to make your own photo mosaics
  • http://www.engadget.com/2004/10/19/how-to-make-your-own-photo-mosaics/
• Twitter is over capacity
  • http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3045/2567701776_89cd1ca33e_o.jpg
• Twitter fail whale
  • http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20080630/twitter-fail-whale-kinetic-sculpture/