Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. This is Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: a writer here and How Stuff Works and with me
Speaker 1: is editor extraordinaire Chris Palette. Hi there, we got a
Speaker 1: real tweet of a podcast for you. Dude. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about Twitter today. Yeah, we have an
Speaker 1: article called how Twitter Works, but in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases recently it's been sort of how Twitter doesn't work? Right?
Speaker 1: There is there's a certain graphic that pops up when
Speaker 1: Twitter is out of service. And I just got to
Speaker 1: hear what the name of it was the other day, Chris,
Speaker 1: come on share with us. It's the fail whale. Is
Speaker 1: the fail whale. It's it's cheerful looking whale that tells
Speaker 1: you that sorry, Twitter is not working just now. Um,
Speaker 1: recently it's gotten a little bit better there. There haven't
Speaker 1: been as many crashes, and we think that that might
Speaker 1: have something to do with an a recent influx of
Speaker 1: cash in the Twitter coffers. That's right. In May they
Speaker 1: received fifteen million dollars in venture capital funding. Um, and
Speaker 1: that increases there they're total to about twenty millions, so
Speaker 1: that gives them a lot more capacity. And the reason
Speaker 1: this is an issue is because people are starting to
Speaker 1: take to these microblogs, which are basically a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty characters. Yeah. Yeah, and so basically you have to summarize,
Speaker 1: you know, what you're saying in a very very short time.
Speaker 1: And it gives people an opportunity to blurt out a
Speaker 1: quick thought. Um. And it's very popular. It's taken off
Speaker 1: so much that Twitter has been showing the fail whale
Speaker 1: to many of us now right right, and and it
Speaker 1: spans beyond just the internet. Uh. Twitter interfaces with cell phones.
Speaker 1: It's using SMS technology, the short messaging service where you
Speaker 1: you send these short messages. It's just like sending a
Speaker 1: text message to someone else, except this case you're sending
Speaker 1: a text message to a network of people. So when
Speaker 1: a lot of people are sending lots of text messages
Speaker 1: to large networks, that puts a lot of strain on
Speaker 1: the system. But um, it's it's another important thing to
Speaker 1: note that the venture capital that's going into Twitter is
Speaker 1: really the main source. In fact, the really the only
Speaker 1: source of significant revenue that Twitter is. It's not even
Speaker 1: really generating revenue, it's just coming in on investments because
Speaker 1: Twitter is very proud of the fact that they don't
Speaker 1: have a business plan. Well, you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of competitors out there that are taking advantage of
Speaker 1: the frequent fail whales, like um um Pounds, which is
Speaker 1: uh something created by a number of people, including one
Speaker 1: of the founders of dig Kevin Rose right right, um Clerk,
Speaker 1: which is created by a group of people call who
Speaker 1: call themselves the A Team. Um Identica, which is a
Speaker 1: brand new version from Canada which is completely open sourced.
Speaker 1: Um you know, and I can't I can't figure out
Speaker 1: whether the j is pronounced ji q or hi q.
Speaker 1: But they were gobbled up by Google right getting ready
Speaker 1: to run themselves in the Google App Engine, and they
Speaker 1: haven't released their new version. But all these people are
Speaker 1: sort of waiting in line to be the next Twitter
Speaker 1: if Twitter manages to uh if they if they collapse
Speaker 1: under the weight of all the popularity. And it's actually
Speaker 1: interesting some of the some of the biggest Twitter cheerleaders
Speaker 1: have kind of moved on to talking about other services
Speaker 1: after seeing the fail whale one too many times. So
Speaker 1: this is definitely a real concern for Twitter. Um it's
Speaker 1: also showing us that that this microblog thing, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like it's going away. It's really really popular. And
Speaker 1: it kind of surprised me because the first time I
Speaker 1: thought about it was like, why would I want to
Speaker 1: know when my friends going out to shop for new shoes?
Speaker 1: But people are using it for lots of things, to
Speaker 1: to organize impromptu gatherings like Hey, who wants to go
Speaker 1: see a movie tonight? Or or even following the news.
Speaker 1: There are many news organizations that have Twitter feeds now
Speaker 1: and they give breaking news on you You hear about
Speaker 1: breaking news before it hits any websites. Oh sure, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that gives you know, added venues for the
Speaker 1: citizen journalists as they call them, to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to tweet there happened to be out on the on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk while something happens, and someone can post it
Speaker 1: to Twitter, and the news travels very quickly, faster than
Speaker 1: the media outlets can broadcast it. At the speed of life.
Speaker 1: You might say. As a matter of fact, I subscribe
Speaker 1: on my Twitter account to a number of journalists and
Speaker 1: photographers who happened to be out and when they see something,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll post something to their Twitter and they can
Speaker 1: even get you out of jail. Uh. James carl Buck
Speaker 1: who was a grad student in Egypt, he got arrested
Speaker 1: while photograph photographing an anti government demonstration. He tweet tweeted
Speaker 1: the word arrested and sent it out to his followers,
Speaker 1: and their response meant that he was freed shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely gots uses um for listeners out there
Speaker 1: who are curious. I have a Twitter account. If you
Speaker 1: want to follow me, it's Twitter dot com slash John
Speaker 1: Strickland that's j O N S t R I c
Speaker 1: K L A n D. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: how stuff Works itself has a Twitter account. If you
Speaker 1: follow how stuff Works underscore um, that's the official stuff
Speaker 1: works Twitter. So I guess we'll have to tweet you
Speaker 1: guys later in the meantime. If you want to learn more,
Speaker 1: you can always read how Twitter Works at the website
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Thanks a lot for listening
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